Peru
Lima
Pacific spray on clifftop terraces where ceviche began and the food never stopped evolving.
Salt air and charcoal smoke drift across the clifftops of Miraflores, where the Pacific crashes eighty metres below and paragliders launch from the grass edge every afternoon. Lima is a city that feeds you before it shows you anything. The ceviche arrives before you have finished sitting down — lime-sharp, ají-hot, the fish so fresh it still tastes of the sea it left an hour ago.
Lima is the gastronomic capital of South America. Two of its restaurants — Central and Maido — have simultaneously ranked in the top five of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. But the city's genius lives equally in its street food: anticuchos (grilled beef heart) for two soles on a corner, causa limeña layered cold in market stalls, ceviche at Surquillo's fish counters. The historic centre holds baroque church interiors from the 1670s and the Larco Museum houses the world's largest collection of pre-Columbian gold. In Barranco, colonial mansions have become galleries, bars, and restaurants lining the Puente de los Suspiros.
Solo
Lima's food markets reward lone exploration. Eat standing at Surquillo's ceviche counters, browse the Larco Museum's pre-Columbian gold at your own pace, then watch paragliders from the Miraflores cliffs as the sun drops.
Couple
Barranco's colonial bar scene and the clifftop sunset at Miraflores create a city built for evenings together. Book a tasting menu at Central or Maido — the altitude-themed courses at Central are unlike anything else in gastronomy.
Family
The Larco Museum's grounds are family-friendly, its gold collection genuinely dazzles children, and the on-site café serves excellent food. Miraflores parks along the cliffs have playgrounds where you eat anticuchos while watching the Pacific.
Friends
Lima is a food crawl city. Start with ceviche in Surquillo, move to pisco sours in Barranco, end with anticuchos on the street at midnight. The range from world-ranked restaurants to two-soles street food means every budget eats brilliantly.
- Two Lima restaurants — Central and Maido — have simultaneously ranked in the top five of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list.
- The Larco Museum houses the world's largest collection of pre-Columbian gold in a 3,000-year-old pyramid on the edge of the city.
- Miraflores clifftop parks overhang Pacific surf 80 metres below, with paragliders launching from the grass edge every afternoon.
- The historic centre's baroque altar screens in San Francisco church, built in 1673, are considered among the finest religious carving in South America.
Ceviche so fresh the fish was swimming an hour ago, cured in lime and ají at market stalls in Surquillo.
A city where Central ranks among the world's top restaurants and a street anticucho costs two soles.
Causa limeña — cold potato layers with tuna and avocado — the quiet genius of Peruvian home cooking.
Gothenburg
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A fish market shaped like a church where the west coast's langoustine feels like sacrament.
Florence
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Terracotta rooftops from Brunelleschi's dome, the Arno gold at sunset, gelato in every piazza.
Dunedin
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A Scottish-built city with the world's steepest street where yellow-eyed penguins nest on the headland.
Rome
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Twenty-seven centuries layered underfoot, every wrong turn revealing another empire's ruins.
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Five thousand petroglyphs carved into desert boulders across a silent valley — barely a visitor.
Salineras de Maras
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Three thousand salt pools cascading down a mountainside, each one hand-harvested since before the Inca.
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Cumbemayo
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Pre-Inca aqueducts carved through living rock at 3,500 metres — still channelling water after millennia.