Lima

We stayed here for two four night stays at the beginning and end of our Peru trip. 

The apartment has a fabulous view over the Pacific, and is well set up so that you can see the view from three different floors, and watch the sun set into the Pacific each night. It is across the road from the lovely cliff hugging park that is the boundary of Miraflores and the Pacific. 

But, it is a long way from anywhere. It is 4 km to Larcomar, or Av Larco (the centre of Miraflores where all the shops and restaurants are) and 2km to the nearest supermarket. We walked, but most people would need to catch taxis all the time to stay here. 

And while we stayed, quite a few things in the apartment didn’t work – the gas bottle ran out half way between cooking dinner, the dryer didn’t work, and wasn’t fixed on our second stay three weeks after the first (with no apology, or comment), the light in one of the bedrooms had something dangerous wrong with the wiring (it flashed even when the switch was off so we had to remove the bulb and have a live socket hanging over our son) and one of the toilets had a non working flush. There were not enough towels for our stay until we asked for more to be provided. 

None of these things (except the gas bottle) were that bad individually, but there were a lot of them, and the managers seemed to think we were being unreasonable expecting them to be fixed. 

For this amount of money, I expect better when things go wrong. While appliances go wrong all the time, in several other apartments in this price bracket I have had immediate fixes from the owners (either a fix or a new appliance) within 24 hours. I don’t believe that such service is impossible in Peru. 

If I was coming to Lima again, I would stay much closer to the centre of Miraflores, and would choose a different apartment. The view here was fantastic, but not outweighed by the location and the lack of service.

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