Valladolid was a very good stop, and one that we had somehow missed in the past. It has a nice small town vibe, along with a number of interesting local sites to visit, and it’s easily walkable. But now it’s time to take a cab to the train station at the edge of town for an early departure.
From Valladolid, the Tren Maya heads east following the main cross-Yucatán highway to a stop at the Cancún airport, before making a southerly turn down the coast along the Mayan Riviera. The Cancún airport is an obvious center pivot point for the train where passengers can have easy access to the classic colonial cities and ancient ruins of the interior, or to Tulum and the sandy beach towns arrayed down the coast toward Belize.
We soon pass into the state of Quintana Roo, where the independent Maya nation of Chan Santa Cruz was created after all the non-natives were driven out during the Caste War of 1847-1915. This portion of the Mayab lands still retains its proud Mayan heritage.
The train tracks are generally inland from the sea and the terrain continues to be flat and woody. We won’t visit Cancún because we live on a nice beach in México and don’t need to see another ‘Gringo paradise.’ But oddly enough we’ll soon be staying at a different version of the same thing, and it’s called Playa del Carmen.
Like the other shiny new Tren Maya stations we’ve seen, the one for Playa del Carmen is at the outside edge of town. But there’s a dedicated transit bus into the center, and it’s a quick ride to our hotel in the heart of things.
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There’s an almost-hidden entrance to our tropical-themed bed-sit, named Posada Mariposa Hotel Boutique, that’s wedged between other businesses. The interior is jungle-centric, with a riot of plants erupting from the first floor planter and searching for the light far above in the overstory. It’s a nice place, with a good bed and a friendly staff.
We’re on a street named Quinta Avenida, but called 5th Avenue, and it’s dedicated to the nutty touristic activities we came here for. As we recall from our previous visit, it’s heavily Gringo-laden, with plenty of bars to get a good nose-wet. Places like the Pinche Gringo bar, Señor Frog’s, and the Dirty Martini come to mind. And there’s an adequate number of Starbucks along the way so Gringos can pretend they’re still back in Omaha, but with a beach. Is it embarrassing to be here? Hell yes, it’s embarrassing! This crowded place is really the opposite of that small Mexican town feel back in Valladolid, or even Mérida. But this is a self-inflicted wound on our part, an ‘own-goal’ as they say in fútbol. We actually went out of our way to be here.
There’s a beachside beauty to it, when we get down to the water where the local fishing boats are still kept. And we can bypass some of the more ostentatious offerings, like the all-inclusive Wyndham Alltra – a place to spend more than $1,000 per night to avoid mingling with the common folk.
So what’s our actual lame excuse for even hanging out in this Gringo-ghetto-by-the-sea? Well, we really don’t always need to be totally pure in our wanderings. We can slack off now and then to enjoy the quirks of our fellow primates. There’s a Disneyland quality to it, but without entry passes costing hundreds of dollars per day – at least not yet. And so this is a sort of anthropological study of a hominid species in their borrowed habitat from which we hope to extrapolate the future of mankind. Or something like that….
After a long hot day the place comes alive at night with endless frosty drinks, a welcome comfort to the thirsty throngs. And there are many places to indulge in a local brew with a fútbol game, a good dinner under huge old trees, a spectral fire dancer, or a fine local rock band.
And of course, there’s ice cream. You don’t always need a second frosty margarita to top off a warm tropical evening by the sea when you have the luxury of fresh tasty ice cream. It’s a simple thing that just brings out the inner ten-year-old in most of us.
We pass a sign for the local Museo Frida Kahlo, and it’s a nice day to spring for tickets. We don’t expect a world-famous gallery of her work, but they’ve done a fine job, and it’s worth our time to be there. It’s a colorful homage to Frida, and they tell her story well. Her indomitable independence and wit comes through in her art and her words – and she was always immensely quotable, especially regarding her often-stormy marriage to Diego Rivera. Her mother described the relationship as, “a wedding between an elephant and a dove.”
Frida made the most of her brief time among us, and she died in 1954 at the age of 47. London’s Tate Modern considers her to be “one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century,” and is posting a major Frida show this year. And her painting named “El Sueño” broke records for a woman artist in 2025 on auction at Sotheby’s.
After a few days of wandering the same old Strip, we deviate to see if there’s anything appealing just inland. And that’s where we locate our favorite coffee shop in Playa. To get there requires ambling along several streets and a small park until we see a crowd hanging out at a semi-hidden doorway. We look up on the building to search out the sign, which reads “Choux Choux” – if you can make it out through the foliage. This is clearly our kind of place, where they let the coffee, the food, and the vibes do the talking. And advertising is optional.
There’s a time-worn guy sitting placidly near us and reading a time-worn book. It’s nice to see such a rare event these days. Carolyn restlessly waits for me to cut into the excellent breakfast we’ll be sharing. The almond croissant is to live joyously for (never understood “…to die for”), and there are local folks willing to rent you a cool apartment, lead you in meditation, or even read your soul!
¿Y qué más? As we say in these parts.
We happen to be in Playa del Carmen for the Super Bowl, and a nice Quebecois couple offered to share a table in a crowded bar. The game was good, but the half-time show was the biggest hit. Bad Bunny was in top form, in Spanish, and the local crowd loved it! We heard later there was some grumpy old guy in the US who complained, but maybe he forgot to take his meds.
While there, we took advantage of the Quebecer’s knowledge and asked for the real translation of Choux Choux. They explained that one meaning is ‘cabbage,’ but that in this case it’s actually an endearment more like ´Sweetheart’ or ‘Creampuff,’ or even ‘My Little Cabbage.’ So we decided we would take it, and next time we´ll ask that they add one of those gorgeous frosted choux choux in the display case to the bill!
In the morning we check out another good brekkie place at Chez Céline, and then we take a hike to the north end of 5th Ave. to see where the Gringo zone ends, and it does kind of dribble out where the coastal jungle is fenced off at a kind of wildlife area. And we see a ‘Hevy’ Chevy and a nice old red’ Vocho.’
Then we meander through back streets to find some of the local artistic community and get a feel for the actual Mexican part of Playa. There are some very good murals and some fun cartoony art pieces. Also some chickens and a duck are checking out the garbage, and a large charming version of a Matilda cartoon is making a political statement. The city also has an ‘adopt your corner’ program to encourage community involvement with the whole trash thing, and it’s probably a good idea for the rest of us.
A big sign tells us we can score a fancy condo with some sort of ocean view at the not-yet-built Portofino 28. Another sign says we can bag a recently murdered chicken for dinner.
We arrive back at the Cueva del Chango in the afternoon for a couple of frosty drinks rich in vitamin C, in the leafy shade of towering trees.
And yet, even with the discovery of a fine local coffee hangout, we’re ready to leave Playa after a few days. It’s time to catch that shuttle bus back to the train station and hit the rails again.
We’ll be heading for a place we’ve never managed to visit in the past, but have heard much about. We’ll be going south again now on the Tren Maya to a place called Bacalar – and we hope to see you there! — PRW
It was good to enjoy Mérida again after a decade away, yet now it’s time to move on. And from here it’s only a three-hour bus trip to Valladolid. Along the way we pass the turnoff to Chichén Itzá, but we’ve been there before and don’t want to deal with the crowds again this time.
As day folds into the afternoon we ride along through the flat landscape and dry woodlands of the Yucatán, At one point the highway crosses over the Tren Maya tracks below, and in a few days time we’ll be on that train again.
Valladolid was founded here in 1545 and named for the city that was Spain’s capital at one time. We arrive at a very nice place named Esencia that’s right on La Calzada de los Frailes, which is the main tourist street of the town. There’s more to this small city than just the Calzada, but this is the area where we’ll find most of the good coffee shops and restaurants.
Just across the alley from Esencia there’s La Mezcaleria Don Trejo, a relaxed open-air place that appears to be awaiting our visit, with cold margaritas de mezcal. That pleasant intro is followed by abundant helpings of good food. And what better way to welcome travelers to your fine city?
We emerge from a fine first dinner in town to enjoy a short evening’s walk down the Calzada, which goes to the old Convent ruins. And we’ll look forward to more exploration in the days to come.
We head back to our room at Esencia for a good night’s rest and a bright new day tomorrow.
The morning breaks bright and warm, and we stop at Conkafecito on La Calzada for a cup of Joe, along with something creative and delicious to eat. This cafe is committed to an organic approach, and will even share their used coffee grounds to help improve the soil in your garden.
The world has gotten on the coffeehouse bandwagon ever since the Ottomans introduced the idea to Europe while losing the Battle of Vienna in 1683. In the aftermath of the Battle, coffeehouse culture became one of the defining features of life in Vienna.
That humble bean has come a long way from its probable origins in the Abyssinian highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea, to its first reported use in the 15th century by Sufis in Yemen along the Red Sea. The word for coffee dates from 1582 with the Dutch version, koffie. They got it from the Ottoman word kahve, and the Turks cribbed it from the Arabic word qahwah, which meant ‘wine.’
Mexico currently ranks in the world’s top ten exporters of coffee, produced in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. We’ve traveled in Chiapas and Oaxaca, but never been to those coffee regions. Yet we have fond memories from Xalapa in Veracruz, where the rich scent from large rough bags of freshly-roasted coffee drifts through the streets. And it left an indelible impression on us both.
Cenotes are common in this part of the Yucatán and there are several ancient sinkholes right here in Valladolid. The most well-known is the Cenote Zací, which derives its name from the original Mayan name for the town, and it is only a few blocks off the Plaza. It’s an eerie place, of overgrown retaining walls and narrow walkways under towering trees.
The Yucatán Peninsula is composed largely of porous limestone. There are few rivers or lakes as the abundant rainwater mostly travels through an extensive eroded cave system lying well below the surface. Sinkholes emerge when a cave roof collapses to expose the water flowing deep beneath, and there are more than 6,000 of these cenotes in the Peninsula.
Swimming in cenotes is a popular activity, but this one looks less inviting than others. And that combined with the task of climbing all those steps with my new knee put the experience out of reach.
The Plaza is always the center of things in a Mexican town and we spent time there simply absorbing the energy of the community. And absorbing a good lunch.
The Casa de los Venados is an important site just off the Plaza. It’s a renovated mansion that contains a vast private collection of native art objects, presented as you might hope for in a sensitively restored private home.
If you’ve become somewhat museum-allergic after viewing countless hermetically-sealed displays in the past, then this place is for you. The owners spent considerable time and effort collecting some of the finest artistic work of the local people, and it’s presented in such a casual and refreshingly different manner that we expect the owners to return any moment. It’s really a memorable experience.
Night descends as we leave the art-filled Casa de los Venados to skirt the plaza, with the infamous Iglesia de San Servasio nicely backgrounded by the evening’s glow. The church was originally built in 1545 but was ordered destroyed in 1703 after the town’s mayor and a friend who sought shelter in the church were murdered by political rivals. The killers were executed, the church was demolished to atone for the atrocity, and it was rebuilt in 1705.
We take a different route back to Esencia through side streets, and we come across an inviting place called El Rincon de los Aluxes. (If you read our dispatch from Palenque, you may remember that we visited a jungle refuge named Aluxes there with many wild animals.) The jungle envelopes us nicely as we enter this quiet refuge to find a rustic niche for drinks and dinner. There’s a clay ‘Alux’ icon seated on a special perch overlooking the place to keep the peace and ward off evil spirits. The Aluxes are described as mischievous, invisible forest guardians.
We spend the next few days exploring more of the town, enjoying some of the local quirks you’ll find any in place where you’ll also find humans, and getting tickets for our next trip on the Tren Maya.
The Calzada takes us to a shady and colorful part of town, with some strange birds-nest type boxes on poles. It’s a chance to see the Templo de San Bernardino and what’s left of the old Convento. And it’s worth a visit to these cool colonnaded spaces to see their elaborately carved altar pieces.
We return later in the evening to experience the cool nighttime, and to see some kind of light show that we saw advertised. And that’s when we realize what those ‘birds-nest boxes’ are all about, as they cast shifting and colorful lighting across the old buildings. We’ve seen such displays in other places and it’s an excellent way to tell a story that showcases some of the heritage of a city.
After the show we head back up the Calzada for our final night in town, and one last really nice dinner at a place called Finisterra. They artfully use the walls, the plants, and the landscape to create a space that’s quiet and sheltered, yet open to the evening. And the openness lends a gentle acoustic quality to complete the experience.
We’re feeling flush so we add a bit of good cognac to top off a fine last evening in quaint Valladolid. And we’re lucky that Mexico gives us the opportunity to enjoy such a luxury at a reasonable cost.
We’ll be leaving Valladolid on the morning train, and hope you’ll join us for our next stop, at Playa del Carmen. — PRW
We had a fine revisit to the jungle city of Palenque, and now it’s time to board the new Tren Maya to see what all the hype and the fuss are about. Traveling by train is comfortable and safe and more energy efficient than almost anything else, except walking or riding a bike. And it just seems like a more responsible choice of transport.
Our well-traveled rolling bags are zipped and ready, as we’re waiting for the next train to leave the station. The Palenque Estación is where the Tren Maya begins before it makes a broad loop around the entire Yucatán Peninsula. And maybe someday they’ll connect this spot to a larger train system throughout the country. But we’ll travel most of the current route before departing from the Chetumal airport on the border with Belize. And in the process we’ll experience most of the geography that the Yucatán has to offer.
Once aboard, there are plenty of seats available, as we had expected in mid-January after the big tourist season. It’s a well-appointed train, with wide and comfortable seating, ample plugs for recharging our devices, clean restrooms, and a snack bar with delivery service bringing hot meals directly to your seat.
We’re heading to Mérida, at the NW corner of the Yucatán Peninsula. This will be the longest leg of our trip, and the stations we pass along the way are impressively clean and modern. We settle in for a relaxing trip, at speeds up to 140km/h (87 mph) through vast jungle scenery, while passing farms and villages and towns, with no concerns about traffic.
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About train travel:
Trains leave only a light energy footprint upon the ground, surpassed only by walking and bicycles. And once the tracks have been laid there’s little deviation from the pathway, unlike roads that open untouched wilderness areas to random and damaging car travel. So we prefer traveling by train whenever possible and want to support this effort by Mexico to invest in clean transportation for future generations.
Yet the Tren Maya has been a controversial project, and we hope to get a better understanding of those issues. Among many concerns have been the destruction of priceless ancient Mayan sites, and the damage to fragile cenotes and habitats along the way. Yet as we’re riding along in comfort there seems to be no end of roads that have already been plowed through this jungle over the past centuries. Farm houses and large fields and entire towns have been built here. I realize this is a place where it’s nigh on impossible to turn a stone without disrupting an ancient artifact, and I believe it’s important not to destroy ancient heritage sites. But there’s already so much prior damage visible just outside my window that it seems maybe the problem has been overblown a bit?
Later, we’ll also see reports of subsidence and structural issues that have occurred along some elevated stretches of the tracks. And so, like most human endeavors, the Tren Maya will likely be an ongoing project.
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Our train ride began at Palenque in the state of Chiapas, then passed through the state of Campeche, and into the state of Yucatán to the old colonial town of Mérida. It’s another place we haven’t visited in about a decade, and where we had other fond memories. Carolyn found us a good place to stay called El Misión de Fray Diego, that’s only a couple of blocks from the Plaza Grande. Soon we’re there, and enjoying cold margaritas over a good dinner.
It’s a nice classical hotel, arrayed around a central court and with little noise from the street outside. There’s a ‘Tú y Yo’ seat in the courtyard, complete with explanation, and the bathroom faucet has ceramic handles indicating C for caliente, and F for frio. It’s a nice visit to Old México.
After a restful night, our first morning back in Mérida begins at a cheerful coffee shop named Meriland, and we’ll return here often over the next few days. And Carolyn finds a colorful stairway to pose wearing a hat that goes well with a beautiful top she bought in Palenque.
It’s a bright morning for a good walk-around, to a restful small park near a church where people are enjoying the day, and a young couple is having wedding photos taken.
There are metal-art floral displays in a walkway near the tree-shaded Plaza, and then a colorful parade passes by.
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The henequen boom:
Mérida (pop: 900,000) has been wealthy in the past. Old classical mansions along the Paseo de Montejo and smaller ones in central colonial Mérida show the influence of money from the vast henequen farms that used to surround the city, a wealth that was often derived from the indebted labor of the native population. Henequen and sisal are fibers from the long leaves of the agave plant and were produced by ancient Mayan cultures for making twine, rope, and fabrics, and later there was a great demand for items from packaging twine and coffee bags to heavy ship hawsers. The industry expanded rapidly in the 19th century and produced a class of rich plantation owners, which led to the Caste War (1847-1915), a revolt by the indigenous people of the Yucatán. After reaching its peak in 1916 the henequen industry collapsed, when faced with the invention of nylon rope and other synthetic fibers. In recent years Forbes Magazine has ranked Mérida as one of the best Mexican cities to live in, and today these old homes are sought after by retirees willing to invest in their renovation.
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After the tropical luxury of a good afternoon nap, we emerge from our hotel room into a balmy evening in search of fine food. And Mérida abounds in such delights.
The evening beckons us onward to explore more of what the city offers after the heat of the day. It’s an artistic place, where random art pops up in odd places, and people show up in their most colorful Caribbean evening wear. There’s a grand drumming performance underway at the Plaza Grande, and people get their pictures taken at the big MERIDA sign on the plaza. These large signs are found in towns all over the country and, and they´re popular among visitors.
And a small trash truck is making the rounds to keep everything tidy as the evening progresses. We might like to ignore such aspects of reality, but maintenance really is important.
Music is an important part of life when you’re this close to the rhythms of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, and the following day we search out the city’s big Palacio de la Música. It’s nearby down a walkway that’s now called the Pasaje de las Sufragistas in honor of four women who were elected to the local legislature in 1923, before Mexican women had the right to vote. The slogan near the bottom reads, “Now we are not invisible.”
The Palacio de la Música, the National Center of Mexican Music, is an impressive place with the latest tech to make sure the history of the music is well-remembered.
We’re just in time to enjoy a talented local group in concert, and these concerts are scheduled regularly by the museum.
This is the kind of place where it’s easy to get lost in the music and dig into the deep history of it. There are so many different threads and connections to follow. The old handmade instruments on display capture the eternal human need to create some sort of camaraderie around a campfire, or in the village square. And you can sit beneath a kind of ‘music halo’ that surrounds you as if you’re actually in a concert hall.
There’s a wall-sized timeline of Mexican music that includes the very first mariachi music ever recorded, in 1905 by El Mariachi Coculense and sponsored by General Porfirio Díaz.
According to Latino Music Café,
“The Coculense Quartet was composed of four musicians from the town of Cocula in Jalisco, Mexico. There were two violins, a base guitar called a guitarrón, and a small guitar called a vihuela that was smaller than a normal guitar. The vihuela sounds like a tenor guitar. Three of the five strings are tuned higher than a guitar to give a sharper tone. Note that they had no trumpets, which today we associate with the sound of mariachis”
The 1908 version of that recording is available on Smithsonian Folkways, and it’s a much simpler version than the rich mariachi music we hear these days.
After several hours in the Palacio de la Música, it’s time for a cold refresher. It’s mid-afternoon and probably a bit early to go haunt the DeLorean Bar, that’s just across the alleyway. We opt instead for a pair of frosty limonadas at the Café Nidum, with their fetching slogan reading, “Coffee, yes. You, maybe.” And then it’s time again for another quiet afternoon siesta during the heat of the day.
We awaken into a fine and balmy tropical evening, and take to the colorful streets of Mérida once again, passing a beautiful horse-drawn carriage that sparkles in the evening. And there’s an enticing balcony that’s awaiting us at a restaurant named Le Makech – perched right over the local Burger King.
And it’s a fine perch indeed, a place where we can relax to enjoy plenty of good food and icy drinks as the world passes by just below us.
After a fine dinner we head back to the Plaza Grande, where there’s often something good about to happen. Couples enjoy the ’Tu y Yo’ chairs, which are something of a local icon. A facade is brilliantly lit. And the music of a big band beckons us to the foot of the Palacio Municipal, where crowds of revelers are dancing the night away. This is one of the events that we both recall fondly from a decade ago, when we were some of the few gringos in town and we joined in the revelry.
Time passes so quickly, as we awaken on our last full day in town and go first to the local ADO bus station for tickets to nearby Valladolid. The bus station is only a few blocks away and easy to roll our bags to, while the train station is out at the edge of town. Also, it’s been a while since we’ve been on those good ADO buses, and we opt for an another bit of nostalgia.
With our ADO bus tickets taken care of, we pass the Vito Corleone restaurant on our way to the Plaza, where a group of bicyclists have gathered to enjoy the morning, and an old ‘Gua Gua’ bus passes us by. Carolyn recalls the colorful Gua Guas (named for the ‘gua gua’ sound of their horns) in Puerto Rico when she lived there in the 1960s. Sadly they’re gone now, but at least there’s a guy in Mérida who saved one for the nostalgia buffs among us.
And for those with an intense interest in the huge asteroid that struck the Yucatan 66 million years ago and killed all the dinosaurs, it left a crater here that’s about 120 miles in diameter. And today, Mérida sits almost in the middle of the Chicxulub crater. Yet a few million years after the event, it’s hard to see the evidence.
We’re off to the Mercado Lucas de Galvez to put a splash of color into the morning. We can always count on a good Mexican market, filled with fruit and vegetables and chiles, to be a colorful encounter. I pause to watch a skillful cobbler making another pair of sandals to add to his already-ample collection. And we take a break from the heat with a cold drink under a shade structure, as a young jokester attempts to entertain the crowd. He’s mostly ignored, but he entertains us and we hand him a ten peso coin. At least he’s out working to make a buck, and he adds some local spirit to a hot day.
The Teatro Armando Manzanero is only half a block from the Plaza, and we recall him performing at Fiestas de Pitíc in Hermosillo. He was born near Mérida and became a prolific song writer and performer. He was a kind of a beloved Mexican Tony Bennett, and the audience sang along with him. His songs have been performed by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, Andrea Bocelli, Christina Aguilera and others. He was best known for songs like “Somos Novios,” which became a hit in English in 1970 as, “It’s Impossible.”
Sadly, he passed away in 2020 from the COVID virus at the age of 85, and his ashes were returned to Mérida. It would have been wonderful to see him performing here at the Teatro Armando Manzanero and that won’t happen now. (We’ll also miss a performance of “Por que los Hombres Aman a las Cabronas,” but we probably wouldn’t have gotten all the slang and inside jokes!) I’m glad I got a few pictures of Manzanero when I could, at the Fiestas de Pitíc.
As evening draws nigh, we find a sort of refuge at Jurgen’s La Bierhaus. It may be an odd place to find here in the Yucatán, but a tall frosty bier and a platter of brats on sauerkraut and potatoes just seems like a really good idea on a warm tropical night. And the desserts are another pleasant surprise.
Later, the shop windows beckon in the nighttime with fine clothing that’s well-suited for a hot tropical evening, if I didn’t already have a rack of guayaberas in the closet. A horse stands patiently waiting for the next carriage-load of tourists. And we pass the well-lit Palacio Municipal on our way back to the hotel for a final night of rest before heading onward in the morning.
We’ll be catching an ADO bus to Valladolid next, a place we’ve missed seeing until now. So be sure to join us there next!— PRW
“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” -Susan Sontag
It was a good plan. We’d avoid the cold winds of Kino Bay in mid-January and we’d enjoy a ride on the new Tren Maya in the warm lands of Chiapas, Quintana Rio, and Yucatán. It would be during the low season after the year-end holidays so we’d see smaller crowds, things might be cheaper, and we’d leave our bulky warm clothes behind. Retirement years are a limited quantity and it’s important to invest them wisely.
We began the usual way, as we caught the Costa bus for Hermosillo. We avoid worrying about whether we’ll catch the plane by spending a night in town beforehand and enjoying a nice dinner. It’s like a mini-vacation before heading to the airport.
There was a plane change in Mexico City, and then we drifted down through a cloudy sky toward the fertile green jungle lands around Palenque, in the state of Chiapas. We had been here about ten years ago, staying in some fun and funky lodgings, with cherished memories of warm days and cool evenings. And there were howler monkeys to serenade us in the nighttime. It was a tropical paradise that we wanted to revisit, and an opportunity to check out the new Tren Maya gave us the right excuse, although it would be a bit rainier and chillier than we’d planned for.
Palenque has only a small airport, so we landed at nearby Villahermosa and took the local ADO shuttle that hauls folks like us to the city of well-known Mayan ruins hidden in the jungle.
Carolyn booked us into an exotic-looking place called the Hotel Villa Mercedes Palenque. The towering entry hall includes a friendly parrot that says ‘Hola’ every time we walk past. The grounds are well-kept, and there are sturdy hammocks just outside our door is case we want to stay close to nature.
The bed is comfy, with a window looking right out into the greenery. And the breakfasts and dinners are quite good.
The Villa Mercedes is an extensive facility, as it wanders along pathways back into the jungle. There’s a pool with a bar right near our room, and there’s a second pool farther along in the forest with bar-side seating for thirsty guests.
And there are some cute and perky agoutis wandering about the grounds. These native rodents are described scientifically as ‘diurnal and crepuscular frugivores,’ which means they hang out during the daylight and twilight hours and eat fruit.
Right near the hotel there’s a wildlife center called Aluxes. We didn’t want to make a late start touring the ruins, so we decided to check out this eco-center instead. The place is well-planned, with a naturalistic layout, and houses a wide range of animals who live in the local jungles. It was a good start to our visit, with plenty of flowering plants by the entryway and butterflies in abundance. A pair of scarlet macaws nesting in an old dead palm eyed us with curiosity.
The sunny entryway soon led to dense jungle cover sheltering a variety of animal habitats. It’s a peaceful place to spend an afternoon, with the calls of animals echoing through the woods, and far from the sounds of civilization.
The name of Aluxes comes from the elusive Mayan sprites and spirits that inhabit these lands of Mayab. But they can also be mischievous, so we keep our voices low in this jungle cathedral to avoid provoking them. The Aluxes facility is dedicated to restoring the native habitat and the wildlife, and as part of their educational mission there are ample bilingual signs (with species names in four languages) to explain what we find along the way.
After we got back from a good afternoon walk at Aluxes, Carolyn was inspired to draw a few sketches as she relaxed by the pool before dinner.
On the way to Aluxes we’d noticed a restaurant named Bajlum that features “Pre-Hispanic Fusion Food,” and the sign lists some of the local animals that we could now enjoy on a plate for dinner. It’s what people ate around here for thousands of years before they were ‘civilized’ by the kindly Spaniards.
And aren’t we a picky lot; we eat certain kinds of animals while we draw firm lines to exclude others! For public health reasons, we should allow hunters to harvest more of the deer over-population and then sell that meat on the open market, since we’ve annihilated so many of the predators that used to keep things in balance. But I don’t want to kill off Bambi’s daddy myself, so enough with the sermonizing.
As night fell across the jungle, we were ready to indulge in the ancient Mayan lifestyle – especially if it came with a cold mezcal margarita on the side! So we followed the pathway toward a sweet little open-air dining spot and studied the menu, which includes turkey, quail, pheasant, deer, rabbit, and wild boar. But at least we weren’t offered monkeys, parrots, snakes, crocodiles, turtles, or jaguars! I chose the wild boar, Carolyn got the crema de la casa, and we shared our meals. It was delicious.
On the following morning it was time to revisit the famous ruins which are about 5km uphill from our hotel, so we took a local combi to the entryway. It’s been awhile since our last visit, and the ruins at Palenque are still as fascinating as they were back then. This is the essential ruins-in-a-jungle experience in the Yucatán. You get the impression that if the grounds crew took a few days off, the jungle might engulf it all again. In fact, there are back trails that are more primitive and where you can still get that amazing experience.
The ruins are about four times older than the US, and date from about 226 BC to 799 AD. And now there are Mayan craftspeople selling wares along the pathway, probably similar to the way people lived here during Palenque’s Classical era. These elaborate palaces were abandoned sometime after the year 800 AD, and the area was sparsely populated when the Spanish arrived in the 1520s. The town of Palenque was founded in 1567, and the ruins were not re-discovered for another 200 years after that. And for me, the mystery of this hidden city in the jungle makes the ruins at Palenque one of the more fascinating sites throughout the area.
We like to get our outbound arrangements taken care of early, so the next day we take a taxi ride across town to get tickets at the brand new Tren Maya station. And it’s a more imposing structure than we had expected. The Mexican government is seriously pushing this new rail connection between all the major tourism areas of the Yucatán, and every village along the way. We enjoy travel by train and will be looking forward to boarding this new one in just a few days.
With Tren Maya tickets now in our pockets, we have the taxi driver drop us off in the town of Palenque itself for a look around. It’s a rainy day and the town is mostly uninteresting; but the forested Avenida la Cañada, branching off the main road at the big roundabout, looks like the right place for good drink and dining. We duck out of a downpour into the open-air Cafe Jade for hot bowls of soup as the rain pounds on the palapa roof overhead.
We sign on for a day trip deep into the dense Lacandón jungle, and we’ll finally visit the beautiful falls at Misol Ha and Agua Azul that we’ve heard much about in the past. The narrow road follows a curving landscape through tiny villages, and the bus has a swaying motion that seems in rhythm with the ancient towering forest around us. The quiet lifestyle, and the wilderness that shelters it, seem endless.
Then we come upon an army of huge trucks and heavy machinery slashing through these ancient hills in a massive road-building project that cuts a new route directly through the forest. This is a major new highway that, after 20 years of delays, will connect Palenque and the new Tren Maya station more directly to San Cristobal de las Casas. There are still protests against this new highway from traditional villagers, and allegations that the recent vote of approval was rigged. But this is clearly a major project, and the sudden industrial brutality of it brings us back from our fantasies of a vast and hidden tropical redoubt, and into the realities of modern life.
This new road is part of a larger plan by the Mexican government to connect important archeological sites throughout the Yucatán and bring economic prosperity to these southern states. According to the Chiapas state government site, it will remain a mostly two-lane road, but straighter and wider, with an extra truck lane on long uphill grades and runouts to allow for brake failures on the downgrades. It is expected to reduce travel time between Palenque and San Cristobal by several hours, and provide access to villages along the way. According to reports, there is support among tourism business interests, and although funding for the complete project still appears to be unclear, it’s now well underway.
We leave the butchered landscape behind, returning to the sanctity of the jungle and the tall lacy falls at Misol Ha. And it’s a beautiful sight as it spills into a large pool in the jungle. There’s a tenuous pathway for getting closer to the falls, but it seems an ill-advised challenge for my recently-acquired knee replacement. So I stay behind to avoid that extra joy of being drenched behind the falls. I’ll just absorb the view from across the river.
Then we’re off to our next stop, a tourist village at the base of the wide cascading waters of Agua Azul. This is where many other small tour buses from Tulum and San Cristobal and Palenque converge daily with their tourist loads for a lunch break and a visit to the falls. The sound of water tumbling down the rocks is a dramatic backdrop to the quiet tourist street that ends right at its base.
On our last night we find a pair of Brits at the hotel to wander around town with us for some dinner. It’s a fine evening and we make a late return to the Villa Mercedes.
And in the morning we’ll finally board the new Tren Maya that we came here to experience, as we make our way to Mérida. See you there. — PRW
The summer of 2025 has been good and we’ve covered a lot of ground by bus to so many interesting corners of Mexico. It’s been a memorable excursion so far and now we’re ready to wrap it up with a return visit to the nation’s dynamic capital of Mexico City. And maybe we’ll have a nice lunch somewhere in the city with our old friend Alicia. We haven’t seen her in a while, and none of us are getting younger.
So it’s time to leave the magical alleyways of Guanajuato behind, and board a comfortable ETN bus for the 3-hour trip to Mexico City. We could catch a plane from the nearby airport in León, but it wouldn’t be any faster, the seats would be more cramped than this nice bus, and it would cost a lot more. And besides, we want to see what’s really happening on the ground along this route to Mexico’s famous capital city. This is a country that is seriously on the move, and skipping high over it all would give us a distorted view of things.
This is a nice Clase Ejecutivo double-decker bus with only three seats across, so everyone has extra room and two private armrests. We went to the station a few days early and reserved two seats on the second level just above the driver to get the broadest view possible, and now we’re well settled in for the ride.
Mexico has some good highways, and the landscape near the capital city is generally higher and greener than the deserts we traveled through from Monterrey south to Saltillo, and then further south to San Luis Potosí. Frequent signs along the highway here in the State of Guanajuato extoll the importance of a healthy lifestyle, which includes getting the kids new notebooks and backpacks for school. One reads “Peace is a seed that we plant at home.” Another sign mentions “The last tree” and says, “Climate change is no lie.” And yet another sign encourages businesspeople to get certified as a “Clean Business.”
Somebody in a white pickup truck seems to have taken a curve at high speed and has managed to end up in the ditch. Big white pickup trucks often seem to be in some kind of hurry here in Mexico.
We pass a large refinery flaming off the methane gas that they should be conserving for later use, so it’s apparent that the country still needs to work on becoming more energy efficient. But a line of tall wind turbines on a hill crest shows that things are heading in the right direction.
The misty mountains of central Mexico pass by our windows, and someone is selling ‘artisanal ice cream’ beside the highway.
Soon we’re at the outskirts of CDMX, where a new train connection to Querétaro is under construction. A cluster of overhead signs reminds us that the sprawling city ahead is really a collection of ancient native towns and villages. A long red electric MetroBus occupies a dedicated lane and whisks people quickly to their jobs. And some strong young men are performing at a traffic light for tips. Alas, the bus windows are sealed and we can’t drop a ten-peso coin into their cup, but we’ll find other opportunities as we enter the big city.
We arrive soon at the city’s large and modern Estación del Norte, and then we get a Taxi Seguro for a quick ride to our accommodations in the leafy Condesa district.
Yet when we get to the place where we’d booked an apartment, we’re not on the guardia’s list. After a few phone calls, to the apartment owners, etc, it’s clear that we’re been had. At least sort of. It was clearly some kind of scam – or something like that. We’re not really sure.
So there’s no room for us, but we’re not actually out any money. It’s just weird. What kind of scam doesn’t cheat us out of money? We still don’t know what happened, but it was approaching evening, it was raining, and we had to find some other place to stay.
We had wanted to rent a little apartment so we’d have a kitchen, but that was not to be. So we found a room at the modernista Hotel Circulo instead, and it all turned out very well. There appeared to be only three rooms per floor and we were several floors up, with a good view into the neighborhood and no excess ground-floor noise issues.
The hotel has an open-air bar and breakfast area on the second floor that looks right into the neighborhood trees, and the birds. And the breakfast buffet is excellent.
We’re staying in the Condesa district, which has become our favorite part of this world-class city. It’s good to be wandering again on that tree-lined walkway down the center of Avenida Amsterdam. And sharing it with all the walkers and the runners.
Avenida Amsterdam is a large leafy oval that used to be a horse racing track long ago. The verdant Parque México, a fine place for long walks, is just a block away inside the oval, with a bust of Einstein and his famous formula of E=MC2 in the flower bed in front of him. It’s also where you can watch people trying out their latest rad dance moves – before they dare go on stage. And this is the season when the city’s famous jacaranda trees drop their purple blossoms in carpets along the streets.
The surrounding area is filled with interesting shops and vendors and there are so many really good places to enjoy a fine dinner. This is one of the world’s great neighborhoods.
We won’t be able to ignore the dogs of the Condesa, taking regular walks with their humans. For many of the others, a professional dog-walker appears at the door each morning, and they’re heading to a fenced-off playground in Parque México. That’s where they leave their leashes behind to hang out with friends. It’s a special daily occasion in ‘dog world.’
As for living ‘a dog’s life,’ that doesn’t seem to apply to the CDMX mutts who get pampered and live a pretty sweet existence.
Yet some of these well-loved curs still manage to get lost, like ‘Marley’ in this ad posted on a light pole. Hope they can bring poor Marley home again soon. And some of the neighbors ask for a bit of consideration among those numerous dog owners.
There is so much to see along the streets of CDMX that going off for a sort of long ‘lost-wander’ can be very rewarding. You might just end up finding that part of yourself that you’ve noticed has been missing lately – maybe you’ll even find it among the mural of famous party girls happily hoisting their drinks, and named Mona Lisa, Frida, the Pearl Earring Girl, and The Girl on the Half Shell (re: Joan Baez in “Diamonds and Rust”).
A long day like that can build up a healthy appetite, and so a stopover at Patagonia, a neighborhood joint that specializes in large portions of delicious Argentine food, would be well-deserved.
And after a hearty dinner you’re lucky that the hotel is only a block away, since it’s pouring down rain outside! Try to think of the rainy season as ‘romantic.’
And when you finally return to your lodging after a long day of exploring the Condesa neighborhood, you might just relax with a bottle of good mezcal before bedtime.
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When morning breaks there’s always a good coffee shop just a few blocks away, no matter which direction we walk. One of our favorites is El Péndulo, a ‘cafebrería’ where the coffee is rich, the food is excellent, and the walls are lined with a good selection of books for sale. Many residents of Mexico City are serious readers, and that gives this city a special kind of world-class excellence. El Péndulo is a fine place to settle in over a rich cup of Joe and a good book to kick-start the morning.
So after a fine brekkie we take the city’s efficient Metro (one of the world’s largest) to Chapultepec Park and emerge onto broad tree-lined Avenida del la Reforma. From here we’re just a short walk to the park entrance and the lakeside Porrúa bookstore, another place that also dispenses rich coffee and good lunch munchies. It’s a pleasure to hang out over coffee, watching herons fishing the shore while humans paddle by.
This sprawling and leafy park is one of the city’s many pulmones, or ‘lungs’ to help counteract the pollution. It’s also the home to several important museums, and today we’re heading past photo displays and vendors to the Museo de Arte Moderno to see what’s on the walls lately.
This is a modernist museum-in-the-round of several floors with views radiating out into the surrounding sculpture gardens. And there’s some compelling stuff inside.
One of the main events here is surely the famous and troubling “Las Dos Fridas” (1939) by Frida Kahlo. Art historians have noted that the bicultural depiction of a European Frida on the left in Victorian dress, and the native Mexican Frida in Tehuana dress on the right show Frida’s own bicultural background – her father was a German immigrant and her mother was a Mexican woman. And the blood spilling down her white victorian dress is in stark contrast to the strong Tehuana side of her heritage. At any rate Frida’s work always gives us much to consider.
The woodland sculpture garden just outside is filled with large and compelling pieces. It’s an excellent place for an afternoon stroll. The local squirrels might well agree, especially if you’re having a proper lunch at the outdoor cafe and you might be willing to share a bit of artisanal crust.
We finally leave the park at the eastern entrance, festooned with ’shroom sculptures, that takes us back into the center of the city. It’s a nice evening for a walk through the streets and interesting neighborhoods of CDMX.
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We’ll be stopping off at a new bistro called “Baldio,” that looks to be one of the city’s more interesting eateries these days. This is a place where they recycle and compost everything that’s not consumed. It’s a big task to figure all that out, but they appear to have done it. And we have found that a commitment to making the world a better place is now common in Mexico.
Baldio is hidden on a quiet street in a gorgeous plant-filled space, the hipster crew is fun to deal with, the cocktails are delicious, and the food is superb.
And don’t get me started on the desserts. Well ok, you probably better let me rave on the chocolate amazement that we ended up sharing. And it was complemented nicely with a glass of rich Mexican red wine – one of my all-time favorite dessert combos! It was a fine end to an excellent dinner.
We leave Baldio as the evening spreads out upon the sky. We enjoy a fine walk back to the Hotel Circulo, and we pass a sweet heart-shaped repair in the sidewalk.
It’s been a good long day, and a gentle evening like this reminds us that CDMX is truly a world-class city. In many ways it’s like visiting Paris, or Rome, or London – but a lot cheaper. And we won’t even bother to visit any of the high-roller districts this time, like Polanco or Santa Fe.
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We’ve had a quiet rest as the morning sun breaks anew. And now we’re off for another good long walk around the city, starting with another good coffee shop called Malcriado, on a quiet side street a few blocks away from the busy scene along Avenida Amsterdam. It’s the kind of place that’s frequented by young Mexican residents and professionals and it’s helpful to know some Spanish here, but it’s not required as so many educated young people now have a reasonable knowledge of the language that has become the lingua franca of the world.
I order an avotoast and coffee while Carolyn has a fruit bowl with berries, as we settle in to an old parking spot that’s carved from the street by potted plants. I bought myself a gorra with Malcriado (spoiled brat) proudly stitched across the brow, but I lost it somewhere later in Albuquerque. And now, getting another one sounds like a good enough reason to plan a return to CDMX.
So we’re fortified and ready for a brisk walk toward the National Art Museum, which is near the impressive Palacio de Bellas Artes. The Ballet Folclorico is held here and it’s one of the main events in CDMX. We’ll look forward to being part of that excitement again someday, but not on this visit.
After a good long morning walk we’ve worked up another healthy appetite, so we stop off to share a sandwich at Sanborn’s famous lunch counter in the colorful tile-covered Casa de los Azulejos.
From Sanborn’s the Museo Nacional de Arte is only one more block away. There are always some amazing works of art on display in this old classical building as we can see from the long banner hanging outside. And sometimes there are protest banners hanging there too! Protests and their banners are a common feature of life in Mexico City.
We pause for a few moments as the museum’s classical stone stairway is being used for a dramatic photo shoot. The model’s bright red dress is a striking contrast to the grey stones and the brass stairway finial, and it’s another piece of the artful daily Mexican experience.
The first high-ceilinged room we encounter looks like a scene from a surrealist film, with people lying about on the floor. But they may be art students trying to get the best view of the intricate allegorical mural that’s high overhead.
Today’s main exhibit features the revolutionary work of Germán List Arzubide. He lived a long and fruitful life, producing poetry and illustrations for various protest causes going back to those lean years of angry masses during The Depression. He died at the age of 100, still railing about injustice with his fist in the air.
There was a tremendous amount of excellent graphic art produced during those starvation years, and those of us who were born after the terrible years that our ancestors survived in the 1930s may often remain blissfully unaware of those tragic realities of human existence.
Adolfo Mexiac was yet another of the country’s many gifted graphic artists who represented the struggles of the common person, and the grief they endured in those lean years. His famous work protesting the CIA’s 1954 overthrow of the Árbenz government in Guatemala featured a chained person with a lock labeled “USA,” and demanded ‘Liberty of Expression.’ It was an important statement, although it was controversial in Mexico. He died in 2019 at the age of 92.
Among other offerings there’s an ode to Pulque (1826) by Lejarza: “Give me the flavorful liquor of incomparable taste that the Indios attribute to the Mexican agave.”
A highly-detailed painting depicts the capture of Cuauhtemoc on Lago Texcoco, with the snow-capped volcano Popocatepetl towering in the background. The last Emperor of the Aztecs, who was left with the hopeless task of maintaining resistance against the invading Spaniards after the failures of Moctezuma, would soon be tortured and murdered by the conqueror Cortez.
There’s an impressive grouping of sculptures and related paintings, including a portrayal of Socrates’ last words to his followers.
The trial of Socrates occurred after the Athenians were defeated by the Spartans and endured the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. He was tried for ‘impiety,’ largely for questioning the existence of gods, and especially the gods of Athens. It is said that after receiving his death sentence, in 399BCE at the age of 71, he spent his last hours with his followers discussing the nature of death and of the possibility of an afterlife. He has been quoted as saying, “I know that I know nothing” and “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
The Museo National de Arte is filled with some of the more important works of Diego Rivera, Dr Atl, Saturnino Herrán, Pablo O’Higgins, and so many more than we can discuss here. While the Louvre and other museums are more famous, a well-educated person should also be acquainted with the many gifted artists of Mexico and other parts of Latin America.
After a good long walk back to our hotel we’ve built up another healthy appetite, and from our balcony we can see a crowded place called the Lagerbar Hércules. It’s brightly-lit and beckoning on a street corner just below, and the very idea of tall frosty lagers suddenly appeals, especially with a big plate of brats and papas. Or wurst und kartoffeln, if we’re being properly German. But in any language it’s delicious, and we’ll find our way back here a few more times before we leave. It’s another place that makes Mexico City a world-class cosmopolitan attraction.
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Morning breaks again, and we find ourselves at Emmer for some fresh brew. It’s another fine coffee shop along verdant Avenida Amsterdam, and a quick glance at the display case tells us we’ll need some of those enticing brekkie bites.
As we’re hanging out over coffee we watch the quotidian life of the city pass us by. And that includes those guys who keep the streets clean every morning, using palm frond brooms and hand carts that become heavily loaded with all the recyclables nicely sorted.
Then a guy comes jogging along with a hand bell and alerts the neighborhood to put out their garbage and recycling. It’s a good system that doesn’t clutter the streets with bulging trash bags just waiting for the dogs to spread around.
Soon a big garbage truck arrives right beside us, and it’s fascinating to watch the crew separate everything into bigger bags, while another guy stashes the folded cardboard onto a rack under the truck. It’s an efficient way to recycle as much as possible while they employ some street guys to keep things tidy. Most US cities could learn a lot from a visit to CDMX.
Then we’re off for another long walk around the neighborhood, and soon we find the Art Haus. There’s a full range of art lessons available in this place where you can improve your artistic technique – over frequent breaks at the Art Bar. Sounds like a good way to maximize your next MX City escape!
There are posters plastered on walls and light posts throughout the neighborhood, some that have weathered into pieces of street art. There’s an ad for a ‘Hardcore’ Art and Book Fair, and another poster warns against a ‘sexual abuser’ named Gabriel Escaffi, “Who might be your neighbor!”
In this crowded central part of the city warnings are posted against parking in front of a person’s driveway. One of them reads, “Tires punctured for free.” And another says “You respect my entryway, and I’ll respect your car.” The message is clear.
The evening turns rainy just as we get back to the hotel, and we detour into the dry doorway of a spot called Caracól de Mar. That intriguing wide-window view into the second floor dining area has caught our attention over the past few days and this seems like a good evening to try the place out.
The food and drink are excellent, as befits such an enticing place. We’re in no rush to leave so we relax into the evening as the rainfall rattles against the large windows. It’s been a good day and we’re enjoying the evening although we’ll probably get drenched after we leave. But we’re close enough to the hotel that we don’t really care – the idea of getting thoroughly wet even sounds nicely romantic. And I think there’s a bit of that good mezcal still waiting in our room to warm us up.
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Friday is market day and we’re awakened by the sound of vehicles, loud conversation, and metal braces being assembled under our balcony, as a tent city emerges on the street below.
This is the kind of event for wandering through colorful displays of food, housewares, plants, second-hand clothing, and other surprises. Without a kitchen we can’t buy much of the fresh food; maybe just a couple of apples or juicy peaches for a mid-morning treat. And we also have no place to put any of those beautiful beckoning plants.
Afterward we’ll wander off to the sweet little Cafe Nativo, with coffee produced by the women of Chiapas. It’s a fine rich brew that goes well with a platter of egg toast and a delicious bear claw pastry.
We’ve passed an interesting artist’s studio over the last few days, and we decide to take a closer look. We won’t be able to carry anything large in our luggage but maybe there’s something that’s easily packable.
It’s lucky for us that the artist has some long cloth prints and one of them will end up looking fine on our dinner table back in Kino Bay!
A couple of guys are catching a snooze on their motos, probably between deliveries around town.
We pass the famous colorful Red Tree House, a popular place where we’ve never been able to stay because it’s always booked. But maybe someday….
Then we stop for an early dinner at Matisse, a nice place that we’ve been to in past visits. There’s no room outside at the fully-occupied street-side tables, so we’ll be dining in their pretty courtyard. We’re seated amongst an abundance of classic Parisian rattan chairs to enjoy some very good food and wine. It’s not Paris, but it’s a close approximation, and that’s good enough for us.
It’s our last night enjoying the culture and the fine food of Mexico City. We stop to share a special treat, an ice cream bar from a local convenience store. We’ve had an excellent few months of travel, beginning at Monterrey in northeastern Mexico and topped off by a couple of good weeks here in CDMX. We depart on an evening plane back to our casa on the beach at Kino Bay in the northern state of Sonora. The lights of Mexico City are below us in the night as if someone has tossed a blanket of luminous pearls across the ground. And we know we’ll return again to this magical place someday soon. — PRW
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Afterthoughts…
There were so many more museums and other fine places in this city that we haven’t mentioned, and here are a few of them:
ANTOLINA is a good choice for ample platters of fine Mexican fusion food.
CATORZE excels at food and desserts.
GIA is the place for excellent pizza, and good red wine.
And here are several more good coffee shops that are within easy walking distance of Ave Amsterdam.
Our trip to San Luis Potosì has come to an end. And for me it was a fond return after my first encounter here 50 years ago, a long awaited wander back down memory lane. But we have a loosely-rigid schedule to maintain, and it’s time to move on. We’re now heading to the artistic and winding alleys of old Guanajuato, an immensely charming place that we’re always glad to see again.
Our big comfortable bus carries us along the next leg of this trip through more of the legendary Mexican countryside. And again, there are no other Gringos in the station or on the bus. I’m sure much of it has to do with the US addiction to cars and an association of bus terminals with low-lifes and drunks. All of that was predictable after the US middle class fled from vibrant cities to the lifeless suburbs. And California’s Proposition 13 was perhaps the most blatant collective abdication of responsibility that sent helpless people into the streets, while the wealthy began seeing large tax breaks. But I digress.
In Mexico the bus stations are clean. The middle class, the college students, and many of the country’s brightest people travel economically by public transport. It’s the same on the trains and buses of Europe and South America.
This is still the rainy season, and the craggy peaks and plants of the desert are getting a long-awaited drink. The arroyos are running, the cactus are plumping up again, the tall fields of corn (the milpas) are getting a good rinse, and the rows of spiky blue agave are looking fresh.
Soon we’re in the charming ancient streets of Guanajuato and we’re checked in to El Mesón de los Poetas, a nice old hotel on a winding lane known as Calle Pocitos. After an afternoon rest we’re back out into the evening to enjoy a fine dinner with good Mexican wine. And later we’ll find our way back in the night along quiet alleyways to our comfortable bed.
‘Laundry is Forever’ is a familiar refrain in our travels, and it can lead us to interesting adventures. So in the morning, it’s time to deal with that heavy bag of dirty clothes we’ve gathered lately.
Someone mentioned a place nearby, and our trek leads us to a lavanderia called Casa Caracol. There’s an inauspicious sign on a corner with a squiggly arrow along the bottom edge of the sign that seems to point into a narrow alley. Around the corner we find another faded sign pointing down a narrower side-alley.
It’s beginning to resemble something out of Kafka when we actually locate the lady who does the laundry. She’s wedged into a tiny back corner of an old building, in a well-organized space, with no wasted room, and I think she could lecture most CEOs about productivity. If your product is good enough, there’s no reason to waste money on high-rate rental footage.
So we leave the laundry behind for now, and we’ll pick it up later. It’s time to find our way down to little Plazuela Baratillo to score some strong coffee, and a nibble or two.
Guanajuato is a colonial silver mining town that’s stuffed into a rocky valley. It’s a collection of alleyways that snake down the old riverbed, with few places wide enough to drive a car. Some of the alleys can be so narrow that it’s said the dogs have to wag their tails up and down.
The enticing labyrinth of Guanajuato leads us past a back-alley grocery that we’d surely return to if we had rented an apartment with a kitchen. A semi-artistic array of fraying posters decorates a heavy old wooden door, an almost-artistic tangle of wire and cables is perched high on a light post, and a tiny forecourt has been fenced and filled with plant life.
We arrive at ‘Pirul mx’ for coffee and bagels at a corner of the Plazuela del Barratillo and we settle in for a needed jolt of Joe. We asked them what the name means, and we don’t remember what they said. But it’s a good stop to get our morning going.
In another corner of the Plaza is ‘Xocolat,’ a fine little chocolate shop that we recall from past visits. We’ll return in a few days to rummage through their seductive array of goodies.
But now it’s time to greet our friend Elaine, who’s arriving today from Albuquerque, and get her settled in the hotel. Then we’ll all trek onward down narrow Calle Pocitos, passing some of those ‘pocitos’ (little wells) that gave the street its name. On my first trip here, in the late 1960s, there was still water running at those taps where people filled their buckets. Things are more modern these days, and a little less quaint, and the taps have been removed. But that vestige of history still remains along these narrow streets.
Soon we’re at UG, the Universidad de Guanajuato, where this year’s graduates are gathered on broad white stone steps at the base of the University. The school colors of blue and white are flying in little banners over the street as they celebrate that last big bittersweet event before they move into the working world. I don’t know what happened to the UG hat that I bought here several years back, but I enjoyed wearing a hat that just said ‘UG.’
The artistic alleys of Guanajuato are home to large murals, poster art, political screeds, and poetic musings. And one of them reads “Quiero mirarlo todo con ojitos de primera vez” (I want to see it all with little eyes for the first time). Maybe with the eyes of children, open in wonderment? It’a nice thought for the day.
But we’re actually on our way to Cafe Tal, one of my favorite coffee shops in the entire known world. There’s no real sign outside the door, just some old coffee bags hanging over the window railings. It’s a cosy place where you can sit with a cup of fine dark brew by an old window in a thick stone wall and watch the neighborhood go by. I seem to recall that Elaine went for the ‘beso negro’ — a cup of liquid-lava dark chocolate, and she left well refreshed.
Guanajuato is still the kind of funky, offbeat, and low-gringo town that we appreciate. There’s an opera-quality baritone, and other talented musicians, busking in places where the acoustics of high stone walls in an old alleyway enhance the sound as well as in most concert halls. There’s plenty of public art, and a few local artists are strolling by. And there’s a bench to catch a bit of siesta, if you’re in the need. This is where a basic ability in a second language can enrich your life. When you combine that with the curiosity to toss yourself into unfamiliar circumstances, it makes life more interesting. And you can travel a lot cheaper, like the local people do.
On a previous visit we decided to hang out in our hotel room during the heat of the afternoon, and we flicked on the telly to see if there was a fútbol game. There wasn’t, but we happened upon an old Cantinflas movie instead. He was one of the most famous comedians in all of Latin America, and even had major billing with David Niven in the movie Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).
He was also a fast talker who could turn anybody in circles, and the butt of his jokes in this particular movie was a Gringo actor that I seemed to recall from old B-movie westerns. The Gringo was stumbling through the Spanish while Cantinflas was making rapid-fire jokes that were way above my head. And the whole thing was hilarious.
I thought of those old US TV shows and movies where some Mexican actor bumbled his way through English to great comedic effect – in the kind of roles that are frowned upon today. Yet I realized the Mexican movie industry had been doing the same thing to the Gringos during that same period. And it really was funny, before we all became so serious.
It’s a normal warm and sunny day when we happen upon a poster advertising an afternoon concert by a group called ‘Mosaico.’ We have nothing more important to do, and a concert seems like a fine way to spend our afternoon. The entryway leads past a pretty plant wall and up a stairway to a nice veranda, to await the concert inside an intimate performance space. And it’s a very good event, by a talented local group.
Then it’s time for dinner with our friends Jaime Torrez and Norma Becerra at La Vie en Rose. There’s room available upstairs, with good conversation and some fine food. Jaime is a retired Doctor and Norma is the author of several physical fitness books that are used in school curricula. They used to live in Hermosillo and recently moved to Guanajuato. We’ve travelled together in Europe, and it’s nice to catch up with the latest news in their busy lives.
A couple of friends sitting at a table-for-two in a balcony overlooking the street life below are a picturesque backdrop to the evening, framed by a pair of simple old French doors.
On the next morning we start our day with a hearty breakfast at the hotel, and Elaine is hungry enough to wolverine the food. Then we’re off on a quest to retrieve our laundry so we can get that all tucked away, before exploring more of the city.
Guanajuato occupies a special place in Mexican history, as it’s the site of the first big battle of the country’s 1810 War of Independence from Spain. And the huge old stone granary called the Alóndiga is where the local Spaniards walled themselves up against the ragtag army of Padre Hidalgo, until a local patriot called Pípila breached the main door. Nowadays, a huge statue of Pípila towers over the city from the canyon wall above.
Yet on our visit, the famous Alondiga is swarmed with students on a school outing to visit one of the country’s main heritage sites. Normally it’s a quiet place that also functions as an art museum. We’ll miss out on that today and go downhill instead to the city’s big main market, the Mercado Hidalgo. Along the way, a street address plaque says, ”Donde qualquier sapo es rey.” (“Where any toad is king.”) And the spelling of the town’s name as, “Quanax-huato” goes back to the old Purépecha name, meaning “frog hill.”
There’s a poster on another wall advertising Japanese lessons, in case you have a need for that. There are interesting things to see in every city, if you keep your eyes open.
The big Mercado is nestled into the busy city, and the place is filled with all kinds of things to grab your interest, from food to potted plants to piñatas, and everything else. A clamber up the broad red stairway gives us a colorful overview of this great old cast-iron structure, and the daily commerce it holds.
After the Mercado, we detour back uphill through the gorgeous little Plazuela de San Fernando, where an artist could set up an easel facing almost any direction and find plenty of worthy art for inspiration. The colorful casitas that climb the hills beyond are just waiting to be painted. And it all just feels like those famous days in old Montmartre that inspired Picasso, Modigliani, Valadón, and their band of starving artists.
The rest of the afternoon is consumed by the challenging art at a modernista gallery called ‘El Patio.’ There’s a wide range of works by Capelo and others to catch our eyes. They range from realistic to surrealistic, and in sizes from small, to huge and threatening.
A plaque says the concept of ‘patio’ represents a ‘sieve of the desert, protector of life and passport of the soul.’ It’s also, ‘the digital footprint of God, squaring the circle, beautiful mathematics, textures of the wind, of perfume, and of light.’ Among other essential properties.
I was especially drawn to a painting that includes a blue 1949 Ford that’s part of some crazy airborne carousel of classic cars. My family, mom, dad, and four kids, came to the West in 1955 on Route 66 in a blue ’49 Ford sedan just like that one, when I was ten years old. And I still recall my amazing first sight of the vast and dry Rio Grande Valley desert as we emerged through the mountains into Albuquerque. So yeah, art can speak to us in strange ways, in unexpected places, and it can rekindle fine old memories.
So after a long day of trekking around the alleyways of intriguing Guanajuato, we’re ready again for dinner. Inside a nearby open window is a colorful place with ‘proverbs’ on the walls: ‘I want a love to enjoy like mezcal, slowly’ and ‘A clear mind and a dark beer.’ It’s the kind of place that looks just right for us!
Jaime and Norma have offered to drive us to historic Dolores Hidalgo, where Father Hidalgo issued his “Grito de Dolores,” the famous cry that started the Mexican War of Independence. The plaza is well-kept and well-visited these days due to its historic significance, and it’s a nice place to relax on a hot day.
It’s lunch time when we arrive, and the umbrella-filled patio of a place called “El Fruty” entices us to enjoy some fine refreshment before continuing our explorations.
Just off the plaza we find the Museo de la Independencia, which tells the story of the nation’s long struggle for freedom. There’s a painting of an Aztec calendar hovering above the impressive city that stood in Lake Texcoco when the Spaniards arrived. The snow-capped volcanos of Popo and Ixta stand large in the background, a once famous view now obscured by the modern advent of choking pollution.
Some of the paintings depict the tortures endured by the Aztecs at the hands of the Spanish conquerors. And others deal with the later defeats suffered by Father Hidalgo and his followers on the long struggle for independence and freedom. We’re reminded that humans are forever an oppressive and bloody lot.
We return later to a beautiful evening in Guanajuato’s tree-filled Jardín Unión where we enjoy a fine dinner under the stars as the fountain bubbles and strolling mariachis play. Students and visitors are relaxing on the steps of the blue-lit classical Teatro Juarez, while the statue of El Pípila glows high on the canyon rim beyond.
This is Elaine’s last evening in town so we drag her to a rooftop bar known as ‘One,’ with its gorgeous nighttime views of the Teatro Juarez and the statue of Pípila. The red-domed Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is about a block away, and the towering white face of the Universidad glows softly in the nighttime. It’s hard to beat Guanajuato for fine romantic views, and an excellent climate.
Alas, the time has come for Elaine’s departure. She had things to do that seemed important at the time. But she’ll later tell us she should have dropped all of that and just stayed with us for the final leg of this excellent two and a half month trip, to the compelling streets of Mexico City.
On the following day we share our last evening over a quiet dinner with Dr. Jaime and Norma at another nice second floor bistro along charming Calle Pocitos. Someone just across the alleyway is flying the Cuban flag, and that nighttime balcony view down the winding lane of Pocitos is surely one of the more beautiful in the world.
After dinner Carolyn and I walk back in the night to our hotel, and we pass yet another interesting coffee and book shop we hadn’t seen before. This is our last evening in town, so this new experience will have to wait for our next visit to this wonderful artistic village. And that will be soon, we hope.
The morning finds us leaving Guanajuato in a comfortable ETN Clase Ejecutiva bus for the 3-hour trip to Mexico City. We had stopped at the station a few days earlier and booked two of the three seats right above the driver, for an unobstructed ‘Vista-Vision’ view of the countryside. And we hope you’ll join us soon there in CDMX for another few weeks of wandering around that world class city. — PRW
After a few weeks exploring much of northeastern Mexico, we’re now heading south from Saltillo to the city of San Luis Potosí, which is the capital of the State of San Luis Potosí. And then we’ll take an interesting, if ultimately wrong, side trip. But more about that later.
This will be a long ride on an early bus, so we spent last night in a hotel near the station. While Carolyn is buying our tickets I enjoy the general turmoil in the bus station where we can interact with locals before boarding. And the dogs that are often just hanging out, in case anyone is kind enough to drop a morsel.
We’re traveling down Hwy 57, passing some of the highest peaks in this part of Mexico that reach to more than 12,000 feet in elevation. The country’s tallest peak is Orizaba, down near Veracruz; it tops out at more than 18,000 feet, making it the third tallest in North America. But these local peaks, punching up through the desert landscape and even altering the local weather, are tall enough. Mexico is a mountainous country, and we’re traveling southward through the high and dry desert lands of the Mexican Plateau that’s embraced on both sides by the Oriental and Occidental branches of the Sierra Madre.
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‘Panoply,’ according to Oxford, is “a complete or impressive collection of things.” And the panoply of Mexican daily life is passing just outside our large bus windows as we relax in our comfortable seats. There are simple ranches, small eateries, sturdy desert horses, plenty of ‘vulkas’ (vulcanizadoras to fix a tire that’s thrown a tread), and humble repair shops under tarps. And there are sweeping mountain vistas as we pass by.
North of San Luis Potosí there’s a detour past a construction project, over a railroad crossing, and onto roads that wander through a number of small villages. This is the back-country and not your usual turista Mexico.
In fact, we’ll see almost no Gringo tourists on this entire trip of about a month and a half in northeastern Mexico, starting in fascinating Monterrey and then heading south to other cities and towns. There were a few Gringos back at that charming hotel in the ‘Pueblo Mágico’ of Parras, as the historic wineries in that valley are an important attraction. But we’ve found almost no other ‘norteamericanos’ on this trip. And that’s fine with us; we didn’t come here to hang out with Gringos.
Mexico has a good bus system, but most Gringos prefer cars – mostly to reach well-known tourist spots. They avoid most of the back areas, probably due to a lack of adequate Spanish. But tourist areas attract crooks, while there are some really nice people living down most of the back roads. And we enjoy the surprised looks we get from local people when two older Gringos show up in a small town or village.
It’s been a long trip and we arrive in the historic narrow streets of central San Luis Potosí in the late afternoon at the fine old Hotel Museo Palacio de San Augustín, dating from the 17th century. It’s another surprising gem that Carolyn managed to find for us, and we’re even greeted with a classy welcoming note that’s signed by the Manager.
The bed is exceptionally comfortable, the bath is well-equipped, and there are antiques (that we’ll be careful not to break) everywhere in the room. A thick photography book about the hotel is lying on the bedroom table, in case we have extra time to read it while we’re here. In the stairway there’s some impressive art – and a grand piano on the landing! And they put out an exceptional buffet every morning.
The Palacio seems intended for European royalty, and it’s clearly a step or two above our normal kind of gig. But right outside the main door is the quotidian life of the city, and we’re near the pedestrian-friendly historic center of just about everything we’ll want to see while we’re here.
San Luis Potosí (SLP) was founded in 1592 near the silver mines of Cerro de San Pedro, and was named for the wealthy Bolivian silver-mining town of Potosí. After the mines played out, San Luis became the most important ranching and business center in NE Mexico until Monterrey rose to prominence in the 20th century.
It’s been 50 years since I was last here, and I recall San Luis as a city of fine old buildings and lavish homes. There was a kind of confident sophistication about this old colonial city that’s far off the usual tourist trail. And I’ve been looking forward to this return trip ever since that first visit.
Fifty years ago the city was rebuilding the old Plaza de Armas and replacing all the paving stones. I had a room in the once-nice but aging Hotel Plaza which overlooked the plaza and it seemed, in my sickness-addled brain, like a local version of New York’s famous Chelsea Hotel back in the 1960s. Patti Smith, then an unknown artist and resident, shared those cheap digs with Dylan, Mapplethorpe, Janis Joplin, and Hendrix, and called it “shabby elegance.” But that was before some rich guy went luxury and ruined it.
I have no idea whether any soon-to-be famous writer and poet outcasts were inhabiting the Hotel Plaza 50 years ago, but I didn’t meet them. The place was sorely in need of repair, and felt like a leftover from the days of Porfirio Diaz, just before the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). Despite my sickness at the time, due to some youthful imprudence in the days before I arrived, I was attracted by the hotel’s aura of faded glory. And mostly the cheap prices.
After checking in, I collapsed onto a lumpy bed in a fitful night of dysentery, and in the morning I was awakened early by the clang of hammers on chisels. I took a cold and dribbly shower, then I emerged onto my little second-floor stone balcony in a soothing morning drizzle, as I tried to focus on the work below. I stared into the work site as a cool rain settled over my head and ran in rivulets under the collar of my bathrobe and down my neck. My hands held onto the wet and soothing baluster for support, and I watched as carved stone pavers measuring about 6” by 18” were placed carefully in beds of mortar. I slowly scanned with bleary eyes across the work site and noticed there was no stack of pavers waiting to be placed.
Then I focused on the heavy clanging hammers in the street right below me. Two men were pulling large rocks out of a rubble pile onto a long rough table, and shaping them carefully with chisels. They were master stone cutters at work, cutting each paver by hand, as their ancestors had done when they built those ancient large Olmec, Zapotec, and Aztec cities that later impressed the Spaniards. I’ve wanted to return to San Luis Potosí ever since to see how that project turned out.
There are good little coffee shops scattered in charming old San Luis, and we’ll enjoy some of them over the next few days instead of always having breakfast at the hotel. We find a coffee shop named Sorbo to get us moving in the morning, and next door is an impressive little art store, in case a few new brushes or colored pencils are in order to try to capture the essence of this city.
Just a block away is Calle Zaragoza, the pedestrian-only pathway that takes us north into the historic heart of the old city. We spend time enjoying the window displays and a cheerful lady with a little puppet theater, as we wander these fine old streets collecting any number of memories. And photographs.
Near the Plaza de Armas we find the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo (MAC), with the sort of challenging works we like to find on our trips. In the sometimes elitist world of art criticism, my primary question becomes, “Would I hang it on my wall?” It’s not an entirely fair question, because I’d avoid large tapestries that require dusting, and we don’t need valuable works that someone would steal. And some works are well-accomplished but too disturbing to have around. But there are plenty of fine artists in the world whom I wish we had room for on our walls. And the extra cash to afford them.
We enter the MAC past galleries of excellent works, visions of serenity, and some fanciful views that taunt the conventional use of color or concept. And many of those could easily hang on our walls, if we had any space available.
Then we encounter the troubling works of Ákos Ezer. He’s a challenging Hungarian artist who is attempting to express the fraught situation of his present day homeland. The twists and turbulations of fate, in my interpretation, are seen in the painful and contorted figures of his subjects. There’s clearly a touch of humor in it all, a cosmic Hungarian giggle. Or maybe it’s a worldly smirk at the mess of life over there in Mittel Europa, all those ancient tribes surrounded by the deep history of those other contentious tribes of Slavs, Germans, Romanians – every one of them elbowing for breathing room. Or perhaps I’m just making too much out of it. But he got me thinking, and maybe that was his point all along.
And there’s other interesting stuff up on the rooftop, where they hold occasional openings and guest events overlooking charming older buildings in the surrounding neighborhood. This area was probably the commercial center of town long ago and we can hope there are plans afoot for its renovation.
After all that art, it’s time for lunch, and the Bistró 233 is just around the corner. The place offers a delicious mix-up of Mexican-French cuisine. With big cups of coffee. It’s a nice find to relax into for a few minutes while we scarf some good food before we move onward in our quest. There was a handy Cuidado con el Perro store very nearby, with a well-petted pooch out front. And that cup of strong coffee helps us stay focused on what our quest today actually was!
At the MAC we meet an artist named Laura Leticia, and she invites us to her studio on a quiet side street. The place is filled with a collection of various objets d’art, and other inspiring found objects. Some of those influences are among the art that’s hanging on her walls, and she’s a talented artist who captures the spirit of this city with her fine brush and pen work. So we end up with a few pieces that will fit into the remaining extra space in our big rolling bags, and they’ll be joining the eclectic array of art that’s hanging in the limited empty space on our walls.
As the afternoon settles in, it’s time to find the old Hotel Plaza of my youthful travels and see how it’s fared over the past 50 years as the city has grown and prospered. But the old Hotel is now closed, and we hope it’s awaiting a financial angel with deep pockets. The place was a minor bastion of faded glory from the city’s deep past when I was last here, but it was charming back then in its decrepit way. And in my aging memories, it just seemed to look much bigger in those days, and more important.
My old balcony is still up there — the second one from the left — where I stood in the rain 50 years ago to watch them rebuilding the plaza. And now I’m standing on the same stones that were chiseled into shape back then on a big rough table in the street. Today the rebuilt Plaza de Armas is well-used, with its fine church undergoing restoration, the impressive stone bandstand, and the gardens. It’s alive with the buzz of families enjoying the evening life of the city.
And of course there’s a payaso (a clown) in the plaza who’s gathered a bunch of laughing kids into a line so he can play tricks on them while the audience of parents, grandparents, and others (such as us!) get a great laugh out of it.
Later in the evening we find an outside table on the Plaza at the beautiful La Posada del Virrey. We’re under the sheltering sky enjoying cold drinks and a traditional Potosino meal, while merchants fold their tents for another day. After dinner we’ll take another walk around the now-quiet plaza to absorb the evening.
On the far corner of the Plaza we find a life-sized bronze statue of a local 22 year-old student named Karla del Carmen Pontigo, who was murdered here in 2012. The plaque, which some idiot glued a sticker onto, says this is a memorial to the many women who have been murdered in Mexico, and whose families are still seeking justice. It’s a sobering moment, and the array of pink crosses lying on the pavement before her make it all the more memorable. Yet it’s a continuing tragedy in the country that demands attention, as mothers continue to search for their children.
As we leave with our thoughts, the darkened old Hotel Plaza stands there in the nighttime facing the now-quiet Plaza de Armas. It’s a fond memory of San Luis Potosí that I’ll long recall.
On another day we follow Calle Zaragoza southward to the leafy Jardín Colón and pause at a Feria de Libros. For many Mexicanos books are important, and authors are held in respect. And we enjoy looking through the many volumes available.
Farther along the tree-lined parkway there’s an open-air exhibit of large colorful dance photos that celebrate this beautiful and cultured city. The photos remind us that there’s often a band playing on weekends at the main plaza of many Mexican cities, and we’ve been known to join the dancing. It makes for more good memories.
We’re following this tree-shaded walkway to the recently-renovated Centro de las Artes. This imposing former penitentiary is now showcasing a new permanent exhibition of the British-Mexican surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.
Carrington (1917–2011) was born in Lancashire and encountered surrealist art at an early age on a visit to Paris. When she was a debutante later in England she refused to be “sold to the highest bidder” and instead pursued her emerging interests in art. In 1937 she moved in with the artist Max Ernst and became part of the Paris art scene. When the Nazis invaded, she escaped to Spain and then to Mexico, where she lived out the rest of her life and became a friend of the Mexican surrealist, Remedios Varo (1908-1963).
The city of San Luis Potosí has done an admirable job of converting an older museum into a modern facility for displaying Carrington’s life and work with a wide variety of her art. She was a prolific artist who produced a great number of paintings and sculptures, and one of her paintings set a record at Christie’s in 2005 for the highest price paid for a living surrealist painter. She’s an important figure in the world of modern art, and the people of San Luis Potosí are now recognizing her as such.
Her works are at museums around the world, including Mexico City’s Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, where they are displayed with the work of Remedios Varo and Frida Kahlo. Her large bronze sculpture (5 tonnes) entitled “How Doth the Little Crocodile,” based on a poem from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is along the Paseo de la Reforma in the center of Mexico City.
Her enigmatic “Self Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse)” from 1937-38 seems to include influences from the works of Frida Kahlo, although Carrington would not arrive in Mexico until 1942. And maybe Frida was influenced by Leonora, or by their common female experience. At any rate, her work is challenging.
We haven’t yet visited the Casa Estudio Leonora Carrington, the home she occupied for 60 years in Mexico City, at Calle Chihuahua 194 in Roma Norte, but we look forward to doing so. It’s an easy walk from the leafy Condesa area where we often stay, and it was slated to become a museum of her works. But for now it’s a ‘documentation center’ under the Universidad Autónomo Metropolitano (UAM).
After a good long afternoon in the Museo, we’re ready for a drink and dinner and time to reflect on Leonora Carrington’s legacy. And the rooftop cafe at the Margarita seemed like a good bet. There’s a sweet statue of a little girl being swept away with her balloons high on a prominent corner of the building that overlooks the city, and that was appealing enough for us to seek an elevator to the roof.
In the opulent lobby there’s a large mural of Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People,” commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 that toppled the conservative and unpopular King Charles X. The female image of Liberty, wearing the Phrygian Cap, and waving the French flag, is known as ‘Marianne,’ an icon that has appeared on French stamps and coinage. Her image here seems like an appropriate symbol for the aspirations of a modern-day Mexico that emerged from the ideals of the Revolution.
It was a beautiful evening to be outside and well above the city, and yet we were the only guests at the time. But we were early arrivals on a Saturday night, and most Mexicanos prefer a later dining hour. Just across the rooftops there’s another gorgeous patio, nicely-lit and planted, of a resident who appears also to appreciate some quiet privacy far above the traffic below.
Soon we’re indulged in fine drinks and a delicious pizza, as we enjoy luxurious views over the rooftops of San Luis Potosí. It’s our last evening in town, and we’ll depart in the morning for a jungle village on the eastern side of the protecting Sierra Madre Oriental. We hope the rainy season will not be a hindrance.
A trip to Xilitla. In the rainy season!
We depart from the gracious city of San Luis Potosí and the charming old Hotel Museo Palacio de San Augustín, to head for the remote mountain jungle village of Xilitla. Leonora Carrington spent time in the village, and we hope to visit the local museum that’s devoted to her work. And nearby are the bizarre concrete sculpture gardens of an eccentric Englishman named Edward James that have become an attraction in recent years. It’s not far from San Luis and it was just meant to be. Until it wasn’t.
Our day began with an adventurous bus ride in a light rain, passing large fuel trucks on blind corners through jagged mountain passes. And yes, it was kind of hair-raising – at least for folks with more hair.
There was a bus change at Ciudad Valles, where anyone who’s seriously north-bound can catch a coach to destinations in Texas. And soon we’re in the heart of misty mountains that face the humid air coming off the warm Gulf of Mexico. The lush green hills, embraced with endless jungle emerging from dense clouds in the increasing rain make an enchanting panorama, as we ascend into the misty heavens and little Xilitla. (And I agree with this guy’s T-shirt that I saw recently in Tucson.) The lush green hills, embraced with endless jungle emerging from dense clouds in the increasing rain make an enchanting panorama, as we ascend into the misty heavens and little Xilitla.
We arrive in the afternoon at the impressive Castillo de Edward James. It’s the former in-town residence of an eccentric Englishman whose artistic ambitions did much to change this little jungle village. This Castillo is where Leonora Carrington and many of Edward’s other good friends would spend their evenings during visits.
On the map, we’re just off the plaza and maybe an easy block and a half from the Carrington Museum. We’re in a great location, although it was actually a steep climb from the road to the hotel. With another steep climb required to reach the plaza. And did I mention my recent knee replacement?
We relax in really nice quarters, and later in the afternoon we step out again onto the steep and rainy and slippery streets in search of dinner. And I realize I may have overestimated my abilities after coming off that knee replacement. I have a sturdy cane in one hand to brace my footholds as I search for handholds along the smooth wet wall beside the steeply sloping street. The paving stones are laid on edge and provide more traction than flat pavers, but it’s a slow process as we make our way carefully uphill to a restaurant that’s just next door.
We arrive safely at an artistic dinner spot called Plutarcos, with an eclectic object collection along the walls and some really good food. And there’s baseball on the big screen. We relax over a seriously fine dinner so we can put off making our way back downhill again, on that steep wet street, back to the hotel.
At the Castillo we get a guided tour of the place and enjoy a spectacular nighttime view over the lights of the city, as the evening rain begins to rattle more heavily onto the rooftop. We settle in comfortably for the night and put off thinking about whatever tomorrow will bring. While it’s clear that getting around the steep wet streets of Xilitla with a recent knee operation will be a problem, we’ll face that issue in the morning. Or maybe the problem will just go away, since we’re right here in the land of ‘magical realism.’
The morning breaks bright and misty, and shortly it becomes rainy again as the hotel staff plies us with a good breakfast of local delicacies. They point out a slightly-faded surrealistic painting on the wall that was drawn by Carrington during one of her stays here long ago. And there’s a photo on the wall, with her working on it.
And maybe it’s intended as irony or it’s a leftover from the summer season, but a sign asks us to save water since this is the “Dry Season.”
Soon we venture into the rainy morning and back up that steep wet street to the village plaza, where there’s some major roadwork underway. People are standing under overhangs and waiting for the rain to subside – in another month, maybe. A mother helps her young daughter over piles of broken rubble as we make our way carefully along a narrow slippery sidewalk.
We find the Museo Leonora Carrington, where the sign reads “Suspended for Electrical Risk.” The Museo is dark since the lights are out, and maybe caused by a short, in the rain. A helpful gentleman opens the museum store which is lit by muted daylight from the street window, and Carolyn buys a long beautiful scarf with a colorful Carrington design.
We leave the Museo and head back to the Plaza, which contains some of Carrington’s bizarre outdoor pieces, including an intriguing salamander, and a pair of hands.
There may be no better way to spend time on a rainy day than finding a cosy coffee shop to enjoy a rich cup of Joe or a hot chocolate, as local people walk past the door that looks out onto the Plaza.
After coffee we cross the rainy Plaza to an ancient church with heavy walls where we find more shelter as the rain increases again. There are several hidden nooks and crannies for wandering, as another wave of rain fills the roof canales and sends showers into the courtyard.
Eventually the rain abates to a drizzle and it’s time to return back down that steep wet street to the Castillo and the shelter of colonnaded walkways. The rain looks dramatic in fine silvery rivulets as it dribbles over the huge leaves of jungle plants.
And later in the evening we’ll venture out again onto that steep wet street, making our careful way back to Plutarco’s for another fine dinner. And we’ll devote some time to discussing our rational options.
We had planned to stay in charming little Xilitla for several more days to fully enjoy the village and do a day trip to those famous crazy concrete sculpture gardens of Edward James. But now we face the fact that the sculpture gardens will mean lots of climbing and stairways. In the rain. On slippery stairs and probably broken stones.
Over glasses of good Mexican wine to clarify our thoughts, and considering my fragile knee (I hate to admit it!), staying here in hilly and wet and slippery Xilitla just doesn’t seem to make sense anymore. It was a bit rainy back in San Luis Potosí, but those streets are flat and easier to deal with.
So in the morning we enjoy another fine breakfast under the Castillo’s gorgeous portal. Then we haltingly tell the staff that, um, you see we, um, need to leave town before we have an accident. Instead of leaving after the accident. No there’s nothing wrong with the hotel. This is truly a fine place. But we didn’t really plan well for the rain. And my new knee.
We wrestle our bags, with some help, back down to that winding road below the hotel, to the bus stop. And we wait there in the rain – although it’s not really a long wait before the bus arrives. And then we wait in the rain until the bus driver opens the door. It’s all a process.
The hill-clinging village of Xilitla passes by our bus windows as we descend a bit too-speedily down the winding roadway to the flatter terrain below. The cloud-wrapped hills, plummeting roadways and walkways, and plant-engulfed graveyards of heavy machinery leave an enduring impression as we make our way onward.
At last we’re in the flatlands, crossing flooded rivers, pausing at makeshift bus stops, and passing the gorgeous green-engulfed lifestyle of these people who live in the jungle as we’re heading back to civilized, and flat, San Luis Potosí, for a few more days.
Back to the fine flat streets of San Luis Potosí
We’d have gotten a room at the Palacio again, but they were booked up. So we found good lodging at the nearby Hotel Progreso, dating from 1870.
We were glad to have more time in SLP because there were so many things we still wanted to see and do, like visit the old railway station where I boarded a northbound train to Saltillo 50 years ago. And there are a few other good museums we didn’t see the last time.
A morning walk on the rainy flat streets of San Luis is a wonderful way to start the day, and we find a nice little coffee shop called ‘ñam ñam.’ Ah yes, the food was that good. And it’s playful, too!
The old train station that I remember from long ago is now the Museo del Ferrocarril. People are bringing in large canvases for a new art show in a section that is now a gallery. And I recall the pattern of the stairway stones that I sat on long ago while I waited for my train to depart.
I recall very well that northbound trip from 50 years ago, when we sat on wooden benches while the train chugged through tall dry cactus forests, with occasional stops for departing passengers. I watched them walk away into that forbidding landscape with their worn bags and I wondered just where could they possibly be going? There was no habitation in sight, just tall spiky cactus and Joshua trees.
We were four guys sitting on benches that faced each other, and I was the only Gringo on the train. Then a mischievous fellow seated across from me pulled an enormous bottle of tequila from under his seat and began passing it around. Soon my Mexican compadres were singing folk songs and laughing away the afternoon. After a few swigs, it was my turn to sing something. I had no idea what to sing, but started in with as much of “Home on the Range” as I could remember. My mischievous buddy was laughing and looking over my shoulder, and I turned to see all the other passengers in the car laughing at the tall singing Gringo. So I took another swig and bowed to the audience. It was another great Mexican memory!
I don’t know when the last passenger train left San Luis, but it might have been the one I was on. I still enjoy traveling the rails in whatever country I might find myself these days, and now I’m back in San Luis to revisit some of those youthful happy vibes of my footloose days.
Out back in the old train yard the tracks are still there, although they no longer depart for Monterrey, Mexico City, Tampico, and other exotic destinations. And there’s a train car with the same hard wooden seats that I remember so well. There’s also a little locomotive mockup with the number 501, for the kids to get their pictures taken. It’s a memorial to Jesús Garcia Corona, the Hero of Nacozari, who pulled his burning dynamite train out of the Sonoran mountain town of Nacozari to save the community before the train blew up. He lost his life, and now it’s a famous part of Mexican folklore – and there’s a well-known song about the tragedy called, “Maquina 501.”
Among the displays inside are pictures of old discarded freight cars that used to stand on the side tracks in train yards around Mexico, providing housing for people after the Revolution. Many of those old freight cars were still on those side tracks when I was last here, and I recall the laundry hanging outside to dry. A lot has changed since then.
In one display there’s a woodcut that honors the ‘Adelitas,’ the women who followed their men during the Revolution, which was the first war to use railroads extensively. The woodcut shows one of the Adelitas tenderly treating a wounded soldier.
The Museo Federico Silva, with its impressive collection of massive stone sculptures, is another surprise in this often-overlooked city. They celebrate the nation’s history of huge carved pieces of native stone that date back to those colossal carved heads of the Olmecs that predate most other Mexican cultures. Just wandering through this museum gives me a sense of how small we are in relation to the many layers of history that lie beneath our feet.
Federico Silva was born in 1923 and died in 2022 at the age of 99. In his mid-20s he became part of the reawakening of Mexican arts when he worked as the assistant of David Alfaro Siqueiros, perhaps the most radical of the triad of great Mexican muralists that included Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Silva published a magazine called 1935, to commemorate the 1935 Revolution Day battle in the Zócalo of Mexico City between workers organizations and a fascist group funded by industrialists. His subsequent artistic collaborations with the crisp stone-faced graphics of Leopoldo Méndez may have been one inspiration for his later huge stone carvings.
Another morning finds us at the local Italian Coffee Company, and we see them often in our MX travels. We end up with some hearty coffee and split a hearty breakfast sandwich to fortify us for another rewarding day of discovery in this interesting desert city.
Right nearby is the enticing entryway to the Museo Nacional de la Máscara, with its extensive display of colorful masks that are an essential part of the country’s ceremonies and fiestas. It’s an encounter with the ancient Mexican concept of ‘Dualism,’ day and night, good and evil, that governs our lives.
We pass through room after room of fantastical creations, many of them dating back to the deepest roots of pre-hispanic times. Many masks are symbolic of the ancient practices of local native groups, and Aztec caricatures. Some were worn by the city’s most famous actors in their Lucha Libre performances. And some are inspired by the contorted modernism of Pablo Picasso. There’s even a collection of Bulgarian masks in this place! It’s a very old form of art that transcends cultures and remains an evolving practice that allows for personal creativity to interpret our modern world.
And after all that, we’ll make our way to another intriguing rooftop bistro named Natal Cocina de Origen, while the evening settles over another fine day on the streets of San Luis Potosí. The street-side doorway opens into a dining area, gallery space, and exhibition hall filled with the creative works of fine local artists.
Soon we ascend the art-filled stairway to the rooftop for an excellent dinner with good Mexican wine, overlooking the pretty lighted dome of the Temple of San Francisco de Asis. This is the sort of place that serves elegantly-appointed meals topped with edible flowers.
A large bearded fellow in a trench coat and fedora visits our table to see if we’d like to purchase one of his small poetry-filled scrolls. And how can we resist that on such a fine evening?
We later look beyond our empty wine glasses to the smiles of fellow diners, amused at the rare sight of two older Gringos hanging out with them at one of the city’s truly wonderful eateries. It’s been another wonderful evening that ends quite well, as we take that artistic stairway back down to street level, then pause to revel for a few more late moments among the city’s many delights before we return to the Hotel Progresso for our last night in the city. We were sorry to spend just a short time in the mountain jungle village of Xilitla, but glad to return to San Luis for a few more days.
We actually have something of a schedule for this trip, and in the morning we leave fine old San Luis Potosí behind us, for now. We’ll be heading next to the twisting alleyways of charming and artistic Guanajuato, where we’ve promised to meet up with an artist friend named Elaine. We hope you’ll join us there on our next Dispatch. — PRW
Dear reader, you’ve noticed, we’re sure, that these posts are NOT always in order by the DATE of the JOURNEY. We have for some time been working on catching up with posts about past travels that had to be put aside for one reason or another. And, unfortunately, the WordPress platform does not allow me to rearrange the posts by date. They can only remain in the order by dates posted.
But I think we’re just about there. It will be our goal in the future to post chronologically. Then again, if we fall off the wagon, please forgive us. Thanks for travelling with us! —Carolyn
We’ve been traveling in an odd ricochet pattern through northeastern Mexico during the summer of 2025, and even doing a bit of backtracking, in order to see everything that’s on our list. We don’t often get to this part of Mexico, which is generally off the well-traveled tourist trail, and we’re getting an interesting overview of the countryside. So “S’all good, man!” As they say on TV.
After a fine time in Parras, our bus leaves Saltillo and we’re back into those high dry desert lands and rugged rock-shot mountains that we’ve traveled since leaving Monterrey. Most everybody on the bus seems to think it’s a good time for a nap, but I never want to miss seeing anything along the road. So I’ll sleep later, wherever we bed down for the night.
After a while we arrive in the small industrial city of Monclova and at first I wonder how many people I’ve ever known who might have somehow been to Monclova. I mean, you know, willingly.
Yet the Hermés bus station is located right on the city’s nice little plaza, beside a pretty stone-walled church. The restroom is interesting, and useable. And soon we’re on the next bus, heading deeper into a hidden corner of these dry mountains of the Sierra Madre Oriental.
Within another hour or so we’ve passed a number of small villages, and the “Tony Fat Burger” restaurant, and we’re dropped off at the outskirts of Cuatro Ciénegas. We don’t know the town yet, so we call for a taxi to our local lodging.
And once again Carolyn has found us an exceptional place to stay. It’s called “Serenna by Hacienda 1800,” yet another fine hideout that feels way above our pay grade!* We’re near a small shrine at the edge of town – and only a few blocks from the central plaza. Around here, most of everything is within ‘walking distance’ and we can get everywhere easily. In the morning we scavenge some breakfast goodies from the buffet to enjoy on our small veranda before wandering out to explore the town.
Cuatro Ciénegas is a quiet little town. It’s even smaller than Parras, and each of them is a fine contrast to the large busy cities of Monterrey and Saltillo. There are the sad remains of a few old adobe buildings whose last walls are badly undermined by erosion, yet somehow remain standing.
It’s always a pleasure to find a nice little coffee shop wherever we go, and the Arena Dulce is a cosy place for a good cup with a sweet something on the side.
The plaza is well-tended yet largely empty, and maybe awaiting the crowds of a coming fiesta, or some such event. There’s a statue of Venustiano Carranza who was born here and opposed the endless dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. He became the governor of Coahuila, and was a major player in the Mexican Revolution until his assassination in 1920 on the train from Mexico City to Veracruz.
There’s a museum here to the memory of Carranza, but we’re kinda museumed-out by now and we’re content to just explore these quiet streets.
We mostly came here to experience the nearby natural wonders of Cuatro Ciénegas (the ‘four marshes’), where a rare collection of springs emerges in a desert valley to support a great variety of native wildlife. We sign on for a tour to these attractions, as the desert quiet is pierced by the sound of a small Learjet cruising above us.
The tour begins with the artful reuse of an old quarry site that was carved off the end of a mountain that overlooks the vast desert landscape. It has since become a sculpture garden containing some large and fantastical creatures. The whole site actually looks dinosaurial, as if these monsters really could have been found within the stone. And a dog is sleeping unperturbed in the shade of a huge leftover marble block.
I search out the restroom facilities, which are down a ramp beside a giant skeletal T-Rex that’s roaring out of a leftover stone face. And the relief station is worth a visit of its own. Especially for the fine view from the urinals overlooking the desert, where you can watch the occasional car or truck passing on the highway below. It’s more creative than most restrooms, and much less boring than staring at a blank tile wall.
The dunes are next, and shoes are optional. It’s a sublime experience to feel the finest of warm gypsum sands between your toes while climbing dunes that have collected here during countless passing winds as warm air lifts over the mountains and drops its sandy load at this special spot. In the distance the process continues, as the warming afternoon desert breeze rises over the tallest mountains and the moisture condenses into clouds to feed rainfall back into the marvelous cycle that nourishes this rare desert oasis.
Just to experience this rare event in the desert is really the main reason we’re here in Cuatro Ciénegas. There’s an area for swimming, and it seems inviting. But we’ve come to see the rare fish and other animals that have managed to survive and evolve in this environment over millions of years of geologic upheaval and isolation. There are also dozens of tiny creatures hidden in the aquatic plant life, and each of them is an important part of what makes this environment work.
By the end of the day, we’ve managed to collect armfuls of entry tags – trophies of a sort. And it’s been a good experience.
We return hungry from the tour, and settle into a quiet courtyard with cold drinks as we recount the day. From there we migrate to platters of delicious evening fare, and some good Mexican wine.
Magnificent evening colors paint the sky along with the artful lighting of the church, and it beckons us to explore more of this fine little city. We follow the lights of an interesting street to where we encounter the Callejon de Guevara. We have no idea what lies in store, but it’s a pleasant surprise to find such an exuberantly lighted entryway to what appears to be a classy residential area – a place for those with the means and inclination to sequester themselves here in the quiet desert.
The brilliant shifting colors playing onto a huge stone slab are mesmerizing. And a convenient bench is an inviting place to enjoy our last quiet evening in this special little town.
And yet again it’s time to depart, to move onward to our next destination as we work our way slowly south toward our eventual destination in Mexico City. But the pleasures of CDMX are still about a month away. For now, we catch a van service back to Saltillo, and we depart pretty Cuatro Ciénegas under an imposing hilltop statue of Carranza. From Saltillo we’ll catch another bus to our next destination, the artful city of San Luis Potosí. It’s a place I have found memories of, from a fitful visit fifty years ago, and we hope you’ll join us there. — PRW
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* A note about how we find places to stay. When we decide where we want to go, we start looking at lodging possibilities. Normally, we don’t book things far in advance, as we want to be flexible should we choose to stay more or fewer days. But when we’re ready, I check mostly on Booking.com, as it has been very reliable and provides lots of details, customer reviews, easy booking process, and great discounts for regular users. (No, I’m not getting a commission!) My process is to enter the dates and location, then do a search for highly rated listings. We look for the places with a match of good prices and high ratings: and, of course, we try to pick things near to the sites we want to see, or that have good public transport to those places. In the photos, we look for beds that have reading lights on both sides! And handrails on the stairways. — Carolyn
We depart from Trieste for Milano, our final stop during this 2018 season on another fast Trenitalia Frecciarossa. It’s our favorite way to travel. We don’t rent cars in Europe when we can settle into nice seats with a table and large windows, and watch the countryside go by – the farms and the small villages and the vineyards, a flock of sheep by the river. It’s an affordable luxury to travel this way.
We’re crossing the broad plain of the Po River, the longest river in Italy. It begins in the Alps just inside the French border and then wanders across northern Italy to enter the distant Adriatic Sea, just a little south of Venice. The Lunghin Pass high in Switzerland is actually a ‘triple watershed’ for the Po, Rhine and Danube rivers, some of the most legendary rivers in the world. The Po then crosses the largest unbroken plain in southern Europe, a fertile countryside that produces some of the world’s finest foods. This valley is home to vineyards and broad fields of rice and grains; the area provides 40% of Italy’s milk production, and more than half of the pork. Think of Parma ham and that rich Parmigiana cheese we love to grate onto the finest pastas that they also produce here.
And soon we’re in Milano, the second largest city in Italy (pop: 1.36m), an industrial powerhouse, and an important banking center. Lodgings can be expensive in the gorgeous center city, so we’re renting in a more ‘modest’ part of town, an area where we can actually afford to hang out.
Sometimes the cheaper rentals lack those extra bedside plugs that we all need to recharge our devices so we pack an assortment of cords and adapters, and all is good.
The neighborhood is a bit grungy, but there are parks nearby and sometimes there’s an interesting jumble, a clash, of the very old with the splashy new. But these off-trail places are where you’ll find some of the best food! Local ristorantes need to plate out la nonna’s best recipes because they don’t have a captive tourist base and they have to please I vicini, the neighbors, to stay in business. And we also get the benefit!
We also have easy access to a tram line that gets us to the center of things quickly and cheaply. All of those affordable amenities allow us to wander around Europe like the local people do. It’s more interesting than grabbing a cab because we have to actually understand where we’re going, and the large tram windows give us a better view of the vast theatre of the city. And there’s usually a little place along the way to grab a cold refresher, or even a pizza, on a hot day.
The rich plain of Milan is nestled among three rivers that flow into the larger Po River itself. The area is deep in history, having been settled by Celtic tribes around 590BCE, and conquered by the Romans in 222BCE. And about five centuries later, in 286CE, Diocletian named this growing city the capital of the Western Roman Empire for his co-Emperor Maximianus. This is also where the Emperor Constantine later issued the Edict of Milan in 313CE granting freedom of religion throughout the Empire, effectively kickstarting the rapid rise of the cult of Christianity.
Among many other local luminaries, Beatrice d’Este was one of the more remarkable. She was born in Milan in 1475 and was known early in her short life as a woman of culture, and an important patron of the arts and science. She was a leader in fashion for her time, with 84 dresses in her closet. She was short and dynamic, described by the writer Francesco Muralto as “at a young age, beautiful and of raven colours,”and an active participant in sensitive negotiations with the enemies of Milan.She and her influential husband, Ludovico Sforza, an important patron of Leonardo da Vinci, made Milan one of the greatest capitals of the European Renaissance. And she did all that before she died during the birth of her third child in 1497, at the very early age of 21.
In Dante’s Commedia Divina, published in 1321, the Roman poet Virgil leads Dante into the Inferno with that famous inscription over the door, “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi qu’intrate” (“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”) They proceed downward past horrible scenes to the ninth circle of hell, to witness figures engaged in eternal combat. Virgil then brings him back toward the light in the Purgatorio, before handing him over to the beneficent Beatrice, who leads him into Paradiso. (T. S. Eliot has said, “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”) Perhaps the lovely and talented Beatrice d’Este was named for the angelic Beatrice, described 150 years earlier by Dante.
Milan is where Leonardo da Vinci spent over two decades of his life, where he arranged the 1492 wedding celebrations between Beatrice d’Este and Ludovico Sforza, and where he painted “The Last Supper” on the refectory wall of Santa Maria della Grazie, as a commission from the powerful Sforza family. He was also an inventor and architect who re-engineered the city’s system of navigli (canals) to better serve local commerce. Buy in 1516 he was invited by the King of France to continue his work in the royal Chateau d’Ambrose, overlooking the Loire Valley, and he died there in May of 1519 at the age of 67.
A part of Ernest Hemingway’s breakthrough novel, A Farewell to Arms(1929), takes place in Milan where the protagonist recovers in a hospital bed from wounds received near Gorizia while fighting the invading Austrians during World War I. He falls in love with his nurse, and later in the story they escape the wartime madness by leaving from the village of Stresa on Lago Maggiore in a rowboat to the Swiss border. Some of this mirrors Hemingway’s own recovery at the American hospital in Milan from a wound he received as an ambulance driver in that war.
And today there’s a placard on a building about two blocks west of the huge Duomo di Milano, marking the prior location of the American Red Cross hospital where Hemingway recovered from his wounds.
As an important industrial and transport center, Milan was heavily bombed by the Allies during WWII. By 1943, Mussolini’s dreams of a new pan-Mediterranean Roman Empire, by annexing Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Albania, and Greece, had crumbled. His gamble that the Germans would quickly triumph in the war was wishful thinking. In April of 1945 he was captured and executed near Lake Como while trying to escape in a German army convoy to the Swiss border. And Milan is where antifascist Italian partisans hung his body, along with that of his lover Clara Petacci and several other accomplices, in the Piazzale Loreto, which had been renamed Piazza Quindici Martiri after the 15 partisans executed there by fascist forces.
In the post-war years Milan regained its place as an international center of fashion, and Milan Fashion Week is now one of the Big Four, along with New York, London, and Paris. These are spectacular events that take place yearly in February-March and in September-October. (In 2022 Gucci found 68 pairs of twins to showcase their wares!) So we’re lucky to be here in July and miss those crowds. Yet there are plenty of everyday fashionistas on the streets to maintain Milan’s certain allure. And in my well-worn second-hand duds, an array of grays and browns, I’ll remain among the folk who are never pestered for an autograph.
We wander the cobbled streets of the Quadrilatero d’Oro (Golden Square), only about four blocks NE of the Duomo, just to experience some of the head-spinningly gorgeous (and expensive!) designs that Milan is famous for. The names of Armani, Gucci, Versace, Chanel, Prada, and Louis Vuitton are plastered across the store fronts. Even if you can only afford a designer T-shirt or a gorgeous scarf, it will likely remain a cherished memento of your visit to this world famous design center.
This city has long-been the domain of the world’s gliteratti, where the streets are prowled by A-list stars on the hunt for jewelry in Tiffany Blue; where the stores are designed by Zaha Hadid and others of the world’s ‘star-chitect’ class. Elizabeth Taylor’s husband Richard Burton once said “The only word Liz knows in Italian is Bulgari,”
And we’re not overwhelmed by those crowds of seasonal high-trash cruisers. We can appreciate windows-full of the world’s best designs while knowing we’re not really going to lay out heavy cash for any of it.
And there’s La Scala, the grand old opera house where many of the world’s great operas have premiered, including works by Salieri, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Puccini, among others. It’s late summer, and it appears we’ve missed out on this year’s events. But a poster for the upcoming winter-spring season tells us there will be much to offer in the next year.
There’s so much to experience in this wealthy city. The towering vaults of the Galeria Vittorio Emanuele II, fabulously rebuilt after WWII, are an eye-opener. There are plenty of ordinary folk like us wandering these halls and the nearby streets to ogle hyper-expensive wares in the windows, and likely also terrified to ask about the prices. And how much would a high-tech security system also set us back to keep that loot from being stolen? A few pictures will do well for me.
There’s an amazingly long line to enter the Duomo, the city’s famous cathedral, so we decide to avoid the crowds and skip it this time. We’ll save that experience for a future visit, after the summer crowds have left.
There’s so much else to experience in Milan that standing in a long line can seem pointless. The winding streetscape itself is a fascinating lesson in art, history, commerce, architecture, you name it. And around each corner there’s another surprise.
So on a long afternoon of exploration we finally search out someplace quiet to enjoy a bit of grappa, that famous Italian brandy made from pomace, the leftover skins, pulp, seeds and stems from winemaking. It’s called rakija in the Balkans, tsipouro in Greece and marc in France.
The friendly family proprietors of a little back street hole-in-the-wall respond with a happy, “Sure we have grappa!” And soon we’re nicely relaxed at a tiny sidewalk table with a pair of tasty shots – maybe from the family’s own special bottle! – as pedestrians wander past. It’s another momento molto fino that we’ll later recall fondly, of a fine Italian summer day.
Later that evening we’re poking around some other back streets hoping to find a special place for dinner. The streets and the buildings are dark, and it looks like we’ve taken a very wrong turn. Then Carolyn sees a dim flicker down a side street, and we hope it’s a neighborhood bar or something similar. The street is so dark that we feel our way carefully over the cobbles – and we find a hidden treasure. Inside the door we pass an ornate bar and go deeper into the building until we’re in a secret ristorante that looks like someone’s very large living room, with subdued lighting, and fine tables with overstuffed chairs, and art and heirlooms along the walls.
We’re shown to a table and given menus, as a full table in the corner carries on at alto voce, while waving their arms for emphasis. Every Italian friend of ours has said, “any Italian with a broken arm has a speech impediment!” And we’ve just come across one of the more interesting places we’ve ever found in all our travels. It won’t be a quiet dinner, but our table neighbors are having an excellent time of it, and we’re more entertained than bothered. The place is called “Alchimia,” the food and experience were memorable, and it’s worth a special trip to Milano.
Milan is home to a vast array of sculptures that span the centuries, the conflicts, and the conquerors that have composed its long history. But “Il Dito” (’the Finger,’ 2010) is surely one of the more provocative pieces to be found during our Milanese wanderings. At first glance, and considering its location on the Piazza degli Affari directly in front of the Borsa Italiana (Italian Stock Exchange), it seems to be a protest against the Italian monetary elite. But a closer look reveals that the thumb and three fingers are severed, leaving only that prominent middle finger. The piece is entitled L.O.V.E. (Libertà, Odio, Vendetta, Eternità), and some have also seen it as a crippled form of the full-handed Fascist salute that served the country so ruinously under Mussolini during WWII. And since the artist, Maurizio Cattelan, has never given an explanation for the meaning of the work, we are free to derive our own impressions from this massive piece of fine Carrara marble.
For a different artistic celebration of the marvelous human hand, that some have interpreted as a positive ‘Thumbs Up,’ check out “Le Pouce, (1965)” César Baldacini’s 40-foot tall “Thumb,” in the La Dèfense district of Paris. We’ve also seen a large ‘Thumb’ replica in a traffic circle in Marseilles, and a 6-foot version on the grounds of the Sammlung Ludwig Museum in Koblenz, Germany.
PARISKOBLENZ
There’s a fine afternoon concert on offer at the Piccolo Teatro, and it’s an excellent way to experience some of the musical artistry the city has to offer during the summertime. It’s a true pleasure to feel the notes that the bow delivers when it rests lightly on the strings, and the wood reverberates. It’s a form of magic that we’ve found inside the thoughtful architecture of an old theatre that needs no electronics to fill the space.
The tragic history of Europe is long, and sombre wall plaques in many European countries mark the locations of various atrocities committed over the ages. This plaque is located on an outside wall of the Piccolo Teatro, and it reads:
“Here between September 8, 1943 and April 25, 1945, hundreds of freedom fighter prisoners of the fascists were tortured and killed. The Little Theater has made this building a center and a symbol of cultural rebirth and the democratic life of Milan.” —Milan April 10, 1994
We again reach design overload, and head toward the charming narrow lanes of the Brera district to search out another fine meal to enjoy in the open air as a warm summer evening descends upon us. There are plenty of opportunities like that in Milan.
A talented busker is standing at a spot where his music nicely fills the intersection of two narrow streets. Then a guy beside me half-whispers, “Do you know who that is!?” The guy seems pretty excited and says, “That’s Thiago Gusi! Right there on the corner!” I’m duly impressed with the music, although I really don’t know who he is. I later search him out and realize he’s a young star these days in Europe and Las Vegas, and now he’s right there in front of us busking for coins, and having a bit of fun!, on a quiet Milano backstreet corner. It’s the kind of crazy-good thing we stumble across in our travels, and he smiles as I drop a few Euros into his basket. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZZtTtA9Sjg
After yet another fine day, it’s time to head back through the quiet streets of Milano, toward our simple apartment. Our time here has been too short, our excellent 2018 Euro trip has finally come to an end, and we need to finish packing for our departure on a long flight back to the States.
In the morning we catch a cab that’s driven by a lean and interesting young woman who is a marathon runner, and she delivers us to the city’s large Malpensa Airport (MXP) – where we discover that Milan is not finished with us yet! This airport is sixth in Europe for the number of countries served with direct flights – the Departure board is impressive – and around 87 different passenger airlines fly through here. This modernista building is filled with light and sculpture, fine music, and more high-end shopping. And then some kind of celebrity made a flashy ‘entrance’ where we were sitting, with a pro-looking film crew to record it all. We were very impressed, although we have no idea who she was!
Carolyn managed to get us a good price on an Emirates flight, and it was one of the nicest flights we’ve had so far. We settled into plush seats with ample leg room, as we lifted from the runway and passed high over the multitude of red-tile roofs below. By dinnertime we were somewhere over the broad Atlantic, with an excellent meal and wine, before we slumped in our seats to relax into the night.
We began this excursion three months earlier in Paris, and then took numerous trains on a long loop through six different countries. And this homeward flight was a fine way to end an amazing summer. — PRW
Wilkes/Kinsman dispatches 