Travels with Hayley

Today was a well needed free day, so I treated myself to a long lie in and didn’t actually hit the streets until 10am – the luxury! On offer was an optional tour to some ruins, but I was a bit old stoned out so decided to have a nice easy day around town instead.

I’d found a modern art museum on trip advisor I fancied going to but weirdly there was no address, phone number or any contact information at all – I managed to find it on a map about 5 miles out of town which seemed a bit odd, but Lynsey and I duly got in an Uber to head over there. As we drove off down the street our female Uber driver kept giving us concerned looks and after a couple of minutes she pulled over to the side of the road – between Lynsey’s decent Spanish and google translate we understood she was asking us, why are you going to this area? This is a dangerous area, there’s nothing there. We showed her the museum but she was adamant it wasn’t there and the exhibition was in town. So she dropped us at an alternative museum instead which confirmed although it had a similar name, it definetly didn’t have the exhibits we were after. We decided the universe was telling us to give it up as a bad job so we abandoned the endeavour for a walk about town and a bit of lunch instead! Below are the trio advisor pictures in a ‘look what you could have won’ kind of thing.

We wandered around the town, enjoying all the beautiful kinds of architecture and the shady trees, the smells from the street vendors cooking up today’s snacks and just generally people watching.

We happened across a really sweet looking cafe so popped in for some brunch which turned out to be delicious – I had a passion fruit smoothie which they make with water rather than milk here so it’s super refreshing, and a thick piece of granary toast topped with guacamole, serrano ham, tomatoes and balsamic dressing. I would say it wasn’t terribly Mexican but it was made in a Mexican cafe in a Mexican town by a Mexican person in Mexico so…I think it’s fine!

There’s a famous library in town, the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, so we popped in to have a look. It’s completely stunning, it looks like something out of a Harry Potter movie.

It’s been there since 1773, is recognized by UNESCO for being the first and oldest public library in the America’s, and is on their ‘Memory of the World’ registrar. Plus it was free and only took about 10 minutes to look round. Perfect!

After we got back I decided to while away a few hours by the pool, so laid on a very wonky sun lounger in the shade and caught up on diaries and photo sorting. No preschoolers today, just some acoustic versions of famous songs pop playing, it was all terribly peaceful and civilised. Also – are you even on holiday if you don’t post a hot dogs legs photo…?

Some of the others arrived back from the ruins (general consensus was ‘meh’ so I’m glad I didn’t bother going) and the 4 of us girls decided to go for a twilight walk around town and grab some dinner. Meeting in reception a while later it appears 3 of us had got the ‘black and denim’ memo!

Walking past the cathedral we spotted a big group of people in some kind of traditional costumes, the women had on short lace veils and long velvet cloaks and the men had on long boots with ruffled white tops and hats with big bows at the back – and were toting bagpipes!

Lynsey is Scottish and was very excited by the presence of the pipes, so we followed them into the cathedral to see what was going on. After patiently waiting for half an hour we got a very depressing song and a bit of piping and decided that was probably enough of that! The cool air and the sit down was nice though.

We had a wander around the town, including down The Street of the Toads – it’s not the most romantic name is it – to check out the beautiful painted buildings all lit up and do a bit of shopping – I couldn’t resist this hand painted metal heart which I think captures the spirit of Mexico perfectly – and hopefully is crush proof in my luggage!

Other things spotted while out were an Irish pub (does anywhere not have an Irish pub?!), a lot of snack/dessert type places doing a roaring trade with the locals, the biggest bag of crisps I’ve ever seen and lots and lots of spicy sweets on sale – I can’t over stress how ubiquitous spicy things are here – it’s almost impossible to buy crisps that aren’t spicy and at least half of the confectionary on sale is coated in a sweet and spicy mix.

We tried some of the spicy sweets made of dried mango pulp covered with a vivid red spicy powder, which were delicious. I could totally be a convert – but only to the lower end of the spice arena, I’m still very much a novice in the chilli stakes!

We struggled a bit to find a nice looking restaurant that also had decent veggie choices for Lynsey, so ended up at the Italian place they had been to the night before. It was so pretty, bright turquoise woodwork and hundreds of red baubles hanging from the ceiling, with Elvis crooning over the stereo – they do love a bit of Elvis over here apparently. Adding to the famous male singers in situ was Rod Stewart apparently – have a look at the photo below!

We all four ordered pasta but the waiter returned to let us know there were only 3 portions left, so Lisa and I decided to share one and get a pizza too. We assumed this pasta to be homemade, hence running out – however. when it arrived it was most certainly out of a packet (there was a corner shop a few doors down, could someone have not popped out a grabbed a packet of spaghetti?!) and not only from a packet – from 3 packets…they had obviously used up the dregs of everything they had left but instead of giving each of us one type of pasta, they had mixed them all in so we all had spaghetti, penne and fusilli on the plate! Very odd but still tasty. Best thing was the sauces in the middle of the table – there was one with peanuts and sesame in garlic oil and another that I think was like a pesto with greens in it – all delicious and I’m pretty sure homemade.

Much excitement on our return to the hotel to find out the local volcano had erupted (this isn’t as dramatic as it sounds, it does it all the time) but todays ash was so bad the local airport cancelled all flights and even Mexico City Airport which is a couple of hours down the road had to cancel a bunch too. Thank goodness we’re on the bus for our transfer tomorrow rather than a plane!

Talking of tomorrow, it’s a 5 hour bus journey to Oaxaca leaving at 7.30am so exiting things yet to come, stay tuned 😉

Lots of love always xx