I love to go out of town for my birthday, because a. travel is my fave, and b. it feels so much more special and I’m a baby who loves to feel special on their birthday 😉
When we decided to hike the Inca Trail, the first available date for departure was my birthday, October 27th. Of course, I took this as a sign and we booked the trip. I will go over the planning and costs associated in the next post, but this one will be about how we spent our time in Cusco.
If you are interested in reading about our Inca Trail adventures, there is a daily breakdown here and a post about training and packing here!
Thursday, October 24th
On Wednesday, October 23rd, we left Seattle for Cusco with layovers at LAX and LIM (Lima, Peru). The total flight time was about 12 hours, but almost 20 hours of total travel time. Fortunately, the time difference in Cusco is only 2 hours ahead of our normal. We landed on Thursday, October 24th around 11:30am.
I’ll be the first to tell you I got a little bit too cheap with the airport transfer and booked one for $14 on TripAdvisor. The irony of this is that it would have been cheaper to take a cab *facepalm*. They were not waiting for us upon arrival as expected, so we had to call their office line. After a few tries, we were able to get through, and fortunately my husband speaks Spanish well enough to get them to send someone over to help. This person put us in a taxi, lol.
I’ll go over our reasoning for the hotel choice in my next post, but we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn both before and after our trek. It isn’t in the main plaza, but it is a very short walk and a good way to get used to walking around in the altitude. We really loved the hotel, and would absolutely stay there again!
After dropping off our luggage, we walked in to town and decided to look for some food. The great thing about Cusco is that the food is incredibly fresh. The organic movement in the USA should take notes, because the quality is amazing. In fact, our first restaurant choice was a cute little (and I mean little) place called Organika. We ordered the alpaca and trout and both were very good, if you can get past eating a cute alpaca.
One of the things I love most about new cities is just walking around. I love to get lost in the alleyways and Cusco is especially great for this since so many shops and cafes are hidden away. While exploring, we came across a chocolate museum, Choco Museo, and decided to take a chocolate making course.
This class was so much fan and surprisingly hands on an educational. We learned about the chocolate making process from bean to candy bar, and were able to go through the entire process ourselves. We peeled beans, roasted them, made them into a paste, and then made that into a hot chocolate drink. After this, we had chocolate that we were able to make into molds and add things like nuts, candies, and coconut to. We also were able to sample every variety of chocolate that they sold in the shop.
After class we made our way out to the Plaza de Armas in the city center to enjoy the sun and architecture. The city is home to a number of gorgeous churches and the building style is unlike anything I had seen before. The Spanish colonists built directly on top of Incan construction so there is a clear foundation on many buildings made up of Incan building materials.
That evening, we had the check in meeting with our Inca Trail tour operator, so we had a quick dinner at a pizza restaurant near their offices, La Bodeguita 138. The pizza was quite good, but the white sauce it was served with was excellent. I will warn you of two things though: 1 – the pepperoni is more like hot dogs that what is served in the US and 2 – Inca Kola tastes like bubblegum and is truly foul. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel for bed.
Friday, October 25th
The next day, I really wanted to go on an ATV tour, but our trekking company had strongly discouraged this. So my new goal for this day was to find an awesome souvenir to bring home. I knew that ideally I wanted to look into an alpaca wool item. We would pop into the alpaca wool shops as we passed them (Highly recommend Kuna and Sol Alpaca!), keeping an eye out for something that looked interesting. At one of the Sol stores, I tried on a few items and narrowed it down to two coat options.
I decided on the red one, because it is more interesting and I already have black coats. If you are looking for alpaca items while in Peru, Sol is a great choice as the price is reasonable for the quality, and there is a lot of variety in the items offered.
Once I found my coat, we decided to celebrate with a quick Starbucks break. I will not be the person to tell you that Starbucks has particularly great drinks, but remember I am from Seattle so this is like a little piece of home that we can find nearly anywhere in the world.
We spent the rest of the day just walking around and exploring the city. We also made a trip to the bank and I was able to stumble my way through asking to exchange money for smaller bills. With how poor my Spanish is, this was quite the feat.
After my success at the bank (lol), we went to visit Coricancha, the Temple of the Sun. This was at one point the most important temple of the Incan Empire, but it was significantly damaged during the war with the Spanish. What remains today is primarily the Incan foundation with a Spanish cathedral built on top. It has beautiful artwork, and a lot of religious imagery and artifacts, but if you are looking for Incan history, it may not do it for you.
Saturday, October 26th
Our third, and last day before our trek, was very much food themed! We started out with avocado toast at the aptly named Avocado Toast & More. This was another great example of the freshness and high quality of the food in Cusco. Avocado toast is a simple food, but the avocados used were so fresh and creamy, and the aguas frescas was the perfect compliment.
Now time for a coffee break! We are in a coffee growing country so we really wanted to try the local product. To this end, we went to both Black Panther Coffee and Museo del Cafe. The Museo del Cafe is a great place to spend some time relaxing, learning about coffee, drinking it, and getting a snack. They also have restrooms and wifi if needed.
This evening we took a night food tour with Curious Monkey Food Tours, which I would highly recommend! Not only does the tour take you deeper into the city than you may explore on your own, but you also get a great amount and variety of food. We had tamales, grilled meats, empanadas, churros, donuts, coffee, chocolates, and more.
Thursday, October 31st
Once we were back from our trek, you may imagine that we were beat! We spent our first day back in town just walking around and exploring the areas that we had gotten accompanied with on our food tour. We also went to the San Pedro Market which was fantastic! I so wish we had discovered it sooner, and if you go, please don’t wait until you are about to leave to go. It is a large market full of small stalls selling all sorts of items. Meats, cheeses, breads, grains, souvenirs, and stalls selling fresh smoothies and lunch items. We were overwhelmed with choice, but had a delicious smoothie since we weren’t at a point where we could eat a meal because we had reservations that evening and wanted to save room!
Since I spent my actually birthday on the Inca Trail, we didn’t really celebrate until we returned. On the night of the 31st we went to a special dinner out at Uchu. This was an excellent decision. We enjoyed steak and wine while sitting in a beautiful dining room. It felt SO nice to sit and enjoy a meal at a real table after our time on the trail.
We were so lucky to be in Cusco over October 31st and November 1st! The night of the 31st the city was jam-packed with people, most in costume, for entertainment in the Plaza. It was both overwhelming and exhilarating being among such a huge crowd of people celebrating.We loved getting to watch the dancers in the plaza and seeing all the cute kiddos running around dressed as Spiderman!
Friday, November 1st
For our last day in Cusco, we had the morning and early afternoon before we had to catch our flight. The hotel was kind enough to hold our luggage for the day, and I was able to book a pretty last minute class with Ronal (link here). I won’t lie to you, I 1000% booked this course because it was the cheapest one offered, but damn am I glad we did it! Our group (me, my husband, and another couple) were led to the San Pedro Market to pick up supplies. While we were there, we got to sample a few types of fruits and breads. Then we went back to the shop where we had a hands on class making pisco sours, trout ceviche, and papa rellena (stuffed potato). The food, due to Ronal’s guidance, turned out fantastic and we had a great time meeting our new friends and cooking.
And that was our time in Cusco! We loved our time there and would love to spend a month or two there to get to do more. If you need any further recommendations, please reach out!