Previa Road Trip: Guanajuato, Guanajuato

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Happy birthday goes our to our special niece, Shannon!!! This is the first day she is a Mom on her birthday.

Unfortunately today is the day we are leaving Zacatecas. It is bitter sweet - we need to continue our holiday. I took pictures of the cactus plants on the Hotel property. Once diving around the city you realize just how spread out and big it really is.

We drove through Guadalupe, around Leon (formally León de los Aldama) and Silao. Leon is a huge city dealing in manufactured leather goods.

We stopped at a huge Chedraui - another huge Mexican supermercado. We had a fellow hand wash our car for 40 pesos. By the time we hit Silao it had started raining.

Once in Guanajuato, our destination for a few days, we followed the blue dot to our Holiday Inn Express. The blue dot assumed both entrance ways to the Hotel would be open, nope the one we needed was not. The front desk gave Ken a Wi-fi access code so he could book a room at a cheaper rate (shameless plug for TripAdvisor). Once Ken registered us a couple of staff members came out and unlocked the gate just for us. I somehow got us an upgrade to a main floor, kingsize room adjacent to the pool.

Guanajuato - Holiday Inn Pool Side

We spent the evening in our room eating food we brought with us, doing the blog and the laundry. We knew this particular Holiday Inn as we stayed here before. And by luck our main floor room was across the hall from the free laundry, this is the only place I have ever washed pillows.

Beer makes laundry better

We enjoyed doing our own laundry.

Laundry night in Guanajuato, GTO

Thursday, July 12, 2012

We walked into Guanajuato (Gto) from our Hotel. We got all gussied up and off we went. Oh, I forgot to mention the wonderful breakfast of Mexican faire. It included fresh fruit and juice (fresh squeezed papaya juice) and baked goods - yummy! The breakfast room is in the court yard looking up 5 stories. Then we had to walk to wear off the food.

We took the road less traveled back into a residential area. Wow, amazing old buildings and bridges on this foot path called the Camino Antigua. Then we climbed some hill in an area called Marfil which had upper end to middle class, modern homes. We went through areas like little towns and one area of extreme poverty. The structure with the tarped in walls was old, rusty bed springs.

Camino Antigua

I thought it best to leave this guy alone.

Once into the centro historical of the city it was quite hot. The buildings have amazing architecture (this is an understatement) and bright colours. The houses built on hill sides were everywhere. I wanted to take a picture each way I turned - from domed buildings, stone structures, cathedrals to tunnels. The city has many more people than Zacatecas and any food, except at the hotel, did not measure up, at least so far.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Again, the most delicious breakfast you could imagine - a new addition was scrambled eggs in a rojo salsa.

This day we decided to take the bus to an area that took us closer to down town or centro historica. Then we walked. We walked up a hill, actually several hills up through residential areas and small commercial zones. The view of the city of Gto. was breath taking with its multicolored homes built on the hillside.

We were up so high we were up at the statue of Juan Jose de los Reyes Martinez, a young miner and hero of the war of Independence 1810 (nicknamed El Piila). This monument has spectacular views of the city.

Once you go up you must come down. We decided not to use the stairs by everyone else located at the base of the statue and discovered stairs used by locals north from the monument. My legs were shaking on the stairs.