After 7 days in the Sacred Valley / Cusco, it was finally time to begin our journey back home to reality…

[5 things to bring to Machu Picchu and the one I wish I hadn’t forgotten]

When I originally booked our lie flat seats to Peru, I booked us leaving Cusco on a Sunday about 3pm arriving at Lima in the late afternoon.  That gave us a half day in Lima before our flight Monday morning back to Washington DC.  As our plans firmed up a little bit more, I realized that we would have plenty of time in Cusco and I’d rather have more time in Lima, so I tried to move our CUZ-LIM flight to earlier in the day.  I had booked with Alaska miles, which allows free changes on awards, but for some reason there was ZERO availability on any of the TEN DAILY CUZ-LIM flights for most of the summer.  So I had to keep my existing afternoon flight.

On the way to Doubletree El Pardo – whirlwind tour of Lima

Our flight put us into Lima at about 4pm, so unfortunately we did not get a ton of time to visit Lima.  I had arranged a taxi service to take us to the Doubletree El Pardo Miraflores, and when we got to the airport, I negotiated an extra S/20 payment to the driver directly to take us by way of the historic Lima downtown.  This is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and while I understand that just driving by doesn’t really capture the place, I still wanted to see it.  Along with Cuzco and Machu Picchu, this was my 3rd UNESCO World Heritage site visited on this trip and 15th overall.

(SEE ALSO: Tracking UNESCO World Heritage Sites)

Here is a video I took at the Plaza San Martin, which is the main plaza in downtown Lima that features the historic Bolivar hotel

I believe this is a picture of La Iglesia de San Francisco

Our driver was very nice and explained (in Spanish) the different sites that we were passing.  IMO well worth the extra 20 Soles (which is about USD$6)

Doubletree El Pardo location

The Doubletree El Pardo is not near downtown Lima but is instead in Miraflores, which is a fairly upscale and touristy section of Lima.  By the time we arrived, it was dark out.  We asked at the front desk if it was safe to walk around at night and they assured us that it was.  We had no problems whatsoever and felt perfectly safe even at night.

We only had a few hours here unfortunately, so we walked about 3 blocks from the hotel down Avenida Jose Pardo to the Parque John F Kennedy which was a large park that was full of people hanging out, eating and having a good time.  Here’s a video I took of a group of people dancing in an auditorium

There were also lots of street vendors selling art (mostly drawings and paintings), if that’s your thing, as well as a section that is apparently famous for being home to 50-100 cats.

After going through the Parque Kennedy, we continued down the Malecon about 1/2 mile to the Parque del Amor (Lover’s Park), which was a neat area

The Parque del Amor overlooks the Pacific ocean, and I can imagine that (facing west), the sunsets there would be pretty awesome. There were lots of schmoopy couples of course, and I enjoyed reading the different love quotes and trying to translate them for Carolyn, to mostly humorous effect

Doubletree El Pardo room

After our brief excursion out in Miraflores, we returned back to our room at the Doubletree El Pardo by Hilton Miraflores.  We had a room up on the top floor, nearly directly across from the executive lounge

Our room was nothing amazing, but the bed was comfortable and it had all the amenities we needed.  As a Diamond guest, we also received some chocolates as a welcome amenity

and of course the famous Doubletree cookie

Executive lounge / food at the Doubletree El Pardo

We had been hoping to pick up poor man’s dinner in the Doubletree El Pardo executive lounge when we arrived to the hotel, but unfortunately we found out that it was closed on Sundays :-(.  We had an early (9 am) flight out of LIM the next morning, and wanting to make sure we left ourselves enough time to get to the airport in morning rush hour, we were waiting for the lounge to open at 6:30 on Monday morning (it opened a few minutes late).  They had a small spread of breakfast foods and such out.

You could also order an omelet, which they brought up from the restaurant below

In hindsight, as Diamonds, we probably could and should have just eaten the buffet breakfast in the restaurant, which I am assuming would be complimentary.

All in all, the El Pardo Doubletree by Hilton in Miraflores / Lima was a great stay.  Now that Hilton’s award prices are tied to the cash prices, your points cost may vary.  We paid 24,000 Hilton points – you can check cash prices for the Doubletree El Pardo at hotels.com and read other Doubletree El Pardo Hilton reviews at TripAdvisor

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