Yesterday when I woke up I was so excited as it was the day I was going to see my family! Juliet and I went for our very last breakfast in Basilica and this time even broke the norm and had a quinoa cookie as well as our croissants. We then went back to the house to finish up my packing when Horti arrived to say goodbye. She then helped us get a taxi and I said goodbye to Mariscal Gamaras and hello to my new HOTEL. Juliet then went back to the house and she wanted her reunion with my family to be at dinner, so I checked in and enquired as to whether the rooms were ready. I must have looked so bizarre as I was literally pacing backwards and forwards in the hotel lobby, to keep checking if a taxi had arrived with my family in it. My check in actually took ages and soon I went to find out what was going on, I discovered that only one room was ready and after explaining that that was fine, I just wanted to dump all my belongings there, I got my key and a porter picked up all my bags… just as my family arrived!!!! He quickly dropped the bags and I ran to the door to hug everyone and say a huuuuuuge hello after 6 months away. It was so nice to see them and literally within minutes it felt as if id never even left them.
We had a briefing by our tour guide for the next few days, the rest of the Parrott clan checked in, we headed to the room to dump our things and then went for a drink and present opening ceremony for both daddy’s birthday and all of the presents that I’ve got everyone while travelling. For daddy’s birthday, as I know he gets really bad altitude sickness, I bought him lots of coca things! (Making sure he knows it’s actually illegal to take them back to England so they’ve got to be used here!) including, coca tea, coca chocolate, coca sucky sweets and some Florida water which is this strong smelling liquid that you rub on your hands and smell and it stops you feeling sick. Then it was other presents including jewellery, a crocodile hunter DVD, scarves, tee shirts, alpaca jumpers for the whole fam, some silly presents, a beautiful (if I say so myself) table cloth and a tapestry that I bought off a cute little lady on the reed islands. It was so so nice to see them and they were all so happy with their gifts, apart from the fact that Henry my little brother is not little AT ALL any more, he’s actually a lot taller than me (!!!) nothing has changed.

I was so happy I couldn’t stop hugging them and we all went off to the room to get our things so I could show them Cusco!
First stop was obviously lunch and where else to take my family than Jacks Cafe! We queued up outside the cafe and of course the queue went down quickly as the staff are quick and the chefs are fab! We got seated on a very small table and because of the language barrier we ended up with a table filled with water bottles and no space for food! But of course we did actually order food and as expected for Jacks, it was absolutely delicious, big smiles and full tummy’s all round!
We then headed towards the plaza as the sun came out and everyone was amazed by how beautiful the plaza is and the surrounding mountains. I showed them my favourite streets and places to buy alpaca scarves (which ofcourse we bought loads of!)

We then headed back to the hotel for a snooze, as my family had been travelling for over 24 hours and I’d given them a very full on afternoon.
For dinner Juliet and I had planned down to a tee what we wanted to happen. We’d booked the table for 7pm and planned that Juliet would be there early to check that everything was ready and waiting. We arrived at the table, set with 6 champagne glasses and a Julie waiting to see everyone. It was such a lovely meal, everyone chatting and happy. As requested we had specially prepared tapas to share and to start with and then all of our main meals (Juliet and I normally have the smallest dinner so we felt as if we would explode), followed by an amazing desert. The desert was again specially created by the restaurant on our request, a huge two levelled chocolate brownie cake, topped with vanilla ice cream, drizzled with chocolate sauce and for added excitement, a candle on the top and we all sang happy birthday to daddy as I missed his special day. It was a great evening and an absolute fab end to my first day with the fam.