We’re going to say something most Peru blogs won’t: there isn’t that much to do in Lima.
We landed jet-lagged, expecting little more than a bed to recover in before Cusco. The city won us over anyway, through food and atmosphere rather than a long list of sights to tick off.
💡 Planning the whole country? Our 3-week Peru itinerary shows where these 2 days in Lima fit.
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2 Days in Lima at a Glance
Wondering if Lima deserves 2 days on your Peru itinerary? Yes, but not for a packed sightseeing list.
Here’s our 2-day Lima itinerary in short:
- Day 1: Huaca Pucllana and the Kennedy Park cats on foot, one Uber to Barranco for lunch and an afternoon of street art, then a clifftop walk back to Miraflores for sunset at Love Park
- Day 2: A few hours in the historic centre (walking tour, catacombs, and souvenir stalls if you want them), a chifa lunch in Barrio Chino, then Museo Larco
- Extra day (do this if you can): The Paracas and Huacachina day trip, the real highlight of our time near Lima
Is There Really Enough to Do in Lima for 2 Days?
Honestly, Lima’s must-see list is short. Plaza Mayor, the Miraflores coastal walk, Love Park, Barranco’s street art, the Kennedy Park cats, Huaca Pucllana and Museo Larco cover most of it.
This isn’t Cusco, where you’re scrambling to fit everything in.
That’s fine. Two days works because Lima isn’t the headline of your trip. It’s where you land, adjust and eat extremely well.
If you have a spare day, it’s also where you can book the best day trip we did anywhere near a major Peruvian city.
Prices are friendly, too. A sit-down meal runs S/40–70 (roughly $11–19 USD) per person.
👉 We cover what to order in our full guide to food in Peru. It’s worth planning real time around eating here instead of treating meals as a pit stop between sights.
Where We Stayed: Larq’a Park Rooms in Miraflores
We booked Larq’a Park Rooms in Miraflores. It was the cheapest place we could find that still had a good location, an easy walk from the coast and Kennedy Park.
It’s a bit noisy at night if your room faces the street, so ask for one further back. For the price, we’d book it again.
Miraflores and Barranco are the two neighbourhoods worth basing yourself in. They’re the most touristy parts of Lima, but also the safest, which is why almost every visitor stays in one of them.
Skip the historic centre as a place to sleep. It’s fine for a few daytime hours and not somewhere we’d recommend at night.
Day 1 in Lima: Huaca Pucllana, Barranco, and a Sunset Walk Along the Coast
We planned Day 1 so you only need one Uber. Everything in Miraflores is walkable, and you can walk back from Barranco along the cliffs.
Huaca Pucllana: A Pre-Inca Pyramid in the Middle of Miraflores
Start early at Huaca Pucllana, a 1,500-year-old adobe pyramid built by the Lima culture. It sits oddly and wonderfully among Miraflores’ residential streets.
It’s one of the nicer surprises in the city. Go first thing to beat both the crowds and the heat.
📍 Quick facts: About S/15 for a daytime visit. Open Wednesday to Monday, 9am to 5pm, with evening visits Wednesday to Sunday until 9pm. It’s on Calle General Borgoño, a short walk or Uber from anywhere in Miraflores.
⚠️ Tuesday tip: Huaca Pucllana is closed on Tuesdays. If Day 1 falls on a Tuesday, start with the Kennedy Park cats and fit the pyramid in on another day.
Kennedy Park: Lima’s Cat Park
Walk over to Parque Kennedy, the city’s central park, better known as the cat park. It’s about 1.5 km, or a 20-minute stroll, from Huaca Pucllana.
Dozens of well-fed, well-loved stray cats sun themselves on every bench and path. It sounds like a gimmick until you’re there, and then it’s one of the more charming half-hours you’ll spend in the city.
📍 Quick facts: Free and open all day.
A Late Morning and Afternoon in Barranco
From the park, take your one Uber of the day over to Barranco. You get narrow streets, colourful old houses, and enough street art and small galleries to fill the rest of the day.
It never feels like a checklist. The Bridge of Sighs and the Bajada de Baños are the two spots to aim for, but wandering without a plan worked just as well for us.
Lunch in Barranco
Barranco is the easiest place in Lima to eat well at lunch, and two spots come up again and again in reviews.
- Canta Rana: An old-school cevichería that has been feeding Barranco for over 35 years. Expect huge portions, a dozen-plus ceviches and walls covered in football memorabilia. A ceviche runs around S/50.
- Isolina Taberna Peruana: A tavern-style spot near the Bridge of Sighs, well reviewed for generous plates of Peruvian comfort food like ají de gallina, seco de carne and lomo saltado. Portions are big enough to share, and it’s worth booking ahead.
Walk the Coast Back to Miraflores for Sunset
Skip the second Uber and walk back along the clifftop promenade (the malecón). It’s roughly 40–50 minutes on foot, and it takes you straight to Parque del Amor, better known as Love Park.
Sunset falls between about 5 and 7pm, and the colours are strongest from December to April. Set off about an hour before, so the light turns gold over the Pacific as you arrive.
Stay on the clifftop path with the other walkers, and grab an Uber from Love Park if it gets dark earlier than you planned.
🪂 Fly over the coast: We watched paragliders drift past the cliffs all afternoon and half-wished we’d booked a flight ourselves. This tandem flight over Costa Verde launches from the clifftop, and timed for late afternoon it’s one of the more spectacular ways to see Lima’s coastline.
Dinner Back in Miraflores
Miraflores has plenty of good dinners within walking distance, which is exactly what you want after a full day on your feet.
For classic Peruvian food, Panchita is one of the best-reviewed options. Order the anticuchos (grilled skewers), lomo saltado and picarones. Expect to spend roughly S/60–160 per person, and book ahead.
👩🍳 Hands-on option: If you’d rather learn to cook than order, this cooking class walks you through ceviche, causa and a proper pisco sour from scratch.
Day 2 in Lima: The Historic Centre, Half a Day
Getting There: Uber, Not the Bus
The historic centre sits about an hour from Miraflores or Barranco. The bus system is confusing for first-timers, so we Ubered in both directions.
It’s cheap, easy to order from your phone, and one less thing to think about on a short trip.
Free Walking Tour of the Historic Centre
We joined a free walking tour that covered Plaza Mayor, the surrounding colonial streets and a stop at a local market. It’s a low-effort way to get your bearings without committing to a paid tour.
Tip your guide at the end, because that’s how these tours pay their people.
If you’re still near Plaza Mayor afterwards, duck into the San Francisco Monastery for its catacombs. It’s an underground maze holding the bones of an estimated 25,000 people, and easily the strangest ten minutes of our morning.
📍 Quick facts: About S/20 including a guided visit (roughly 45 minutes), open daily from around 9am to 6pm. No photos in the catacombs, and bring cash.
Souvenirs: Browse in Lima, Buy in Cusco
If you want to pick up souvenirs, the historic centre has easy options. The craft stalls and galleries around Plazuela San Francisco sit right next to the monastery.
The sprawling Mercado Central, a few blocks from Barrio Chino, mixes alpaca sweaters, ceramics and jewellery in with the produce.
If Cusco is on your itinerary, though, save your soles for there. Cusco has far more variety and generally better prices.
Centro Artesanal Cusco alone has around 340 stalls of alpaca knitwear, silver jewellery, ceramics and textiles. San Pedro Market has chullos (Andean hats) from about S/10 and alpaca blankets for roughly S/80–150.
Prices are marked at Centro Artesanal, but you can still negotiate, especially if you buy a few things. Lima is fine for a quick look or a last-minute gift. Cusco is where to actually shop.
🏔️ Heading to Cusco? Our guide to the best things to do in Cusco is the place to plan it.
Lunch in Barrio Chino
On the way back, stop in Barrio Chino, Lima’s Chinatown, for chifa. This is the Chinese-Peruvian fusion food that gave the country dishes like lomo saltado.
It’s cheap, unfussy and quietly some of the best food we ate in the city.
- Wa Lok: One of the oldest and best-known chifas on the block. The menu runs to 100+ dishes, with dim sum and a much-loved wonton soup (sopa wantán).
- Salón Capón: Famous for dim sum and wok-fried chaufa, just around the corner. Reviews are more mixed, and some find it pricey.
Museo Larco: Your Afternoon Plan
This is the one that fills your afternoon, and it’s worth building the second half of your day around it.
Museo Larco, out in Pueblo Libre, holds 5,000 years of pre-Columbian art in an 18th-century mansion. That includes a gold and silver gallery and the erotic pottery collection everyone ends up talking about afterwards.
It’s a bit of a detour by Uber, but it pushed back hardest on our “not much to do” take.
📍 Quick facts: Adult tickets are S/50 (roughly $13–14 USD), and about S/5 cheaper if you book online. Open daily 9am to 7pm, and a guided tour adds S/15. The gardens and the café-restaurant are free to wander even without a museum ticket.
If you want the stories behind the gold masks and ceremonial pottery rather than just the display cards, this guided Larco Museum tour lets a local guide do the explaining. We walked through on our own and caught ourselves wishing someone could tell us what we were actually looking at.
🦭 Not a museum person? Swap it for a boat trip out to the Palomino Islands. It leaves from Callao and takes you out to swim alongside wild sea lions in open water, which is a wild thing to be doing on what most people treat as a throwaway layover day.
Where to Eat in Lima: The Best-Reviewed Spots
Food is the real reason Lima earns its two days.
This is a shortlist of the most consistently well-reviewed places, built from traveller reviews and local guides rather than a list of everywhere we ate. Prices and hours change, so check before you go.
Miraflores
- La Mar: Gastón Acurio’s famous cebichería, and lunch only. It opens at noon, doesn’t take reservations, and the line can run long at peak times, so go early. Order the ceviche and the tiradito.
- Panchita: Also from Gastón Acurio. Anticuchos, lomo saltado and picarones in a lively room. Roughly S/60–160 per person, and reservations are recommended.
Barranco
- Canta Rana: The casual cevichería classic, with big bowls of ceviche at about S/50.
- Isolina Taberna Peruana: Generous, shareable Peruvian comfort food. Book ahead or expect a wait.
- Central (the splurge): Virgilio Martínez’s tasting-menu restaurant, named the World’s Best Restaurant in 2023 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Menus run around S/950 per person before drinks. Book at least 3 months ahead, because walk-ins are generally not possible.
Barrio Chino
- Wa Lok: Go for the wonton soup and dim sum.
- Salón Capón: A second dim sum option, just around the corner.
🍽️ Eating in Lima: We break down exactly what to order and where, dish by dish, in our full guide to food in Peru. If you’d rather have a local do the picking, this Peruvian food tour covers several neighbourhoods and dishes in one guided afternoon.
📍 Next stop Cusco? See where we ate in our guide to the best restaurants in Cusco.
The Extra Day Worth Adding: Paracas and Huacachina
If you take one piece of advice from this post, add a third day and do the Paracas and Huacachina day trip.
It’s one of our favourite days in the whole country, and it feels nothing like the city you’ve just spent two days in.
What the Day Actually Looks Like
The route starts with a boat ride out to the Ballestas Islands, home to sea lions, Humboldt penguins and thousands of seabirds. It’s sometimes called the “poor man’s Galápagos”.
Next comes a pisco vineyard tasting, then dune buggying and sandboarding across the Huacachina dunes as the sun goes down over the oasis.
It’s a long day, easily 18 hours door to door. Carve it out as its own day instead of squeezing it into a half-day.
The Tour We Booked (and Would Book Again)
We did the Paracas and Huacachina premium day trip with sunset toast. The organisation was excellent from start to finish, and the people on the bus were great.
The sunset toast over the dunes made all 18 hours worth it. Yes, it costs more than the budget operators running the same route.
Why We Wouldn’t Shop on Price Here
Dune buggying at speed is dangerous if the driver isn’t properly licensed. This is one of the only places in Peru where we’d tell you not to book the cheapest option.
Pay for a serious operator with real permits. It’s the one part of this trip where cutting corners actually matters.
Practical Tips for 2 Days in Lima
Getting from the Airport
Book your airport transfer before you land instead of arranging one on arrival. We sorted ours through Booking.com, and it was both cheap and reliable.
Jorge Chávez Airport is in Callao, roughly 45 minutes from Miraflores or Barranco. Traffic is unpredictable, so you don’t want to be negotiating a taxi at 6am after a red-eye.
Money and ATMs
Use Multired ATMs. They’re reliable and charge no withdrawal fees, though they cap you at 400 soles a day.
This ATM in Miraflores worked perfectly for us. Cards are widely accepted in restaurants, but carry cash for markets and smaller chifa spots.
Getting Around
Use Uber for the longer hops: Barranco, the historic centre and Museo Larco. Walk the rest.
Huaca Pucllana, Kennedy Park and the clifftop coast are all easy on foot. Budget extra time for traffic, because Uber journeys often take longer than the map suggests.
When to Go
Lima’s coastal climate stays mild year-round, so timing matters far less than in Cusco or the Sacred Valley.
December to April is warmer and sunnier. The rest of the year brings the grey coastal mist known locally as the garúa. It doesn’t stop sightseeing, but it does mean fewer blue-sky photos.
A Note on Safety
Stick to Miraflores and Barranco, treat the historic centre as a daytime-only visit, and don’t stay downtown even if it looks convenient on a map. None of this got in the way of anything we wanted to do. It’s normal big-city sense rather than Lima-specific worry.
That said, check the latest official advice before you fly. Lima and Callao have been under a government state of emergency since October 2025, with a visible police and military presence, and protests are common in the historic centre.
The US rates Peru Level 2 (exercise increased caution), and Australia’s Smartraveller advises a high degree of caution across the country. The UK’s advice against travel applies only to remote border and jungle-valley areas, not Lima.
🛡️ Check the latest advice: GOV.UK, Smartraveller and travel.state.gov.
FAQ: 2 Days in Lima
Is there enough to do in Lima for 2 days?
There’s enough for 2 relaxed days, though the sightseeing list is short. Huaca Pucllana, the coastal walk, Love Park, the Kennedy Park cats, Barranco, a few hours in the historic centre and Museo Larco roughly cover it. Most of what makes Lima worth the time is the food and atmosphere.
Where should you stay in Lima?
Miraflores or Barranco. They’re the most touristy areas in the city, but also the safest, and almost every visitor bases themselves in one or the other. We stayed at Larq’a Park Rooms in Miraflores and would book it again.
Where should you eat in Lima?
For the best-reviewed options, try La Mar (lunch only) and Panchita in Miraflores, Canta Rana and Isolina in Barranco, and Wa Lok in Barrio Chino. Central is the splurge, and you need to book at least 3 months ahead.
How do you get around Lima?
Uber for the longer hops, and your own feet for Miraflores and the clifftop coast. It’s cheap, easy to order, and far simpler than working out the bus system on a short trip. Budget extra time, since Lima’s traffic is heavy and unpredictable.
Is the Paracas and Huacachina day trip worth it from Lima?
Yes. If you only add one extra day to your Lima stop, make it this one. It’s a long day, typically close to 18 hours door to door. The Ballestas Islands, the pisco vineyard and sandboarding at sunset in Huacachina made it one of our favourite days anywhere in Peru.
Where should you buy souvenirs in Peru?
You can browse in Lima, at the craft stalls around Plazuela San Francisco or Mercado Central. If you’re also visiting Cusco, buy there instead, because it has far more variety and generally lower prices at Centro Artesanal Cusco and San Pedro Market. See our guide to the best things to do in Cusco.
Is Lima safe for tourists in 2026?
Miraflores and Barranco are where most visitors stay and are generally considered the safest areas, and none of it got in the way of our trip. Crime, including violent crime, is a real issue in Lima, though, and the city has been under a state of emergency since October 2025. Stick to Miraflores and Barranco, use Uber, keep the historic centre to daytime, and check current official advice before you go.
Our Last Word on Lima
We went in expecting a layover city and came out still thinking about Kennedy Park’s cats, a chifa lunch we nearly walked past, and a sunset toast over sand dunes three hours south.
Lima was never going to be the headline of our Peru trip, and it doesn’t need to be. It earned its two days anyway.
Don’t overplan it. Walk the coast, eat well, and save your real energy for the day trip south.
Planning the Rest of Your Peru Trip?
- 3-week Peru itinerary: how the whole trip fits together
- Best things to do in Cusco: our full Cusco guide
- Best restaurants in Cusco: where to eat there
- Food in Peru: a region-by-region guide to what to order
- Inca Trail packing list: exactly what to bring
- How to choose an Inca Trail agency: what to look for before you book
Written by Ru & Tiago
We spent three weeks in Peru in 2026, from Lima’s coastal cliffs and chifa lunches to Cusco, the Sacred Valley and the Inca Trail. Based in Geneva, we specialise in honest, active trip guides built around real experience, not recycled checklists.
