Day in Puebla

Sergio and I spent a lovely day in Puebla! We are staying in a great hotel, the Hotel Imperial, that I found for us at a very cheap price (hooray!). This morning, we enjoyed our free breakfast, and then set out to explore the town. We walked to the Zocalo, or the central plaza, and peeked inside the cathedral, which was just beautiful. Puebla is a very conservative, religious city, and it shows. The cathedral is beautiful and dark and baroque, and there were plenty of people inside praying when we visited. Outside, there are angels guarding the fence. It was lovely.

After the cathedral, we went to find a museum that I really wanted to see. It's a house where a bunch of revolutionaries were killed at the beginning of one of the Mexican Revolutions - I think it was the second one. They were given away, and the government came after them. I was especially interested in it, because it has a special room devoted to women revolutionaries! Unfortunately, when we found it, we found that it was closed for remodeling. So, that was disappointing. But there was still plenty to do....

We then went to the Ex-Convent of Santa Monica, which was a convent that went into hiding for something like 77 years after the government cracked down on religious institutions. The nuns kept on operating, and created a lot of their own religious art (some of which is quite creepy - such as the life-sized recreation of the Last Supper and a painting of a saint being fed simultaneously by blood spurting out of Jesus' side and milk spurting out of Mary's breast). We also saw the kitchen where the nuns invented chiles en nogada, a famous local dish, and a cell where a nun lived, sleeping on a wooden slab with a piece of wood for a pillow, with various tools for self-flagellation. It was all thoroughly disturbing, fascinating, and beautiful. We peeked through a window into the chapel, where mass was being said to an almost full congregation. On Thursday morning!

After that, we headed to lunch. I had chicken in mole poblano, which was invented in Puebla (poblano=from Puebla), which was delicious. Then we put some laundry in at the hotel and headed to the Museo Amparo, a museum of mostly pre-Hispanic art that was incredibly well-designed and fascinating. We explored the city a little more, finished the laundry, and then headed out for dinner just as it started to rain. Sergio had a craving for cheeseburgers, and we didn't want to go far since it was raining pretty hard, so we ended up dining at McDonald's. I had a "Junior Pak" (the equivalent of a Happy Meal).

We are having an early night tonight, as we are leaving for the long drive to Guadalajara in the morning. We are spending tomorrow night at a hotel in Tlaquepaque, which is run by our friend Alberto's partner. Alberto offered to let us stay there for free one night, and to take us out to dinner. I haven't seen him since he moved back to Mexico 5 or 6 years ago, so I am really excited to see him!