Dinner as Art

  Cusco, Peru
Friday, August 17, 2007

Day 15: We really like Cusco and we had a great day.  We got up and realized we should buy our train tickets to Machu Picchu because we were going there in 2 days.  But first we decided to find out if our hotel had a room in their sister hotel in Yucay for the next night.  Yucay is in the sacred valley and is on the way to Machu Picchu.  That way we could go horse-back riding and we'd have a shorter train ride to Machu Picchu.  They had room, so we booked that, and walked to the train station.  Luckily, when Mike was making the reservations for the Yucay hotel, the woman at the desk told us where to buy the train tickets; we were going to go to the wrong train station.  So, we had a nice walk there.  The streets were really busy but at least the sidewalks were wide (unlike in Cuenca) so I wasn't tripping over the tiny sidewalks.  It took a while to get to the counter (the locals seemed to have priority) but eventually we got up there and bought our tickets on the Vistadome train (which is the mid-range train, in between the Backpacker's train and the Hiram Bingham luxury train).  Since the ticket place was right near the Manu café we had read about, we decided to check it out.  As usual, we were the only people there, but by the time we left, other people had come in.  The place was advertised as having international newspapers and magazines but they only seemed to have The Economist and some spa magazine.  Oh well...at least the drinks were really good.  We had some tasty coffee and I had delicious strawberry juice; Mike ordered a combination of strawberry and lemon juice and the waiter looked at him like he was crazy and laughed (which made him doubt himself), but it was awesome... waiter had obviously never had strawberry lemonade!
 
After the café we went to go find the MAP restaurant where we wanted to have dinner that night.  MAP is the Pre-Columbian museum, and really the only museum we were interested in going to.  They have a restaurant in a courtyard inside the museum so it seemed like a really nice evening - go to the museum and then have dinner.  We made reservations and then went to have some lunch at Pucara, a really popular place.  We had a nice light lunch and then headed to the Cross Keys pub for some drinks.  By this account it seems like we haven't done anything today, but walking around and getting lost took a fair bit of time!  But I figure, walking and getting lost lets you see the city...
 
After drinks, we got changed for dinner and headed over to the museum.  I can't express to you how amazing the museum is.  It's not a typical inside museum; there's the courtyard where the restaurant is and all the museum rooms are off of the courtyard.  It was dark out when we got there and so as we walked into a new room, the lights came on.  There was only one other couple at the museum so we basically had the whole place to ourselves.  We saw mostly ceramics from the different time periods in Peruvian history and we were really impressed with both the art and the displays.  I think it was the best museum either of us has been too.  It being night and having no one else there also gave the museum a mysterious feeling, like we were discovering everything ourselves.  After going through most of the rooms, we went to dinner.  The restaurant is basically a glass-enclosed rectangle, about the size of a train car, except it's all glass and fancy.  We felt like we were the museum displays, behind the glass and under the lights.

MAP Restaurant

  This place is truly impressive.  The service was outstanding.  They serve a prix-fixe meal of three courses, including a glass of wine.  We ordered a bottle and they even decanted it for us!  I've never seen the whole process.  Not only was the service amazing, but the food was sooooo good!  They served traditional Peruvian dishes with a modern flair.  Our meals were amazing, from the quinoa amuse-bouche to the after-dinner sparkling wine.  We were so happy.  This was definitely the highlight of the trip.