The Plaza de Armas (or Plaza Mayor) is the heart of the downtown area and arguably the primary destination in Lima for the day tourist. Surrounded by the central cathedral and government buildings there are also a lot of places to eat and a decent marketplace complex.

At any rate, they were very personable and we had a nice conversation for at least 20 minutes or so and they gave me a guidebook and a lot of tips as to how to spend my time in Lima. (They also took the picture of me by the fountain at the top of the page...)

The Changing of the Guard

Every day at noon there is a ceremonial changing of the guard in front of the government palace on the square. When we were there we got a bonus 'show' with a political demonstration that went on while the ceremony was taking place. From my journal: "The ceremony was kind of interesting - brass band marches out, plays about 15 minutes, two squads march out from opposite sides of the Plaza/Square in costume and ((goose stepping)) in slow motion. Two of the guys exchange swords before they march back. There were a lot of tourists lining the fence but we could see OK and took some pictures."

"But while this was going on, from behind us (and around the square) comes this ruckus that causes most of the crowd to turn around. Obviously timed to disrupt the ceremony, there was a large crowd of people marching around the plaza (don’t know how many but looked like in the low hundreds) carrying signs, banners, chanting and hollering through megaphones. Not sure what it was about even after looking at the flyer they handed out, but it was some kind of a labor / pay protest. Interesting. "

Political activism is certainly in evidence (see also here...). The police kept the marchers confined to the street but seemed pretty low profile about the whole affair.