Peru has a way of sneaking up on you. One moment you’re scraping the last of the lomo saltado off a communal plate in Lima; four days later you’re swimming in piranha-adjacent water and somehow feeling perfectly fine (he wrote without the slightest of a nervous twitch).
I was already falling in love with Peru after an afternoon with new friends of strolling Lima’s culinary haven of a neighborhood, Barranco, where I flitted between multiple servings of osso bucco and that lomo saltado — the popular stir-fried dish of steak, onions, peppers, soy sauce, French fries, and rice — at raved-about restaurant Isolina and learned the proper way to make a pisco sour at Hotel B, Lima’s only Relais & Châteaux property.
Sprinkle in pork sandwiches at Juanito Barranco, a City of the Kings bohemian socializing staple once frequented by Allen Ginsberg, and a chocolate tasting at Ciclo’s Café, and it was enough to fall hard for this city after just a few hours — and maybe express self-gratitude for being forward-thinking enough to slip a Tums packet into my wallet.
A great solo travel tip spotted this week on Luxury Travel Advisor.
