713. Peru Trip | Dinner at Kjolle, Lima

With Lima being the food capital of Peru, we wanted to take the opportunity to try a nice restaurant for dinner that night. With a bit of research, we discovered the top restaurant there is Central, which is currently ranked 6th in the world! Unsurprisingly, they booked up months in advance. So we went to the next best place - their sister restaurant, Kjolle. They are located within the same building. The owners/co-chefs are a husband and wife team named Virgilio Martínez and Pia León who also live on the property they work. The wife, Pia, opened Kjolle last year. She is hailed as Latin America's best female chef.

Kjolle (pronounced "koy-ay") is named after a tree that grows at extreme altitudes. The tree produces a yellow flower that is fermented to make spirits and sauces. A lot of ingredients in Peruvian cuisine are only found at high altitudes which is what makes them so unique.

The menu at Kjolle features fresh ingredients found all over Peru, many ingredients being indigenous to the country's diverse landscapes and even some from the Amazonian jungles.

The food was incredible and very flavourful. Everything was beautifully plated. The atmosphere in the restaurant was tranquil and elegant, with very minimalist style decor. The staff was excellent. They were very knowledgeable in all the dishes, and knew just the right time to come and retrieve an empty plate or refill our glasses without infringing on privacy.

I loved the whole experience a lot and highly recommend it.


Each table was offered this drink before starting. I completely forgot what it was but I really loved it.

The bread was delicious! We asked for a second loaf after devouring this one. It was freshly made (we saw them being baked outside in their garden when we entered) from the stone oven/pit straight to our table. It was really soft and light inside.


We ordered several dishes to share. I believe this was the "sea bass and razor clams" and at the top is "squash and crustacean".


The bottom dish is yucca. I have to admit I don't remember at all what the top two were.


I believe this was pork belly.


This dessert was so good!! It was a mixture of cacao, coconut chunks and honey.




On the first floor they have some ingredients on display.


This is the entrance to the restaurants.

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704. Peru Trip | Scenes of Cusco + Plaza de Armas

So we are now back in Toronto. I can't believe I only managed to do 2 blog posts while on the trip! I didn't have any time at all though unfortunately. Now I have a LOT of posts to catch up on but I really enjoy looking back and editing all the photos..and recounting all the memories. We had the best time there! It was one of my favourite trips and definitely one of the most different I've ever been on.

I'll start with general posts from each city. Then more specific ones (ie. posts dedicated to Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, restaurant reviews etc) then I will include some informative posts with information on visiting Peru. We did very extensive research before coming so I will document all of that as well.

Picking up where I left off last..after our time in Paracas and Huacachina, we flew to the very colourful city of Cusco. I immediately loved the city. It's full of old narrow stone streets and has a certain charm to it. There were lots of women dressed in traditional Incan clothing, walking around with alpacas. It was exactly how I pictured Peru to be like.

We spent 5 nights in Cusco. It was our base for visiting Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley. We also had plans to visit Rainbow Mountain but cancelled when we found out we didn't have the appropriate clothing for it (at all). The weather up there was below 0 so I guess we needed winter clothes.

This is the entrance/courtyard to our hotel - Quinta San Blas. I really loved the style of it. Unfortunately I forgot to take photos of our room..but it was all white and blue with high vaulted ceilings. It reminded me of the coastal Greek style hotels. As the name implies, it was in the San Blas neighbourhood. From what we explored of the city, it was my favourite area. The streets felt really cozy and there were a lot of unique boutiques. It's only a short ~10min walk to the main square/Plaza de Armas.



Cusco is a very high-altitude city and many people get altitude sickness here. Luckily it didn't affect me at all. Though it could be due to the altitude pills I took before coming. Coca tea is supposed to help combat it. It tastes so delicious! I'm not sure how effective it is in helping with the altitude but we loved the taste so much we drank copious amounts of it each day..& I also managed to bring some back home (we were not sure if it was illegal to bring it across the border, since it is an ingredient used to make cocaine!).



Plaza de Armas!


The rainbow flag is not for gay pride. It's the flag of the Incan Empire/Flag of Tawantinsuyo.








Lunch at Ceviche Seafood Kitchen. It's a restaurant right on Plaza de Armas with very fresh seafood. It was really good. We sat at the bar and watched them prepare everything. The food in Peru is overall pretty good - the best is in Lima though.




On our second day we went to Machu Picchu! More on this in a future post..


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702. Peru Trip | Day 1: Impressions of Lima

Hello from Peru! We are currently in our hotel at Paracas as I type this. I have been quite busy since arriving that I haven't had much time for a proper update..but there is a lot I wanted to write about regarding my first impressions of Peru/my first time ever in South America. I'm having a really good time so far.

I'm going to try and limit the photos to a maximum of 5 for these travel diary posts. When I am back in Toronto I will do full in-depth posts.

So we arrived in Lima a couple nights ago..very late at night (1:30am to be exact). It turns out the Pan Am games are being held in Lima this year so our flight was full of team Canada's athletes (mostly rugby players).

We waited quite a long time for our luggage then proceeded out to get a taxi to our hotel. I turned around and recognized a familiar face. By a huge coincidence, it turned out to be a famous travel vlogging/influencer couple that I follow. My boyfriend and I had just watched some of their vlogs from the Amazon before coming on our trip so it was so crazy to see them just as we arrive, walking right beside us (their videos from here were from over a year ago..we had no idea they would be here at this time). I was shocked. We got in our taxi then my boyfriend yelled out that I was a big fan but was too shy to say hi lol.

After that we left the airport and drove to our hotel in Miraflores. By the time we arrived and got settled in it was like 4am so we went to sleep right away.

The next morning, after breakfast we walked around our area a bit. As I mentioned, it is my first time visiting South America but I didn't feel much of a culture shock at all. Lima isn't that different from anywhere I've visited before (I think it has some similarities to Asia, Europe and North America). One thing I noticed is that the driving is pretty crazy. We actually witnessed a full on car crash while walking around Miraflores. We also almost got hit by cars while crossing the street. Then, as we were Uber-ing on the highway..I noticed the car beside us was pretty close. It got closer and closer until it was within an inch of us and I thought for sure we would crash. Luckily our driver swerved out of the way at the last second. So it was a very close call. I'm pretty sure crashes happen there quite often as the roads are a mess and drivers seem to have disregard for driving in lanes.

Another pretty interesting thing I noticed is that there's a lot of sellers on the roads. Like people selling random things on the highway (everything from drinks to selfie sticks to Peruvian flags). I am not sure why someone driving in their car would suddenly feel a desire to buy a flag lol. There's always a lot of traffic though so the cars go pretty slow most of the time..making it possible for these sellers to come around.


For dinner we went to a restaurant called Kjolle, one of the best in Lima. It was an amazing experience! Everything was so uniquely prepared and there were a lot of flavours I've never tasted before. I will devote an entire post to this dinner in a later post. So far, all the food here in Peru have been so good. I was told this before I came and it's definitely true.

Now I will go to sleep..tomorrow we will be going to Huacachina!




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654. Recent Life

My new shoes! They are designed by Issey Miyake for United Nude. I always have a lot of trouble finding clothes and shoes that I like enough to buy. Most things I own are things that I saw and fell in love with (a lot) at first sight. That was the case with these. They're the perfect colour for summer and pretty comfortable to walk in actually.

Here are some random photos taken in the first few weeks of this month..









While walking back from dinner one night, we found a cute baby raccoon on the street. Despite living in Toronto all my life I don't think I've ever seen a raccoon on the streets before (apparently our city has a lot). He seemed to really love my boyfriend and kept following him lol.



Dinner one night at Mira, a fairly new Peruvian restaurant. It was my first time having Peruvian food. We both really loved it. Everything we ordered was delicious. I especially love the ceviche sampler and the squid ink rice.





Dessert was a big chocolate ball filled with coffee ice cream, chocolate ranfañote, honey comb, yuzu marmalade & raspberry.





Trying to work off all the food from these days!!


Breakfast and watching the World Cup final.

Another really delicious dinner at Akira Back. Everything we ordered was really good as well. My favourites were the wagyu tacos and tuna pizza. It seems to be two of their most popular menu items:







The restaurant is inside Bisha Hotel, so we had some drinks at their lounge afterwards.





La Cubana



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