Today, a group was planning a trip to Pisaq. Pisaq is a city near Cusco that has a large market on Sundays and some ruins that sound pretty interesting. I really want to go to Pisaq, but since I was already planning on going I thought that I should go when I can go at my own pace.

Instead, I decided to finally go to the Plaza. I had a goal of finding shoes in mind, but that didn’t work out well. I tried on boots in a shoe store, but they didn’t fit me well. I had heard about a custom-made shoe store from someone in my University, but I couldn’t find it. I found the right street, so maybe it was closed for Sunday.

I got to the Plaza de Armas, and there was some sort of ceremony going on with horns and marching and soldiers. I think that it is a ceremony they do every Sunday, from what I could find out online. Nearby, there was another little park area. It may have been part of the Plaza; I wasn’t sure where it started or stopped and the two areas were a short distance from one another. I shopped around and probably bought far more than I should have. By this point, I was getting pretty hungry. I looked around at some different restaurants. Most restaurants that I have seen here have their menu and pricing outside of the restaurant. I don’t know why I chose the one I chose to eat at, but it was a good choice.

After skipping a few restaurants (not for any good reason, I just was looking around a bit…) I stopped at Sumaq Maizito Grill & Restaurant. The restaurant was on the second floor, and I got a seat with a wonderful view out on the park. There weren’t many people there, but that may have been the time of day.

I ordered hot tea and another chicken dish. The chicken dish (I don’t remember the Spanish name) was very beautifully arranged. It consisted of chicken stuffed with ham that was wrapped around cheese and asparagus. It came with some sort of fruit sauce, like a raspberry sauce, that was a little sweet and a little tart. With it were two orange mounds that I found out were sweet potatoes. They didn’t taste like sweet potatoes in the US, so I thought they might be some sort of squash. They were a little bit grainier than I am used to, and I don’t think they were as artificially sweetened as back home. They were very interesting and pretty good, but I mostly ate the chicken.

In the table under the glass panel, there were holes in the table that were filled with corn kernals. I also saw the table next to me order a corn on the cob, and the kernels were huge! They were three or four times larger than the ones back home! Maybe I should have ordered something with corn in it…

I thought about getting dessert here. Their menu looked pretty good, but I have been craving ice cream. I have been a little nervous about eating ice cream here, but I’ve read that if you get it from a reputable source it should be okay. The only problem with that is: how to you know what is a reputable brand in Peru? Even if locals are eating it, you don’t know if there are bacteria involved that you are not accustomed to. So, I asked about the ice cream flavors. They had vanilla, chocolate, and a mix of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. I decided that if I was going to risk an exploding stomach over ice cream that I was going to get something more interesting.

On the way back to the hotel, I found an ice cream shop. It wasn’t one of those plastic, brightly colored carts that I’ve seen inside other restaurants. It was a shop that only sold ice cream. I went in, and it was a little cramped and there was a bit of a line. I got to try the ice cream with a little wooden spoon. I tried one that looked interesting. I didn’t want to waste too much time with a line forming behind me, so I got a waffle cone with two scoops. I got chocolate and some sort of caramel ice cream. I didn’t understand enough Spanish to know exactly what flavor it was, but it was very good. In addition, the ice cream went down into all but the bottom inch of the ice cream cone!

Although I didn’t get it, I saw them making a very interesting type of ice cream cone. They would take a scoop of one flavor of ice cream, then they would plop it in another flavor and roll the second flavor around the first. They were very good at getting a perfect second coating while using nothing but a small ice cream scoop!

Overall, I was pretty happy with my day. Even though I probably spent too much!