At the end of October we made another trip to Mexico. Just for a few days in Mexico City followed by a few days in San Miguel de Allende and then on to Guanajuato. Of course the 1st and 2nd of November are the Días de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations so it is always an interesting time to be in Mexico during that period.
We flew from Sacramento to Mexico City via Dallas with a long (6hr layover in Dallas) so it took all day. We arrived in Mexico City around 8:30pm where we had arranged for a pick up at the airport to take us to our hotel. The idea was there should be someone at the airport with a card and my name - there wasn't. We finally connected with the driver and he claimed the traffic was bad. In the end we waited 40 minutes to be picked up - not a good idea, there are many taxis at the airport and the queues were not long. We won't do that again.
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| Metropolitan Cathedral and Zocalo |
We got to our hotel, the Gran Hotel Ciudad de Mexico, around 10:00 pm and, after depositing our bags, we went up to the rooftop bar which overlooked the Zocalo to observe the celebrations going on in the square below. Even though it was only the Wednesday before the Saturday of Day of the Dead there were crowds of people in the square. There were lots of giant statues of scary looking Day of the Dead characters sitting in a sea of yellow marigolds, all with a backdrop of the Cathedral and the Palacio Nacional, two fine looking buildings.
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| The Stained Glass Ceiling - Gran Hotel |
The next morning I was up early for a walk around. The stained glass roof in the hotel lobby never ceases to amaze me (I have stayed in the hotel at least 3 times). The hotel was once the premier department store in Mexico City and it is truly a wonderful building.
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| Day of the Dead on the Zocalo |
Outside, the city was waking up. There were a lot of police around, and an army of street sweepers cleaning up the square before another day of celebrations began. The Zocalo itself was closed off so I could only observe the statuary and flowers from a distance. Nevertheless it was quite spectacular.
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| The Cable Bus from Constitution de 2017 |
Back at the hotel I picked up Diana and we set off to take a ride on the cable car system that had been put in place to transport people to the more inaccessible neighborhoods on the fringes of the city. To do this we took the metro out to the end of the line, to the station Constitution de 2017. The metro is a wonderful system that transports a lot of people everyday and it only costs 5 pesos for a ride (about 25c).
From the metro station it was a short walk to the Cable Car, or rather Cable Bus as they call it. There were only a few people heading out of the city into the hills so our compartment was quite empty. It is a wonderful mode of transportation giving you a bird's eye view of the city below. Many of the buildings under the Cable Bus line were brightly colored and many had painted murals on their roofs - a most interesting ride.
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| The Cable Bus near Santa Marta |
The Cable Bus line goes up the hillside from the Constitution de 2017 metro station and then down the other side to the Santa Marta metro station. Currently there are 3 Cable Bus lines in Mexico City and this one, line 2 is the longest, in fact, it is the longest cable car in the world.
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| Sculptures on the Zocalo |
At Santa Marta we ended our journey and got the metro back to the Zocalo square. It was now after 10:00 and the Zocalo was open to the public so we walked around admiring all the elaborate and artistic sculptures.
We then returned to our hotel and checked out. It had been hard to get reservations at this busy time of year so we had one night in the Gran Hotel and then another at a hotel around the corner, the Hotel Central and Zocalo Rooftop, another fine hotel.
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| Diego Rivera's Murals |
After coffee and cake in our new hotel, we set off to visit the Secretariat of Education building. This building, still a working office, is also the home of over 100 murals, most of them by Diego Rivera. It is a real treasure and, while the murals aren't as epic as some of the other Rivera murals, they are quite beautiful. They tell the story of Mexican History from the Aztec times through the Spanish Conquest, Independence and the first half of the 20th century. Of course, as with all of Diego's work, they are highly political. It was interesting that some of his murals were signed with his name along with a hammer and sickle symbol. As Diana pointed out, how could the Rockefeller's be surprised and upset by the content of the mural he painted for Rockefeller Center in New York. He was a pretty hard core Communist.
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| Diego's Signature |
The next stop was for a late lunch at El Cardinal, a nice restaurant that is nearby and very popular with locals and tourists (in mid-afternoon there was a 30 minute wait). We had some great tacos followed by a cup of El Cardinal's signature "chocolate caliente". The Mexican chocolate drink is not as sweet as the chocolate drinks that I have had in the US and Europe. At El Cardinal the chocolate is brought to the table in a jug and they whisk it with a wooden whisk, a molinilla, to give just the right amount of espuma (foam).
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| Cafe La Habana |
From El Cardinal we walked through the city streets to the famous coffee shop, Cafe La Habana. This is the coffee shop where Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Octavio Paz all used to frequent. It is a lovely old coffee shop and they offer all sorts of coffee options from Cuba. I had the coffee with evaporated milk. We also indulged in a couple of pan de muertos con nata. Pan de muerto is literally bread of death and the nata is some variant of whipped cream. Very decadent but very nice.
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| Coffee and Pan de Muertos con Nata |
Since by now we were more than a little tired, we caught an Uber back to the hotel. Uber is so much more secure than a un-metered taxi.
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| Celebrations on the Zocalo |
After dark we went out to the Zocalo again to mingle among the crowds of people wandering around. It was quite a crazy time, the Zocalo was so crowded with lots of people in costume slowly shuffling through the crowded walkways between the Day of the Dead statuary and the marigold plants. The strangest thing was the candy floss machines that were producing wisps of spun sugar that were escaping into the night sky. Illuminated by the lights on the plaza they looked quite beautiful but they were likely not so beautiful if they landed on you - a sticky mess I assume.
The next morning we took our breakfast on the rooftop restaurant of our hotel. Looking down onto the Zocalo it was now quite clean and orderly. The army of street sweepers do a great job of keeping the place clean.
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| Inside the Metropolitan Cathedral |
After breakfast we walked over to the cathedral and took a quick look inside. We had visited there before but it is always good to marvel at the wondrous ornamentation of the altars and the monumental architecture of the building.
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| Templo Mayor |
The next visit was to Templo Mayor, the site of the temple that once formed the heart of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire. The site consists of the excavated foundations of the old temple along with a modern museum containing artifacts found at the site. The temple was built in the 1300's and periodically expanded for the next 200 or so years. When the Spanish arrived in the 1500's they destroyed the temple and used its stone to build their homes and the very grand Metropolitan Cathedral. Surprisingly it wasn't until 1978 when construction workers unearthed a massive pre-Hispanic stone disc that a program was initiated to fully excavate the site and preserve what was left. Little remains of the structure but there are many wonderful artifacts on display in the museum.
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| Inside the Templo Mayor Museum |
We had arranged for a driver to take us on the next leg of our trip, to San Miguel de Allende. Gerardo, our driver, arrived at our hotel right on time at 11:00 am and we set off to drive to San Miguel. Gerardo was quite fluent in English having lived for some time in the USA (in Bakersfield) and he did a great job of guiding us along the way. Traffic was quite bad in some areas and the 170 mile trip took a lot longer than expected.
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| Queretaro |
We stopped along the way in Queretaro and had lunch a very quick look around the town. The modern town is quite large and industrial but the historic center where we stopped was a beautiful area with old colonial buildings and parks. Everything there was decorated for the upcoming Day of the Dead celebrations.
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| The Viaduct, Queretaro |
After our lunch and a walk around we headed to the edge of the old town to see the viaduct. The viaduct built in the 18th century is an impressive construction project. It is some 1.25 km long and 90 feet high and was built to carry clean fresh water into the city from the surrounding hills. The viaduct is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Driving on we had another hour to go to reach San Miguel. We reached San Miguel around 6pm and drove down the narrow cobbled streets into the city center and to our hotel (the Hotel Boutique Hacienda Guadalupe). The hotel was quite nice and from the our floor you could see the spire of the Parroquia San Miguel Arcangel, the main landmark of San Miguel.
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| Celebrating Halloween, San Miguel de Allende |
We walked around the town in the evening. It was the 31st October, Halloween in the USA. This, traditionally, was not a holiday in Mexico, and Day of the Dead is held on the 1st and 2nd November. However, nowadays, the Mexican festivities have been expanded to include Halloween. It's a similar holiday with similar costume and makeup requirements and so nowadays children go trick or treating around town with little pumpkins.
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| Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel |
The church on the main square of the old town is the Parroquia of San Miguel Arcangel (parroquia means parish). It is a beautiful church that was built in the 17th century but was "enhanced" in the 19th century. The "enhancement" was to add neo-Gothic spires, finials and carvings to the exterior. It was all done by an indigenous bricklayer Don Zeferino Gutiérrez Muñoz who had seen postcards of the European Gothic cathedrals, like Cologne's, and wanted to imitate them. Apparently some architects do not approve.
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| Outside Jardin de Allende |
There is a nice bandstand and park in the square in front of the Parroquia, called the Jardin Allende. It was bedecked with Day of the Dead decorations and was full of people that evening. There was a performance of musicians and dancers on the stage in front of the Parroquia.
We found a small quiet coffee shop on one of the side streets from the square. We stopped in for a Chocolate Caliente and a Pan de Muerto. Not the best but a nice nightcap.
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| Early morning streets of San Miguel |
The next morning, November 1 the first day of the Day of the Dead weekend, I was out early for a walk around the town center. The light was beautiful at that time of the day and the Parroquia was a beautiful pink/orange color. I resisted getting coffee from the nearby Starbucks and bought a couple of lattes from small coffee shop, La Ventana. They specialized in coffee from Chiapas - quite nice.
Later on I picked up Diana and we again walked around the town. We went to another coffee shop for yet another pan de muerto. This coffee shop was quite slick and modern and would have been quite at home in Sacramento or San Francisco. The large number of expats in San Miguel have brought with them fine dining, coffee shops, boutique clothing stores and, of course, higher prices. It has inevitably changed the flavor of what was once a charming colonial town.
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| General Ignacio Allende, Civic Plaza |
We explored more of the town, more churches, a nice market, lots of tourist shops. In the Civic Plaza there was an impressive statue of General Ignacio Allende a key figure in the fight for independence from Spain and the man who gave his name to the city.
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| Pan de Muerto |
In the mid-afternoon we took a break and went back to our hotel and to the restaurant there. We had a wonderful meal though it was far from authentic Mexican food - beetroot ravioli and chile relleno with shrimp - perhaps you could call it Nouveau Mexican. Of course we did have yet another pan de muerto. This time with a skull pattern in icing sugar on the plate - a nice touch.
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| The Toy Museum |
In the late afternoon we walked over to what we thought was a historical museum but was actually a toy museum - Museo de Juguete Popular. We probably wouldn't have deliberately gone there but once there we went inside and it was quite remarkable. Mexico has quite a tradition of elaborate toys made from all sorts of materials, mostly natural. There were toys from every state in Mexico. From the rooftop of the museum there was a wonderful view of the city spread out below.
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| Siqueiros Mural - Bellas Artes |
We then walked to the other side of the town to an art gallery called Bellas Artes. This was once a monastery that now houses an art school and art galleries. There are a few nice murals there. In particular, there is an unfinished work by David Alfaro Siqueiros (titled "The Life and Work of Generalissimo Don Ignacio de Allende") that fills the walls and ceiling of a large room. It was a major project for Siqueiros to take on but he had a dispute with the school management and the mural never got finished. However, it didn't get destroyed and one can get a good idea of what he wanted to create. The piece is best appreciated by walking through the room and observing while you yourself are moving.
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| Sunset over San Miguel |
As we left Bellas Artes, the sun was setting and there was a nice view over to the west from the top of a nearby bridge. We continued to walk around town watching all the costumed and painted people (alas we had neither). The streets were very busy, especially around the Jardin Allende.
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| American Tourists getting into the Day of the Dead |
In the night there was constant drumming which sounded like it was coming from nearby. I finally got up to investigate around 3:00 am and just as I got out on the streets, the drumming faded away and stopped. The streets were still quite busy - lots of people going home, lots of taxis and other traffic but I missed whatever the drumming was for.
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| Creating Ofrendas in the Park |
The next morning I was up early for another walk around. The entire area around the Jardin Allende was busy with people creating ofrendas (altars) to their loved ones who are on longer with us. There were so many marigolds, the air was thick with their scent. Marigolds are a central symbol of Day of the Dead and they are everywhere. The creations were quite elaborate - painstakingly made patterns with colored beans, flower petals, etc with photographs of their loved ones.
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| Plaza de Toros |
After picking up Diana, we headed out to explore more of the town, this time to the south. First stop was the Plaza de Toros. The bull ring is used more for weddings and other special occasions these days, but each October there is a bull fighting event - no bulls are killed however.
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| Casa de la Cultura |
Further to the south we reached the Casa de la Cultura, a cultural and arts center in a lovely old building. Just below the Casa are what once was a public laundry, The lavaderos are supplied by water from the spring above and there are a series of washing basins around the square. I don't think any laundry is washed there anymore.
We had a late breakfast in the hotel adjacent to the Lavaderos and the Casa de Cultura. It was a perfect breakfast on the courtyard of a very nice old hotel. I believe the hotel was the Villa Santa Monica but I am not certain. Mistakenly they refilled my coffee cup with Cafe de Olla. This is a Mexican coffee variant that is spiced with cinnamon, star anise and cloves. To me, it didn't taste that good.
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| Violinist in the Parque Juarez |
We then walked through Parque Juarez where there were many artists displaying their pictures. There was some very good art on display - much better than your typical pop-up park art. A young boy was playing very nice violin there too. He had an appropriately painted face for Day of the Dead.
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| Mural in Institute de Allende |
Walking on we visited another arts center, the Institute Allende. Like Bellas Artes, this is another art school in the town. It is housed in the old home of one of the Spanish aristocracy (the Canal family) and it features a gallery and a beautiful courtyard. Since this is Mexico there are a couple of nice murals on the walls.
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| Ofrendas around Jardin Allende |
Later in the afternoon I took a quick walk around to see how things were warming up for the night's Day of the Dead celebrations. The ofrendas were now finished and there were a lot of people walking around inspecting the. There were still a lot of people getting their faces painted. I went inside the Parroquia (there had been masses on all the previous times I tried). People were filing through and going down into the crypts. I suppose that's what you do for the Day of the Dead.
In the evening we went to get a quick bite before the evening parade. We went to Los Molinos, a restaurant we had been recommended to visit. It was typical Mexican food and it was very good.
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| Police Escort for the Parade |
Our timing was perfect for as we left the restaurant and walked down the street to the parade route we saw the parade starting to come around the corner. First there was a police escort with sirens and lights. Even the police had painted faces. Then there was a cavalcade of horses, carriages, bands, giant puppets and a lot of people in fancy dress with painted faces.
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| Giant Puppets at the Parade |
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| Crowds at the Parade |
It seems a lot of the expat Americans get involved. Indeed many tourists too - all you need is a crazy T shirt and a painted face - what a great celebration. We tried to follow the parade up to the main square, the Jardin Allende, but there were so many people you just could not move through the crowd and get near to the square.
So it was more pan de muerto and chocolate before retiring to the hotel.
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| The Day After - back to normal |
The next morning, Monday morning, I was up early to find the streets relatively clean, the ofrendas around the Jardin Allende had all been removed and life looked like it was back to normal.
We had ordered a driver to take us to our next stop, Guanajuato. Mable, our driver arrived on time at 9:00 am and we said goodbye to San Miguel de Allende - a beautiful city.
While the road from Mexico City to San Miguel was relatively flat and featureless, the road out of San Miguel to the north was much more interesting. There were hills and mountains in the distance and the countryside was quite beautiful.
We passed through the town of La Sauceda where everyone seemed to be selling sculptures of deer made out of twigs and branches. So many of the stores in the town seemed to have some of these animals. I don't know if they are reindeers and it is a Christmas thing or are they just deers to be used as ornaments anytime of the year?
Passing through the town of Yerbabuena, we saw signs by the road side for tunas - not the fish, but the fruit of prickly pear cactus. I have tasted it and it is not my favorite fruit.
We dropped down into Guanajuato which lies at the bottom of a narrow valley. A most interesting city - in the mid 1500's gold was discovered and the city was a significant producer of gold and particularly silver since that time. In the 18th century the area was the world's leading silver producer.
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| One of the many tunnels under Guanajuato |
The town from time to time would flood and it nearly was wiped out a couple of times. This led to the creation of channels and tunnels to divert the flood waters away from the city. When a later dam solved the flooding problem many of these channels and tunnels were converted into underground or below ground roadways.
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| Teatro Juarez, Guanajuato |
We arrived at our hotel, the Boutique 1850 Hotel, and since it was early in the day we dropped off our bags and went to explore the town. Outside the hotel was a small park, Jardin de la Union, tree shaded and surrounded by restaurants. Across the street was the Teatro Juarez, a magnificent looking theater from the days when there was a lot of money moving around Guanajuato.
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| Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guanajuato |
We walked down the main pedestrian street to the main church, the Basilica Colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, a rather stately 17th century church that dominates the square. We had a quick bite of lunch sitting outside one of the restaurants nearby the church. The air up at 7,000 ft was quite nice - chilly in the shade but quite warm when in the sun.
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| Valenciana Church |
We next took a taxi to La Valenciana. This is a nearby small town up the hill from Guanajuato where there was the largest silver mine in the area. At the height of its production this mine alone supplied two thirds of the world's silver supply. An impressive mine indeed. What was more interesting to us was the adjacent church in La Valenciana. It was supposed to have the most magnificent ornamentation inside. That would only be appropriate for a church near such a productive mine. Alas today on a Monday it was closed, and apparently it was closed the next day so we didn't get to see it at all.
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| La Valenciana Mine |
We did a tour of the mine which really wasn't that impressive. Just a lot of steps down a few hundred yards into the mine with the occasional model of a miner operating some equipment along the way. On the way out, I could really feel the impact of climbing steps at 7,000 ft.
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| Guanajuato Market |
We waited for the bus back into town and were dropped off nearby the central market. The market is a fine building. A majestic entrance and a large two story covered market inside.
Back at the hotel our room was ready but oh what a smell when we entered the room - a very strong sewer smell. We had to ask for another room. The second room was also not entirely odor free - not so strong a sewer smell but a fairly strong disinfectant smell - that's how they cover up the sewer smell. I think in some of these older hotels in older towns the sewers are not in great condition and the smell permeates the building. Later on in our visit the hotel lobby had a faint odor of sewer and the hotel manager acknowledged that they had an issue. I, with my very poor sense of smell, soon became accustomed to it. Diana, with her more finely tuned sense of smell never got over it.
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| The Funicular |
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| View of Guanajuato from the top of the Funicular |
Later in the afternoon we walked to the funicular that takes you up to the top of the hill behind the town. It travels up the steep hillside to the monument to El Pipila where there is a viewing area that provides excellent views of the town below and the hillside to the north. The trip is well worth the 60 pesos return fare, it would be a strenuous climb without it.
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| El Pipila |
The statue at the top of the funicular is of El Pipila, one of the heroes of the War of Independence. Apparently the Spanish had retreated into the city's granary building and were quite successful in defending their position. El Pipila (which means the turkey), was a cripple, but he was brave. He strapped a large stone tablet to his back and crept up to the door of the granary protected from the Spanish bullets and arrows by the stone. He set fire to the wooden granary door allowing the insurgents to gain entry and defeat the Spanish.
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| Diana on the University Steps |
Back down in the lower level of the city we walked over to the University of Guanajuato. It is a quite a big university for the size of the town (some 30,000 students). The most significant thing we saw of it was the grand series of steps up the hill to the main entry. A great seating area for viewing performances on the street below.
We then walked over to another touristy site in the town, the narrowest street, where allegedly lovers from one side of the street and the other could lean out from their balconies and kiss. It's really just a very narrow street.
We had a nice meal in the restaurant next to our hotel, allegedly the best restaurant in town according to our hotel. We had excellent ceviche and pretty good tacos and enchiladas. The margarita was also great.
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| Subterranean Roads |
The next morning, Tuesday, I was out for my usual early morning walk. The town was just waking up. I went to the Cervantes Museum, the Santa Case de Loreto Catholic Church, the Plaza de Allende where there is a statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and returned through the subterranean level road below the main street level.
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| Don Quixote and Sancho Panza |
After coffee from Starbucks (shame on us), I picked up Diana and we went to visit the Cervantes Museum. This most interesting museum was created by a Spanish exile in Mexico, one Eulalio Ferrer Rodriguez. Eulalio was a captain in the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War and after Franco came to power he had to flee, first to France and then to Mexico. During his travels he read Don Quixote and was greatly inspired by it. After a successful career in Mexico he wanted to create a Cervantes Museum to house his collection of Cervantes and Don Quixote material. With help from the Spanish and Mexican governments he did just that.
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| Salvador Dali's Don Quixote Painting |
The museum has sculptures, paintings, murals, books... everything imaginable connected with Cervantes and Don Quixote. There are a couple of Salvador Dali paintings and a Picasso, though the Picasso wasn't on display while we were there. We thoroughly enjoyed it and it inspired me to read the book when I get home. We will see how that goes.
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| Diego Rivera's Childhood Home, now a Museum |
The next place we visited was the Diego Rivera Museum. Diego was born in Guanajuato and his childhood home is now a museum. There are none of his murals in the museum or even in Guanajuato but there are many of his paintings and sketches. It was interesting to see how he progressed as an artist. His early work started in the same place as everyone does, with landscapes and still lifes, then he went to Europe and was influenced by the impressionists and then the cubists before he finally settled into his Mexican history and muralist styles. Sadly no photographs were allowed in the museum.
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| The Steep Steps to the Mummy Museum |
The last place we wanted to visit, or rather the only other significant place on the tourist map, was the Mummy Museum. This is adjacent to a graveyard where when they needed more space to bury people they decided to remove bodies from those graves that were delinquent on their burial tax payments. To their surprise the bodies had not decayed but they had been mummified - a combination of the soil type and the dry climate prevented complete decay. The mummies were exhumed and stacked in an ossuary. Sometime late they created a museum and put the mummies on display for the world to see.
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| The Mummy Museum |
The Mummies were high up the hill and it was quite a strenuous walk to get there. We were exhausted - an altitude of 7,000 ft is not to be taken lightly. The museum itself is a bit weird and macabre - some 50 or so mummies behind glass. Some clothed, some naked, some old, some young children and even a few babies. All had horrific facial expressions. We didn't stay long.
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| A Mariachi Band getting ready to play in the Jardin de la Union |
We walked down the hill to the center of town again. This time an easier downhill route. We had a late lunch at one of the restaurants on the Jardin de la Union. After a leisurely meal we checked out of the hotel and got a taxi to the airport. The airport is near the city of Leon, but is called Guanajuato Airport for Guanajuato the state not the city.
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| Direct Flight to Sacramento |
After checking in for our flight to Mexico City we noticed that there was a flight the same time as ours going directly to Sacramento. That was a huge surprise. I knew that Sacramento had flights to Mexico but to Leon, a place I had not heard of before this week, that was a surprise. Anyway, instead of a direct flight on the Mexican budget airline Volaris, we had a flight to Mexico, a hotel for the night at the airport and a flight the next day to Dallas and then another to Sacramento.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. A short 45 minute flight to Mexico City, a hotel at the airport (which also had a sewer smell), a 6:00 am flight to Dallas and then home by 2:00 pm.
