Day 1 – travel day Traveling during pandemic is definitely different. The airports were about as busy as before, but everybody was masked, and surprisingly many people were double-masked. And both flights were full. When we landed in Oaxaca, they were very well organized. People led us from the plane to the airport building, before entering the building they took everybody’s temperature, squirted us with a disinfectant, and collected a Covid questionnaire we had to fill out. Immigration and customs took all of 5 minutes and we were out. We took a taxi to the hotel (Quinta Real). The ride took about 25 minutes. At the entrance to the hotel, the same procedure was repeated – temperature, squirt with disinfectant and fill out another questionnaire. As we later found out, this is a standard procedure at entering any place (minus questionnaire). We checked in and went into our room to unpack. The hotel premises are spectacular as it is an enormous 16 th century former monastery wit...
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 neigh...
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 re...
Comments
Post a Comment