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When you’re ready for a proper pisco, Miraflores’s PiscoBar is a capital choice, both for traditional cocktails as well as heady new creations. As is to be expected, owner Ricardo Carpio is a celebrated pisco expert, which makes this the ideal laboratory for personal tastings of some of the country’s premier brands. Happily, it’s also a fabulous place to eat, whether you’re craving tapas or a full-on meal. Dishes like the seafood risotto and the beef with tacu tacu (Peruvian refried beans and rice) make you wish you had a Peruvian grandmother; the welcoming staff provide a warm facsimile.

Not many know that Matsuei was the first restaurant with the great Nobu of international sushi fame at the helm. Back when he had both a first and last name, he met a man while working in a sushi bar in Japan who offered to stake his solo business venture if he set up shop in Peru. And thanks to a large Japanese community in Lima, Matsuei was a success. On the menu you’ll find the original cream cheese, tempura, mango, and fusion rolls now loved the world over. But even purists will love the high quality local fish and seafood, especially the creamy sole and to-die-for scallops.

Though better known for its high-quality, wide-ranging craft beer menu, Mapacho, in Aguas Calientes, merits culinary attention, too, regional suds or no. Lunch and dinner choices are varied and delicious with choices like trout ceviche and osso buco, as well as a wide selection of Peruvian favorites like lomo saltado (a Peruvian beef stir-fry). The atmosphere is casual; service top-notch. Arrive early or late to snag a coveted river-view table.

When it opened in 1996, the Belmond Miraflores Park was the first hotel in Lima to take advantage of the city’s Pacific Ocean views. Set along the Miraflores malecón, the 82-room property offers some of the most privileged panoramas in the city, particularly from the heated rooftop pool. Several levels down, the ground floor was completely redesigned in 2010 by renowned Peruvian architect Jordi Puig, who added an open-air lounge and avant-garde restaurant space that now houses international eatery Traguluz. Also on-site is The Observatory, a breakfast buffet spot on the 11th floor, and Belo Bar, a park-side lounge offering pisco cocktails infused with Amazonian fruits.

A city tour of Lima isn’t complete without visiting the catacombs of the Monastery of San Francisco. The basement of the working monastery reveals the bones of wealthy Limeños who believed they would be the last to rest in their expensive plots. The tour reveals what actually happened to their remains. Since the catacombs couldn’t expand and affluent Catholics, unfortunately, kept dying, bodies were stacked to decompose down to the bones, and now the larger bones (femurs, forearms, and skulls) are arranged artistically in a circular pattern to make them more aesthetically pleasing to visitors. The site is interesting from both a historical and modern sociological, ethical, and religious standpoint.

The beach town of Pimentel, near Chiclayo (on Northern Peru’s desert coast), is known for its family-run beachfront cevicherias. These restaurants have immediate access to fish straight from the sea. Ceviche is eaten only for lunch in the north - so make your visit in the afternoon. Northern Peruvian ceviche is prepared with paper-thin sliced red onions, chile peppers, large chunks of fresh fish and lots of lime juice. The fish gets cooked by the lime juice on the outside, but stays raw on the inside. Fishermen in Pimentel still use the tule reed boats of their ancestors, which you’ll see on the pier and on the beach. The malecon (an ocean front promenade) is lined with decaying stately homes.

Many visitors to Peru stay in Miraflores, and for good reason: The neighborhood is where you’ll find most of the better hotels, as well as the top restaurants. Get off main streets to stroll the pretty side streets. Down by the ocean, walk the Malecón seawall and visit the Parque del Amor, or Love Park, to watch paragliders soar and bank overhead. The oceanfront is also home to Larcomar, an open-air shopping mall where you can grab a bite or shop for any items you may have forgotten.

When you’re considering Peruvian souvenirs, things like coffee, pisco, and alpaca scarves come to mind. But Peru is also known for ceramics, and you can find marvelous examples at Seminario’s. Its founders have taken motifs from Peru’s past and made them their own, offering ceramics that blend ancient and modern graphic designs. Buying a practical souvenir like a coffee mug ensures that your presents will be put to good use, while other more unique and purely artistic pieces can make you look at ceramics in a whole new way. Visits include a short video presentation on the studio’s history, a tour of the workshop and, sometimes, meeting the founders themselves. Warning: the on-site store will likely have you buying as much for yourself as others, but don’t worry—the workshop ships everywhere.

Tanta is a bistrô, pâtisserie and rotisserie all in one, a great choice at any time during your trip to Lima. It has a laid back vibe and well-prepared, flavorful criolla food. There are several of them around the city and you’ll likely find one open at any given time. It’s an easy choice for travelers! You can get there at 5 PM and have a Lomo Saltado ou Ají de Gallina while the ladies at the table next to you share an afternoon tea and the kids nearby have a burger with fries. That’s Tanta, there’s a little bit of everything for everyone. It’s also a great place for children: there’s a kids menu, changing table, high chairs and coloring supplies.

We took a four night trip to the Peruvian jungle and the Macaws at this clay-lick were a highlight from the boat trip up the river.

A few years back, when Lima’s Central Restaurante was closed because of zoning issues, Peru‘s celebrity chef, Gastón Acurio, was one of many who petitioned for it to be reopened. I knew that meant the young chef at Central, Virgilio Martinez, must be doing something truly special. Virgilio’s restaurant is located in Lima’s hip Barranco neighborhood. I stopped in solo one afternoon for lunch and was dazzled by the dishes his servers put in front of me: charred purple corn with scented octopus, lentils, yuzu, and bok choy; “mask of the suckling pig” (or pig face) with tart green apple, baby tomatoes, and galangal; and suckling goat with chickpeas, goat cheese, and lemon verbena. Each course was plated like a work of art and was a beautiful riddle on the palette. My enthusiasm for my food earned me a tour of the open kitchen and the rooftop garden, where servers pluck flowers or clip herbs for dishes like the citrus gelée with edible flowers (pictured above). Chef also gave me a tour of his incredible chocolate cellar, where he shows off his favorite chocolate bars from around the world.

Just a few blocks from the hotel, the Surquillo Market bustles with daily life, as locals shop the stands for their fresh groceries. You’ll find stalls selling a bounty of seafood, vegetables, fruits, meat, herbs, and many surprising and unfamiliar indigenous items. For an insider’s look at the market, book the Belmond Miraflores Park’s private Gastronomic Discovery experience, which includes a guided market tour—during which you’ll shop for ingredients—followed by a cooking class back at the hotel and then lunch at Tragaluz. Photo by Carolina Murga Portella/Flickr.

Huacachina is a coastal desert located in the Ica region. It holds one of the few oases in the whole region: a blue-green lake amid huge sand dunes under a beautifully clear sky. Take a dune buggy so that you can ride all over the dunes before riding a sand board down. This is the definition of a touristic little town, and it is definitely worth a visit. You’ll find some nice hostels ands lodges where you can stay overnight right in the middle of the oasis. Huacachina Oasis is a short four-hour drive from Lima, and there are also plenty of buses that will bring you here.

Voted one of the top restaurants in Lima, chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino’s modern Amazonian restaurant, Malabar, is worthy of the praise. From the à la carte menu, order the river snails with chorizo sausage and exotic, sweet-and-sour aguaje fruit, followed by the smoked duck with cacao sauce, avocado, and blue cheese. Or opt for the seasonal tasting menu featuring organic heart of palm salad with chestnut flour and paiche jungle fish with black hot peppers and nutty dale dale. In a city addicted to meat, Schiaffino’s vegetarian tasting menu is a delight. It includes black quinoa, Amazonian honey, and a starchy-sweet tuber dish translated as “seven textures of yucca.”

To Limeños, nothing goes with fresh fruit juice better than sandwiches, at dinner, or after dinner, or in the afternoon, or even in the morning. In fact, sandwiches don’t have to count as a meal in Peru, while it’s perfectly acceptable to call a pitcher of thick papaya juice “dinner.” Juice bars are everywhere, but it’s best to go to a reputable place, such as La Lucha, where you can trust the quality of the water used and the restaurant’s sanitation. It’s more expensive than your average hole-in-the-wall—though it’s still less than $3 for a freshly pressed mixed passion fruit, mango, and orange juice—but you pay for quality. For a Peruvian specialty, try the exotic lucuma “juice” with milk (more like a butterscotch-maple smoothie). And remember that in Spanish when you order “tuna” you’re actually ordering sweet prickly pear, not fish juice. The sandwiches made from giant hunks of rotisserie pork, chicken, homemade hot pepper, olive, and creamy golf sauces are also some of the least expensive and filling meals in the area.