What a surprise! At first glance, Lima in May seems to be one of the saddest cities I've ever visited. From April till October, the city is covered with fog arriving from the Pacific. It obscures the sun almost completely, making the whole city look extremely gray and grim. Under such conditions, one has to make an extra effort to find some photogenic places and escape the grayness.
Being located near Miraflores district, I thought it'd be a great idea to start the exploration in this part of the city. Miraflores is a residential and upscale shopping area, known as one of the main tourist attractions and one of the prettiest places in Lima. Well... as for me it would be hard to get further from reality.
The whole neighborhood is composed mainly of very modern, glass and concrete buildings, representing many different styles, which makes the place look rather chaotic and not very interesting. Add to it almost completely empty streets and omnipresent gray aura and you'll quickly realize that it's not worth lingering on in this district.
If you're looking for a much more lively atmosphere, charming streets and good photo opportunities, you'd better give Miraflores a wide berth and... head right away to Barranco district.
Beautifully located by the ocean, it's full of splendid, colonial architecture, flowered streets and parks. Its incredibly colorful façades and lovely alleys, invite you to go for long walks and take photos.
Barranco turned out to be full of some excellent pieces of street art too. Here's a little sample of quite impressive creativity in this field that can be found in this area:
As my stay in Lima was extremely short (only 2 days...), except for Barranco, it was only possible for me to visit the old city center with Plaza de Armas and the adjacent streets.
There I found myself torn between taking pictures of even more beautiful colonial architecture and photographing extremely lively street life and inhabitants of this unique city. Trying to do both as much as I could, I kept on telling myself that I gotta go back to Lima some other time and discover more of this one of a kind city.
