A relatively early day…I think we got up around 7:30 or so. Down to the hotel restaurant to grab some breakfast (super cheap and very tasty) and then off to meet up with Mario, Luisa’s brother for a day of touring Puebla City.
We actually started off the tour by searching through some sort of museum looking for Mario, Steve and Sean who decided that they couldn’t wait a couple of minutes for us to show up. :) After a good 20 minutes of searching, Luisa showed up and found them for us, I’m still not sure how she did that.
From there we went to check out the main Cathedral which is located in the Zocalo (the town square). Quite impressive as far a churches go. After that we headed to another museum, again, not sure of the name, but this one had some mayan atrifacts in it. Pretty cool stuff. Unfortunately we were told that we weren’t allowed to take any pictures so if you want to see what was there, you’ll have to visit yourself.
After the musuem we headed over to one of the markets in the historical part of downtown. I bought some cool shot glasses (for tequila) and Amy bought a few things of Talavera. Steve also bought some Talavera which he planned to take back with him for gifts. We looked around the market for a while and then decided that it was time to get something to eat. Just before leaving the market Mario bought us each a small gift. What a guy!
For lunch it was off to Vips which was conveniently just down the street from the market. Mario helped out Steve and Amy to order something that wasn’t too spicy. I can’t remember what anyone had but rest assured it was all delicious. While we were there Amy noticed that the nametag of our server had Wal-Mart written on the bottom. Mario explained to us that Vips was owned by Wal-Mart! Crazy!
After lunch we headed up to see the Fuerte de Loreto which was up on a hill overlooking the city. Mario gave us a bit of a history lesson about the battle of the 5th of May (1867?) which took place at the Fort while we walked around. We had taken a cab up to the fort (cabs are super cheap) and so we had to walk down a little ways to find one for the trip back. One our way down we stopped into see “Nuestra Senora de Lourdes” which was a church which was built into the side of a hill, completely out of rock. It was super cool!
We grabbed a cab and headed back downtown. Mario asked us if we wanted to have a ‘special drink’ to which we said, “Of coure!” So after the cab dropped us off, we went into a shop that seemed to sell drinks. I’m not sure I would call this place a bar, since maybe only 5 to 10 people could be in there at once but the couter did remind me of a bar. Anyways, Mario ordered us up a drink which came with cheeze on a toothpick in it. The cheeze was aweful! But the drink was really tasty. We later found out it was Mezcal.
We had to be back at the hotel by 6 since Scott and Luisa’s families were getting together for supper. We dropped a very reluctant (he was willing to skip dinner with the families in order to take us out for tacos) Mario off in the lobby of the restaurant and headed up to our rooms to relax. At around 9 or so, we were feeling a bit hungry so we headed down to the lobby to see if the families were finished with dinner. Mario had promised to take us out for tacos after supper (the families supper) so we took him up on the offer. We wandered around looking for a taco place. After visiting two shops which were just closing as we walked up to them, we finally found a third place which was still open. Mario said that this place wasn’t as good as the first two we tried, but that it was still good. I would have to agree, the tacos tasted great to me!
After supper we headed back to the hotel to hit the sack. The plan for the next day was to go visit some hot springs which were about 2 hours away so we needed to get up early. Everyone was going to meet in the lobby of the hotel at 8 am.
Pictures of things we saw in Puebla can be found here.