After wandering around looking for a farmacia in which to buy a phone card (which by the way is reminiscent of a prayer card as one side is a picture of the Virgin) and then wandering around looking for a payphone and then standing around figuring out how said payphone works, we made our travel arrangements for Guanajuato: we are renting a casita for a week and while the website of the place shows a thousand pictures of a pool, the phone call confirmed that they don't actually have one. Our bus tickets were less expensive than the shuttle that brought us here from the airport and we leave at 8:45 tomorrow morning.
On our way to the center to take care of that business, we saw a small work crew repaving some streets in our neighborhood. Because the streets are cobblestone, this entailed men digging out old loose stones, fitting new ones, hammering them in place and then covering the new stones with sandy soil. The end result is a bit like a new grave: the road patch is a slightly lighter color and raised from the surrounding surface. Eventually, the feet of the people who cross over will tamp it. Don't think just because the street stones seem haphazard that they are; they have been carefully placed and that gave me something to think about.
We lost a lot of the day to some work I had to do for school, but we did return to the art studios we visited our first day when they were closed and it was rainy. Today, the sun was shining brightly and there were artists in residence: piano music filled the courtyard; sculptors plied their trade on the balcony outdoors; we saw elbows from beyond easels in several cells. The setting here is a natural backdrop to the creation of beautiful things.
We had dinner at a Lebanese restaurant just up the street from our place and Chris said if we could find decent Indian, too, then we could probably live here. After dinner, we went to the Teatro Santa Ana to see the Players Workshop production of The Art of Murder. It wasn't anywhere near the best play I've seen but it wasn't so close to the worst, either. The lead was played by a guy who does actually have an IMDB page, mostly bits and pieces on shows like Dallas and Knots Landing and Chips and T.J. Hooker. The 80s, maybe, were his heyday. The theater itself is a super cool space, also within the Biblioteca Publica and so in a room that was originally part of the convent. It had a very high ceiling, stone wall on three sides but was still an intimate space with only about 75 seats in total. I would go again but they are at the start of their run and the next show isn't until mid August.
It was dark when the play let out and we haven't been in the center in the evening yet so we headed in rather than out. The Parroquia is more majestic at night than during the day, lit from within and behind each spire at every level with the palm trees that flank it enlivened by the warm breeze. There were dozens of mariachi musicians strolling in the plaza offering a soundtrack to the scene. Charming.
When we returned home, we discovered there was a fireworks show in honor of something and we could see it from our porch which was a nice way to finish the evening. Tomorrow, we're off to Guanajuato, and if we have a decent internet connection, I'll continue to post while we're there.
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