Happy Birthday Gosia! Today we have celebrated Gosia´s 28th birthday in Cusco the capital of the Incas. This was a long day as we arrived in Cusco at 5am. We shared a taxi to the centre (S/5, as we were 5, it will have been S/4 for both of us) with the French students we had met in the Colca Canyon, that we met again in the bus. We checked a few hotels (there are so many hotels in Cusco!) climbing the steep streets of Cusco (very hard when carrying backpacks!) and finally opted for a quiet hostel in San Blas (Pirwa backpackers, calle Carmen Alto, S/40 for a double room with free Internet). After finalising the booking of our Inca Trail with the agency we started discovering Cusco. We had been told that this town is very touristic and that there are more tourists than Peruvians, so we were not too surprised. But it has to be said Cusco is the most touristic city we have visited in Peru. There are hotels, restaurants, travel agencies and tourist shops everywhere! But we still enjoyed the city, the impressive plaza de Armas, the cute area of San Blas with very small streets on one of the steep hill of Cusco, wandering around we saw a couple of the Incas walls left in Cusco. We visited a few churches, San Blas, Companera, Sagrada Familia, Catedral and Iglesia del Triunfo. One boleto gives you entrance to all those churches. We were very happy as the guy sold us a student ticket (S/18) without asking us if we were students ... we must look young! We have to say that only the Cathedral impressed us, the other churches are quite simple. A few details surprised us, the statues were dressed, there were mirrors inside the churches, in la Iglesia del Triunfo there was not a statue of Jesus in the choir but a statue of Marie. Sorry we cannot post any pictures of the inside of those churches as you are not allowed to take any pictures...this way they are trying to make more money selling postcards and books. We ended up the day celebrating Gosia´s birthday having a nice meal. Happy Birthday Gosia!
