Wedding Blog: Wedding Eve

All/Most/Some/Few/None of you know that I got married down in Peru a few weeks back. Technically, I was already married at the time, but a proper Peruvian wedding was in order despite May's main-event.

So, down came a group of gringos to attend. Fortunately, Nina and Marcus from Denmark had a trip planned for Peru at the same time as my wedding, thus ensuring that Europe was represented along with the contingent from New York, California, and with the South American representatives from Brazil and a mob of Peruvians from all over the country, we had somewhere around 150 people in attendance.

After a late breakfast at Cafe Manolo in Miraflores, during which Katie managed to offend the entire cast of waiting service by sending back her non-scrambled eggs TWICE (leading to hilarious invisibility on the days thereafter), we climbed aboard the bus we rented in order to provide our guests with a city tour of Lima the day before the wedding. Unfortunately, there was a flight snag (understatement of the trip!) and my whole family missed most of the tour that included cruising around the cliffs and parks in Miraflores, walking around old Barranco and Surco, watching a monk dive off a cliff into the ocean, and fine dining at Sonya's, probably the best ceviche I've ever had in my life. Of course, I think I say that everytime I eat ceviche, but this one was special since it had some live piano music and of course was featured on No Reservations. We ordered way way way too much food there and it wouls have been a shame to see so much of it go to waste were it not for a certain Italian who insisted that every fried item and every ounce of rocoto hot sauce was consumed - much to his chagrin, he later realized. Remember: raw vegetables + gringo stomach = bad; rocoto hot sauce = raw, pureed rocoto (pepper); raw rocoto pureed + gringo stomach = bad. Stefan was exhibit A for this hypothesis.

He came down with a violent case of Tupac Amaru's revenge that was befitting of the last Inca himself later that night, when I had the honor of sleeping in his room (in order to avoid seeing Erika on the wedding day). He was not the only victum, either. Ol' Iron Belly Stefan was joined by Jonathon, Melissa, Summer, Daniel, and Nina in feeling Tupac's wrath on the trip, a terrible consequence of being on location for the wedding. Faryn won the award though by coming down with strep throat the day she arrived in Cusco.

Anyway, after our late lunch, we went back to the hotel to freshen up and gather the rest of our guests who had arrived. Oh, the hotel. Okay, the hotel was horrible. Despite what some people say, it was clearly stated on the wedding website that this was the "discount" hotel. But, shoot, I would have stayed here because the pictures looked great on the website. But the picture didn't show shower heads rusting off and spraying lukewarm water outside the bathroom, holes in the walls big enough for a horse to walk through, toilets that didn't flush, mildewy carpet, water dripping from the ceiling, and, the worst offense possible, a SLOW computer with lethargic internet access. Warning to all the googlers out there: avoid La Casa de Sanchez! The only thing good about it was the location, which really couldn't have been better, but there were nicer places available right next door practically.

After picking everyone else up and "cleaning up" (i.e. changing hotel rooms), the bus took us on an eternal ride to downtown Lima that took probably two exhaust-fume-filled hours to get to. The fumes from the ride were so bad that somehow I got an earache with a lot of pressure when we finally arrived. Two hours later, it was gone. It was horrible, frustrating, and made everyone want to gag, which ruined the mood of lovely downtown Lima at night.

On top of that, it was raining for the second day in a row at night. We called the wedding planner who told us that if it rained, we were pretty much screwed because the wedding tent was already up and they couldn't put the rain cover on after it's already up. Man, we were praying for good weather the next day!

Luckily, the last stop downtown turned out to be great for the guests and kind of changed everyone's mood - mine at least! There are some lighted fountains downtown that are just gorgeous and a lot of fun to visit. It sounds boring, but they really are worth visiting if you going to be in Lima at night. Some of them you can play in if you are a child or child-like (i.e. a certain Italian), though a change of clothes is recommended because it can get chilly when you're drenched in the Lima desert-climate at night.

After this, we headed back to the hotel and dropped off Erika and her mom at the apartment, the last time I saw her before the wedding.

J. Riley, pictures will be linked in the next post