Cusco

 On Thursday, June 20th, we took the train back to Ollantaytambo and the bus from there to Cusco.

After lunch, the group went to the Church of Santo Domingo, which is built on top of the Incas' most important temple, Qoricancha, where the sun god, Inti, was worshipped.  Parts of the temple complex were built into the Dominican convent, and we visited these.

We checked into our hotel, the Jose Antonio, which is about a twenty minute walk down from the main square.

Since this was the week of the Inti Raymi ("Sun Festival"), the big winter solstice festival, there was much more bustle than usual going on, with parades and dancing and nightly fireworks, culminating in an all-day reenactment on the 24th of what the annual Inca festival might have been like, ending in hours of performance (see YouTube for recorded national TV broadcast) up at the ancient temple grounds at Sacsayhuaman, to the northwest of Cusco.  We would be gone on to Lake Titicaca on that day, but we were not upset at missing the long, crowded, pricey extravaganza.

Since we were dining on our own that night, we had made a reservation at Cicciolina, a few blocks from the main square.  Not only was this restaurant highly recommended by Lonely Planet, our go-to- restaurant guru, but a friend's friend, who goes often to Cusco, had said that we absolutely had to eat at Cicciolina.  So, we did, and it was one of the two best meals we had on this trip (the other being at Fiesta in Lima).

Afterwards, on our way through the crowds back to our hotel, we were saluted by fireworks.