Day 5

Day 5  Saturday

Since we need to have a negative Covid test in order to get back to the US, the hotel concierge arranged for a testing person to come to our hotel room to test us. She arrived promptly at 9 am, did the nose swab test for both of us and told us we’ll get the results via email between noon and 1 pm. After the test we embarked on a trek to another Oaxaca neighborhood called Xochimilco. It’s the oldest part of town and home to many weavers’ workshop. Bo found a picture of a very colorful street of old adobe houses, which was  taken somewhere in Xochimilco, but there was no street name. We must have asked about 10 people where this street was before a woman by the church pointed out where she thought it was. Then we stopped at a weaver’s workshop (saw the looms and bought some stuff) and he also pointed in the same direction. So we went… If this was indeed the street, it was full of construction equipment and much changed. Generally, the area is being gentrified with lots of new and renovated posh houses. Apparently it is now very expensive to live there. On the way back to the hotel we picked up a sandwich (excellent!) at Boulec because the wait to get into the restaurant was too long. At about 12:50 we got the test results – both negative, as expected. It was getting very hot, but we decided to walk to the second most important church in Oaxaca La Soledad. It’s a beautiful church (and also open as opposed to Santo Domingo), and next to the church is a market with the oldest ice cream places in town so we had to have ice cream.

We had to wait out the hottest hours in air conditioned hotel room. It cooled down around 6 pm so we went out again. For dinner, we decided to another highly rated restaurant called La Olla. When we sat down and ordered drinks, we almost decided that this will be it and we’ll leave because it was too warm inside and the menu didn’t look very exciting. But then we decided to try an appetizer. We ordered a vegetarian tlayuda and it was fantastic so we decided to try a main course. We selected a chili relleno, but substituted meat for cheese and beans. Again, it was excellent – didn’t even resemble the dish under the same name served in most restaurants in the US. Then we also had to order a desert – a mango tart  - just as good as the rest. It was probably our best meal here.









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