Despite having seen some quite amazing and interesting sights it can also be the little things that make an impression. And these can be quite random. We can often be walking down streets, clearly out of place in both the way we look and the way we dress, and people go out of their way to wish us a good afternoon/evening. We can arrive at a place we have never previously heard of, and find that it has a lovely feel to it with people sat out at night in the Plazas and children running around and playing - how they get up for school in a morning we don't understand. A supermarket chain here is bizarrely called 'Liverpool'. A Jewish woman has just been elected President of macho Catholic Mexico. The pink sandstone churches have very ornate carvings that don't seem to have weathered? The Spanish left so many churches! Everywhere!
It's these sort of things that have stuck in our minds as we generally head north. There was no particular reason why we chose to stop in Toluca. It was just on the way. But we found it had the most wonderful botanical gardens in a converted 1930's market building that had been enclosed with enormous stained glass panels. And loads more old Spanish churches and a wonderful Art Deco café where we managed not only afternoon tea but also our evening meal and breakfast. One of the things we have found is that only a minority of accommodations available serves breakfast - so we go out or go short. Unlikely.
We headed to San Miguel de Allende from Toluca via Morelia - somewhere else we knew nothing about. Yet...
San Miguel de Allende was supposed to be an interesting colonial town well known in tourist guide books - but what we found was a thriving art community and a really eclectic Art Centre where we spent the good part of a day admiring things in a whole string of private Art Galleries WITHOUT committing to buy anything. San Miguel also had the most luxurious supermarket we have ever come across anywhere in the world - anything to do with the very large expat community here?
We enjoyed a fantastic stay in SMdA with friends of American motorcyclists we met at the Colombia/Ecuador border - Carol and Art's house is wonderfully colourful, filled with art with tons of almost Gaudi-esque architectural details with a touch of the Grayson Perry too. Art currently owns ten motorcycles including three 1970's British classics; he formed a motorcycle club in town and has a workshop to die for. And he is a nifty welder with some really cool balustrade panels to his credit.
We have time pressures and we want to see as much as we can so we are continually obliged to pack our bags and move on. When we reached Guanajuato, our next stop, we arrived in the centre of town and were suddenly diverted into a series of long, wet, narrow tunnels. We had been warned previously about old mine workings being used as road tunnels. Silver, gold, iron, copper - all sorts of things were mined here. They also have a Romeo and Juliet kissing balcony story across a narrow alley. The story has it that both participants met an early demise at the hands of a non-approving parent. The accommodation we were staying in at Guanajuato was covered with stickers saying things like, 'nothing is real', albeit in Spanish. Maybe they were bought at 'Liverpool '? As we rush through Mexico things are becoming a bit of a blur and we hope that these posts will limit our confusion when we look back on our trip.
