Day 2 4/21/2021

 Day 2 – Wednesday 4/21/2021

By the time we got out of our room, it was 10 am so we headed for breakfast to a place recommended by Bo’s Spanish teacher from Mexico  (Titos). Then we decided to take a city tour to get an overview. The tour was in a double decker bus, only in Spanish and it took is through the historical center and some of the adjacent neighborhoods with lots of explanations about the history and architecture. It was a good Spanish lesson. We also stopped at a cooperative where at several different stands we could taste (and get explanations) local ice-cream, sweet bread, mescal, chocolate, and most importantly the seven moles of Oaxaca. They also had artesanias weaving wool and cotton rugs. After the tour we got back to the hotel for a little rest, and arranged a private tour for tomorrow. Then out again – Bo wanted to see a store that specializes in Latin American designers so we walked there, and then to have a late lunch or rather an early dinner to a restaurant Los Danzantes. The place was packed so we had to wait 20 minutes for a table, but it was nice because we chatted with a Peruvian couple from San Francisco. The restaurant is visually beautiful, and the food was very good too. We just ordered too much: a fantastic fish/tomato ceviche with jicama, a candied pork rib dish and their version of a typical Oaxacan dish called tlayudas (a mix of shrimp, Oaxacan white cheese and red cabbage wrapped in blue corn tortills with some special sauce). We were so full afterwards that we had  to walk it off so we went to a neighborhood called Xochimilco, which is very picturesque, and then to a very strange mescal place called Union de Palenqueros, which Bo saw in some documentary. Since we walked all the way there, we had to buy some mescal. At 7 pm, we ended up by the Santo Domingo church, which is now closed all the time and they only open it for mass at about 7:10 pm. Unfortunately, when we honestly said that we only want to see the church for a few minutes, the guy wouldn’t let us in. Mext time, we’ll say we are going to mass. All together, we walked about 7 miles, but walking with a mask on in hot weather is no fun. Everybody wears a mask here so if you don’t, you’d stick out like a sore thumb.

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