Reported to be the gastronomical capital of the Americas and also known as the garden city due to its many green spaces, Lima was always an essential stop on our world tour. Getting there from Argentina proved problematic: we are still in a dispute with the airline LATAM regarding our single flight from Mendoza. I won’t use this as a place to rant but simply put, they owed us more money than we spent during our time in Peru (Toms persistence did get the bulk of it back eventually!)

Friends had advised we booked an Airbnb in the Miraflores area of town, it took us a while to find the right one but as soon as our host Ursula opened the door, we knew we had picked a gem. She was very helpful, spoke excellent English and there was a vast amount of information about the city to read in her apartment, which was stylish, spacious, clean and within a few minutes’ walk from the coast. Ubers were again the way to get around and were super efficient.

Arriving mid-morning, we headed straight to MAC Lima for lunch and a stroll around the museum of contemporary art.

There are a couple of branches of the café La Bodega Verde, the one at the museum was mainly al fresco close to the park that circled the museum (with some sculptures to explore and climb) and had a lovely menu of salads and light bites. It also had some kids toys and was clearly the spot where expat mums and kids came on playdates.

The museum itself was a little thin on content, no permanent collection on display which surprised me, just three small temporary exhibitions. The first was just a few pieces by the artist Camila Rodrigo on the construction of landscape.

The second a larger showcase of the history of contact between Peru and Venezuela (tackling migration) where it was good to see a new work by Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck (who shows with Green Art Gallery in Dubai) and some strong video and textile pieces.

We spent the most amount of time in the third temporary exhibition Common Ground, an experimental space designed by Ximena Garrido-Lecca and Ishmael Randall-Weeks (who shows with Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai). They were inspired by the Dominican Friar Tommaso Campanella and his imagined utopia where the city’s walls were covered with all the knowledge of its time. Visitors could add an object to the exhibition, help to rip bits of newspaper used in the clay construction or climb up a flight of stairs and read an extract of the newspaper into a microphone.

It’s the type of project which could never happen post COVID-19 and was fascinating in lots of ways. Sadly, all we had with us to leave was an entrance ticket to the museum and an Argentinian peso.

We set off to walk back in the direction of our apartment – knowing we wouldn’t make it all the way on foot. El Malecón is a six-mile stretch of coastline, with a series of parks along the cliffs with views of the Pacific Ocean churning below. We got as far as the Larcomar mall which had been recommended by Ursula and was spectacularly situated on the coast. We had a good buffet dinner at Mangos and enjoyed the sunset.

The following morning I got the measure of the coast a little more, setting off running the other way along el Malecón and then making my way down to the shoreline trying to avoid the traffic. It was more pleasant up high on the cliffs, idyllic really, especially through the Parque del Amor, a Gaudí style tiled viewpoint with Victor Delfín’s sculpture of a robust couple embracing.

I was stunned by the number of people exercising: bootcamps, boxers, joggers even groups practicing Tai Chi. Its famed as a great spot for paragliding but I think it was a bit windy and murky that morning. Down on the beach there were plenty of surfers, with pelicans and other large birds dipping and diving around them.

It was a little smelly and I got stupidly distracted by a woman collecting rubbish and tripped over – this time a long way from the apartment so it was a bit of a hobble back.

We tried a few more museums, with mixed results. MATE was a highlight, the museum in a beautiful villa, established by the photographer Mario Testino who is from Lima. Several rooms featured floor to ceiling blown-up reproductions of his photographs of models and glitterati such as Kate Moss and Mick Jagger. Upstairs there was a room dedicated to his infamous photoshoot with Princess Diana which was rather moving. Best were the spaces dedicated to younger Peruvian artists, not just photographers, there was some strong, experimental work on display.

Included in the ticket price was the Museo Pedro de Osma in the villa next door, so we took a look – not hugely taken with the 17th century religious paintings and silverwork but it had a nice garden.

We thought we would take a tram down the street but instead found ourselves in the free Museo de la Electricidad – quite a bizarre place but we had fun getting electrocuted!

We warmed to the atmosphere around Barranco, walking over the Puente de los suspiros (only reading later that first-time visitors are supposed to hold their breath the whole way across and can then make a wish). The small wooden bridge built in 1876 is hardly a match to the Venetian bridge of sighs (or indeed the one I walked over daily at St John’s College Cambridge) but is so named as the area was a place where lovers often met, leading to a lovely ‘mirador’ or viewpoint, now bustling with cafés, bars and buskers.

There is plenty of good graffiti all along the Bajada de los Baños which winds its way down to the coast and would traditionally have been the main thoroughfare of fishermen.

How has it taken so long to get onto the serious subject of food and drink? We had been given quite some education in Peruvian cuisine due to the delicious menu at Toro Toro in Grosvenor House, but nothing prepared us for the variety and sheer wonder of what we found to devour in Lima.

It always seems to make sense to start in a market to truly understand a city’s relationship with food, best of all one frequented by more locals that tourists. We found that at Mercado N° 1 de Surquillo – where we were stunned by the amount of fresh produce, fruit, vegetables of every description, fish and meat and dried goods too and of course corn, the national stable with many varieties.

We had lunch at a place there which specialised in cerviche, portions vast and a fraction of the cost of restaurants. We couldn’t resist also ordering yuka fries and it was where we had our first jug of chicha morada, an incredibly moreish non-alcoholic drink made from purple corn.

As our plates were being cleared, we were serenaded by a trio of talented violinists. We found them outside too and the girls had a dance.

We walked on to the rather too touristy Inca Market to purchase a fridge magnet or two before heading down to Barranco.

Head chef and friend Alfredo had given us a fantastic list of restaurants to try and get in to, we only managed two, but they were both so good and so different I think we did well. We had managed to book an early dinner slot at Isolina Taberna Peruana, not too early to try our first Pisco Sours of the trip which were divine.

The menu was very hard to decipher, not only just in Spanish but with quite obscure cuts of meat and fish to identify. Alfredo helped us out via What’s app, and we ended up with vast dishes of delicious food, mainly meat stews. So good.

The second was La Picantería for lunch the next day. Its first come first serve, you can’t book, so we were there just as it opened its doors at 12 noon and managed to get a table. We only then realised it was dry that day because it was the day before the elections (what a good idea) so instead of piscos this time we all shared delicious juices. Again, we over-ordered: this time a whole fish on ice, picked from a blackboard, enjoying watching it being prepared in different ways and brought to the table with many different side dishes.

We were stuffed and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring other corners of Miraflores, spending time on the swings in Parque Kennedy.

We ventured out of the Miraflores area only once, taking a taxi to Circuito Magico del Agua at Park of the Reserve to see a waterfall light show after sunset, again one of Ursula’s recommendations. It was a pretty impressive show (although we have been a bit spoilt by the fountains at Burj Khalifa) and the atmosphere was lively and local – the ice-creams nothing special but the whole experience was worth the journey.

That drive was the only time we noticed our driver locking the car doors as we drove through some rougher parts of the city. For the most part we had found Lima to be a modern, picturesque, vibrant and safe city and the perfect place to spend our first few days in Peru.