Off to Cusco

This girl totally ripped me off, she charged way too much for letting me take her picture.  That's okay though, I really didn't care that much.  And she has a cute baby llama.

As you can see we went to Peru for our 15th wedding anniversary.  Leo picked the destination, and we've been planning it for about two years.  We stayed at my cousin's Clay's house on Friday night--his daughter Hannah was watching the kids the first week and then we flew out Saturday morning.  Had a seven hour layover in Mexico City--which if we had known that we had to go through immigration just for a connecting flight, we would have planned on doing something in those seven hours.  As it was, we hung out at the airport, ate lunch, and tried on perfumes and colognes at the duty free stores.  I discovered (I've only ever owned one bottle of perfume) that I like floral scents with slight bit of fruitiness and a little bit of sweetness and that I like on Leo fresh scents with woodsy undertones.  Yep, we spent a lot of time smelling perfumes.  Anyway, after watching two late couples beg to be let on a plane that had already unhooked and was heading to Italy, we headed out on our flight and got to Cusco about 11 AM Sunday morning.  Cusco's airport is tiny--there's not even one store or restaurant. It really would have no industry at all without tourism.  But I really loved it.  It's easy to understand why it is such a popular destination--even without Machu Picchu, Cusco is so charming.  Well, the part that's the touristy section anyway.  The rest is kind of a dump.  Someone told Leo that they have to pay more taxes if the building is finished so most people leave their businesses/homes partially unfinished.  I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly looked that way.  And there was litter and trash everywhere (outside of the tourist sections).  Stray dogs are everywhere so you constantly have to watch your step even in the tourist section.  But despite all that it really was wonderful and I would recommend it to anyone.

 This was in the main square, the Plaza de Armas. A lot of Incas were excuted there.  Crazy history.  

This is the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin--also a UNESCO World Heritage site.  We did go in at the end of mass one day, and looked around.  Leo and I aren't very found of Catholic religious art though, so we spent about three minutes looking around.  That was enough for us.

Leo was my lovely model in the rain.


Yes, I am posting a million pictures of city streets but I LOVE the balconies and the blue balconies and white walls and the cobbled streets and well just everything.






 This was at the Qorikancha Inca temple that the Spaniards built a church on top of.  (Well, almost all the Spanish churches were built on top of Inca temples/palaces--asserting dominance and all that).  I have more pictures of the inside later.  But it was pretty fascinating the juxtaposition of two very different cultures/architecture.


This was the inside of our hostel--El Grial.

And the outside of it.

 
Blue was THE Inka color so all the balconies, doors, etc are either wood colored or blue.  It was lovely.



The sales lady dressed us up trying to get us to buy more.

 Random kid, but she was adorable.





 We spent some time just browsing around a local outdoor market.