Day 4

Day 4

Started the day at a café (Boulenc) recommended by our tour driver/farmer who supplies eggs to the place. It was hard to find since it had no sign. From the outside it looks like a run down building, but inside it’s beautiful. Generally the interior design of restaurants here is much more visually interesting than restaurants in the US. The food was very good and when we were leaving, there was a long line to get in. We then walked to the Mercado. It was like markets we have seen in many places. Three hundred stalls selling everything. The difference was that, like in every other place here, they took our temperature at the entrance and squirted us with disinfectant. It was around 11 am and many stalls were still closed. We tasted a spoonful of chapulines (fried grasshoppers), a local specialty. Al hated it, but it’s just crunchy and a little spicy.

In the afternoon we walked to a neighborhood called Jalatlaco, which by some travel magazine was named the second coolest neighborhood in Mexico.  It is very colorful, full of all kinds of murals painted on buildings. Bo took a lot of pictures. It was a very hot day (about 90F) and we were dying for ice cream. That turned out to be a huge challenge.  We went into  10 bodegas, cafes, and restaurants to no avail. Nobody had ice cream (but most had hot chocolate) and they looked at us strangely. Finally close to our hotel we found a restaurant that had ice cream. It was excellent, and one of the flavors was rosemary – quite unusual and delicious.

For dinner we went to Casa Oaxaca, one of the top restaurants.  The same as the two previous restaurants, the appetizers were better than the entree. We were lucky to get a table on the roof terrace so we had a nice breeze and a view of the Santo Domingo church.










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