One afternoon, Jenny, Tina, and I decided to head to the Larco Museum in Lima. This museum is known for two things 1) its beautiful gardens 2) its ancient erotic Inca pottery. A strange combination, to say the least. (Warning: I'm including an example image of the pottery in this blog post).
The girls and I enjoyed strolling around the museum gardens - many of the plants were in full bloom even though it was early fall in Lima.
The Director of the PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge at Duke, Cathy Davidson, highly recommended the museum and its cafe. She actually had a food epiphany at the museum the day before. She told us that over 20 years ago, she was traveling and visited a Peruvian restaurant that served unique dulce de leche dessert. Apparently, she had been searching for this uniquely Peruvian version of caramel for decades and finally tasted that distinctive, super-vanilla-y ducle de leche at the museum cafe. Wanting to experience this same foodie-find, we ordered the caramel crepe. The dulce de leche was completely different from the ones that I've tried in Mexico and at other Latin American restaurants in the US. As Cathy said, the caramel had a particulary vanilla-y quailty to it that was intense and striking...almost a concentrated form of French Vanilla? Cathy thinks there is something special about Peruvian vanilla that causes this flavor difference.
After savoring that amazing dessert, we headed into the museum to see the pottery. The pottery, as you can imagine, is quite explicit and anatomically detailed. Fascinating! The main gallery was so impressive - the collection is so varied and vast. The amazing thing is that the main gallery only contains a tiny percentage of the larger collection of erotic pottery. The Larco Museum is unique in that its storage facilities are open to the public. So, after you see the main gallery, you can take a tour of the storage area. There, you can see thousands of examples of this type of pottery on glass-enclosed shelves. WOW!
The girls and I enjoyed strolling around the museum gardens - many of the plants were in full bloom even though it was early fall in Lima.
The Director of the PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge at Duke, Cathy Davidson, highly recommended the museum and its cafe. She actually had a food epiphany at the museum the day before. She told us that over 20 years ago, she was traveling and visited a Peruvian restaurant that served unique dulce de leche dessert. Apparently, she had been searching for this uniquely Peruvian version of caramel for decades and finally tasted that distinctive, super-vanilla-y ducle de leche at the museum cafe. Wanting to experience this same foodie-find, we ordered the caramel crepe. The dulce de leche was completely different from the ones that I've tried in Mexico and at other Latin American restaurants in the US. As Cathy said, the caramel had a particulary vanilla-y quailty to it that was intense and striking...almost a concentrated form of French Vanilla? Cathy thinks there is something special about Peruvian vanilla that causes this flavor difference.
After savoring that amazing dessert, we headed into the museum to see the pottery. The pottery, as you can imagine, is quite explicit and anatomically detailed. Fascinating! The main gallery was so impressive - the collection is so varied and vast. The amazing thing is that the main gallery only contains a tiny percentage of the larger collection of erotic pottery. The Larco Museum is unique in that its storage facilities are open to the public. So, after you see the main gallery, you can take a tour of the storage area. There, you can see thousands of examples of this type of pottery on glass-enclosed shelves. WOW!
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