Morelia

SUNDAY (3/14)
I got up early and packed and took the 622 to where I was meeting Nikiya and her friend Dennis. Our bus left at 10:10am from Guadalajara and arrived in Morelia around 1:30pm. We checked into our hotel and went out in search of food.

We thought our hotel was much closer to the main cathedral, but we were wrong and we wandered around for a long time before we finally settled on a place. We assumed there would be a lot of restaurants around the main cathedral when we found it, but Morelia has a different church every two blocks or something so part of our problem was that we didn’t know which one was the main cathedral. After eating we wandered around some more and ended up doing some shopping. I bought a high-waisted jean pencil skirt for 90 pesos that I’m wearing right now! When it was all over it was like 6 and we decided to go back to our hotel and rest before getting dinner.

For dinner I was much more prepared. I looked up restaurants in my guidebook and found one near the main cathedral and the plaza de armas called La Casa del Portal. It was this funky place in an 18th century house with the original wall paper, cluttered with random pieces of old Mexico and custom furniture and the food was delicious. I got a regional soup from Michoacan with a bean base, chiles, avocados, tortilla strips, and cream. It was so good! After dinner we walked around looking for something to do but there wasn’t much. We sat down outside a bar with live music (they played lots of Bee Gees for some reason) and had a few beers. We turned in pretty early.

MONDAY (3/15)
Lots of churches. That’s my impression of Morelia. We had pretty much all of Monday to explore the city since our bus didn’t leave until 8pm. After walking around so much Sunday afternoon we decided we could take it slow, visit all the churches, go to the market, and leave.

We started off by visiting the aqueduct, only a few blocks from out hotel. There was a pretty park with two fountains where the aqueduct ended. One of the fountains was of three topless women holding up a giant platter piled with all the fruit from the region. I noticed, walking around later, that this fountain is kind of a symbol of Morelia.

After that we went to all the churches in the center. I was the keeper of the map so I helped navigate us through the narrow streets with their narrow sidewalks while Nikiya announced that she had no idea where we were. We went to a lot of churches so I’ll only mention the ones of interest. We went to the church we had nicknamed the Dome of the Rock because it had a very impressive gold mosaic dome, but the inside was disappointing. We also went to the main cathedral which was beautiful, the outside and the inside. There was a giant organ with a winding staircase up to it that Dennis climbed up. I took a picture of him on the stairs because the size difference between him and the organ was funny. It was huge. But by far the coolest church in Morelia was the church of San Guadalupe which we saw on our bus tour we took before lunch. The bus stopped there and we all got off. It looked like a regular church from the outside but as soon as I stepped inside I realized this place was special. What I loved about this church was that it was a representation of the Mexican passion for their beliefs, not some attempted reproduction of European designs. The walls and ceiling were completely covered in colorful decorations in the shapes of flowers and fruit with gold accents that glinted in the sunlight let in through the stained glass windows of the giant dome. Everything seemed so hectic and yet it all worked together and had a kind of beautiful symmetry about it.







At the end of the bus tour we were dropped off at El Museo de Dulces (the Candy Museum) where we paid 7 pesos to take a little tour (all in Spanish) lead by a girl in 19th century (?) costume. Apparently Morelia is known for its fruit candies. In the olden days each family made a hobby out of making candies and selling them from their front door. The museum was in the house of one family in particular that took candy beyond just a hobby. They make the candy by turning the fruit into pulp and then heating it and adding sugar. then they take this sugary pulp they spread it out on boards to dry in the sun or stamp them into molds with words or images on them. They gave us a little demonstration where they showed us the heating and adding sugar part and then gave us all little sample cups at the end. It was like sticky applesauce and very tasty. The tour ended in the museum store (of course) and I bought myself some caramels and rolls of the fruity stuff.

After the candy museum and lunch we walked to the market which sat against the back wall of one of the churches further out of the center. It had a lot of the typical things and it was no fun because they wouldn’t bargain at all, but I think I made some good purchases.

By the time we finished at the market it was time to go back to the hotel and get our stuff and go. We stopped at a café on the way back and had some truly awful tea and went on our way. We got a taxi and got on the bus without any problems and got back to Guadalajara around midnight. We shared a taxi and made two stops, first at the Casa Internacional for them and then my house. Then it was sleep for me.