The first day of our Peru trip was mostly spent on the flight from Newark to Lima. We flew on Continental and it was a pretty good time, considering we were spending about eight hours in coach. Luckily, however, thanks to Josh’s status we got bulkhead seats with extra legroom. The best part was that we had individual TV screens with video on demand. I watched some chick flicks (S&TC 2 and Letters from Juliet) during “dinner” (really it was lunchtime), then slept the rest of the way.
The food on Continental isn’t terrible, but it’s obviously not gourmet. I guess we should be grateful they still serve food, for free. What peeves me a bit though is that when you’re on a plane, they only ask you if you want “chicken or beef”, which isn’t very explanatory. I like to be able to choose my meal based on how something is prepared, like what sauce it’s cooked in or what sides come with it. I guess it’s just an efficiency thing, since they have a lot of people to serve and don’t really have time to describe the dishes to each passenger. Obviously I’m thinking too much into this, considering this is just airplane food, but I was just sad that I “chose” wrong.
I picked chicken, which turned out to be a grilled breast covered in tomato sauce, served on a bed of plain rice with green beans on the side. The chicken was cooked decently well and the sauce was good, but the rest of the dish was pretty bland and boring. The tray also came with a small side salad, a dinner roll, and a package of Milano cookies for dessert.
Chicken with tomato sauce, rice, green beans, salad, roll, cookies
Josh picked beef, which turned out to be penne pasta with meatballs. When you think “beef” on a plane, you think some sort of stew or some dried out slices of a roast, not meatballs! I absolutely would have picked it if they said “meatballs” instead of “beef”. The pasta was definitely better than the plain rice, and the meatballs were pretty flavorful. The penne was slightly overcooked but the sauce was tasty and it was a better dish overall.
Pasta with meatballs
Yes, I just reviewed airplane food. What can I say, it had to be done! On the flight home I told Josh that I was going to ask what “chicken” and “beef” actually were, but I was watching TV and didn’t hear the flight attendant come by so I ended up with “chicken” again, though this time the chicken was served with pasta (cheese ravioli to be exact) and a pink sauce. It was pretty good, actually, but I don’t know what the beef was because Josh also wound up with chicken.
Ok so back to the trip! We landed in Lima around 9:30 pm and met our transfer for the ride to our hotel, which was in the Miraflores district. It was about a 45 minute ride, driving along the ocean most of the way. Too bad it was dark though because we couldn’t see much. After dropping our bags off at the hotel, we headed out in search of a late dinner, though most places had stopped serving food already. At least Miraflores is a nice neighborhood so there were lots of people out and about, heading to bars or the disco, and we felt safe walking around until we found somewhere to eat. We ended up at a place called Cafe La Maquina, which I’ll review separately.
It was a long day and we were pretty exhausted from the plane ride so we went to bed pretty much right after we returned to our hotel. We definitely needed to rest up since we had a full two weeks of vacation still ahead of us!