It was interesting at the boarding gate. We noticed a number of customs officers hanging out at the gate entrance. Hmmm... we finally figured out that since this is a direct flight to Mexico City they are there to help with the escort of 4 people who are apparently being deported. Three of the people looked like ordinary folk but the fourth was clearly a well tattooed gang member. They were all loaded on first. This might be one of the reasons we like to fly business class.
We had a brilliant sunset as we lifted off from the Vancouver Airport...
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Since we arrived after midnight we spent the night at the Airport Hilton. In the morning we grabbed a Starbucks and found a Telcel place to buy Mexican accounts for our cell phones. $358 MXN for 23 days unlimited calling and texting in Mexico and North America plus about 4GB of data. That's about $21 CDN for 2 phones. Compare that with the $60 US we paid for one month for one phone in the USA last year! Early Wednesday afternoon we took a bus to Puebla.
Our hotel, the Villahernan, is about 3 blocks from the Zocalo so, after checkin, we went over there for some lunch then wandered along the pedestrian 5 de Mayo street before returning to the Zocalo for some wine and dinner at one of the many sidewalk places lining the Zocalo.
Thursday we started out at a Starbucks that is so new the smell of lacquer is a tad strong but the place is pretty spiffy and probably has the best restroom in the country. Afterwards we walked up 4 Poniente to Uriarte, one of, if not the primo, Talavera places in Puebla where we picked up some nice pieces and arranged to have them shipped home around the end of February. From there we jumped on a local bus that indicated it went past CAPU (Central Autobus de Puebla). After a very bumpy 10 minutes we arrived at CAPU. We found the ADO bus counter and bought our tickets to Oaxaca for Saturday. Luxury bus through a very scenic part of the country for $21 CDN each. Nice! Although we saw some local buses indicating "centro" we opted to spend the extra $60 MXN (about $3.50 CDN) and took a taxi back down to the Zocalo.
For lunch we tried an upstairs place with a balcony overlooking the Zocalo. After lunch we went on a giant snark hunt looking for a street, we had visited many (probably more than15) years ago, that had a number of slightly lesser quality Talavera shops. We had asked the guy at Uriarte but he only knew of a number of stores in an artisan area that was only about 3 blocks from our hotel but most of those weren't actually Talavera shops, just must cheaper ceramics aimed at tourists (but we knew better). So later in the afternoon we set out to find the street hoping that they all had not moved somewhere else. It took a hike of about a dozen blocks before we finally found the street we were looking for. We had wanted to find the area because we have a set of Talavera bowls, with a common motif, and wanted to replace one that was chipped last year. Alas, not to be! We found numerous other pieces with the same motif but not what we were after. Oh well, it's just a small chip :-)
Friday was a designated museum day. In the morning we saw the Regional Museo de la Revolution Mexicana, a house where apparently the first battle of the Mexican Revolution took place on November 18, 1910. It focuses on the Serdan brothers who lived in the house at the time. Nicely done while retaining some of the original bullet holes throughout. In the afternoon we went to Museo Amparo, a fascinating museum with a vast collection of Mexico antiquity along with modern day expositions and a beautiful new modern part of the original old museum building. Excellent! In between we had a great lunch at La Casa de los Munecos, a decent dinner at the Quinta Real Hotel and a couple of glasses of wine at El Corona on the Zocalo to finish off our Puebla visit. We plan to return here on our way home at the end of February.
Saturday morning we caught an ADO luxury bus to Oaxaca arriving at about 4:00 pm. My, have they ever upscaled the bus terminal a whole lot!!! We caught a taxi to our rented apartment where Macrina was waiting for us. After a brief briefing we bid her goodbye then wandered down to the Zocalo for some munchies (all we had to eat so far today was a couple of croissants) and a couple of glasses of wine at a sidewalk cafe where we relaxed and watched the bustling life of Oaxaca go by. Much as we remembered it. Very nice! Brought back many fond memories of visiting Oaxaca with our good friend Marjorie (RIP).
| On to Week 2 |
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