Casa Lima heritage stay experience, Peru

While I was looking to chose a stay in Lima, Peru's capital city, I had 2 options

• Chose a property closer to beach- closer to airport, away from city and very expensive
• Stay in city center- less expensive. 

I chose to stay in city center. City center is pretty far from airport but I hoped it will be close to other attractions in city and easy for day tours.

After scouting through various options in booking.com, I eventually chose Casa Lima as it had both dorm and private room, was reasonably priced and reviews seemed fine. Three of us stayed with them, we all got rooms in different floors!

Casa Lima is a nice heritage building in Lima, capital of Peru. Casa Lima is located pretty close to city center. The building was apparently residence for nuns in the past. This post shares my findings

Casa Lima: Positive things:

• Different types of rooms available in different floors, reasonably priced
• A very good heritage building, which was once housing nuns
• Nice open terrace and breakfast area
• Room doors with door within a door
• Free hot water, tea packets at reception
• Decent WiFi (was weak inside the room, good network in common areas)
• Not too far from city center- starbucks, restaurants, shops within 500 meters radius (beach several kms away)
• Airport taxi drop off arranged at reasonable 55 sols
• There is one cat in the campus- doesn't like too much petting though.
• There was a pet cat in the campus. Did allow me to pet but not very keen to interact with people.

Casa Lima: What could have been better:

• Our airport pickup booked with Casa Lima was nowhere to be seen when we landed at Lima airport. Eventually we had to book an Uber
• Breakfast available for purchase for about 7 soles but no vegetarian options.
• Some branding/name plate outside will make it easier to locate. First time customers will NOT be able to locate the entrance due to zero display of brand name. We reached map location, sent our cab away and had tough time locating the entrance and had to call them to come out.
• Kitchen access to guests to cook some basic food- at least a microwave/induction stove will be nice. As of now Zero access.
• I saw some cloths hung on terrace- when asked if I can wash my cloths and hang them, I was told no. Need to avail their paid laundry service
• Some basic facilities in the room like kettle, TV etc

Other things to note

• Our airport taxi guy missed a turn to enter city center, ended up taking a long detour and a toll road, forced us to pay for the toll
• Tour buses were not offering any pickup point within walking distance from Casa Lima. I had to book an early morning Uber and go to a spot 5 kms away for my day trip.

Wanted to extend my stay by a day at Casa Lima, but couldn't as they closed for fumigation. Booked another hostel for 8 $ 2 kms away, which had good kitchen.