Today, we planned to be away from home for several hours and packed a picnic to bring with us to the Hacienda San Gabriel de Barrera. It is no longer operational and exists now as a museum, but it was a working hacienda in the 17th century. The building itself is preserved well and furnished in period specific pieces. The original family was extremely wealthy and the interiors are stunning. There was a chapel in the home that was no larger than four individual seats for each member of the family but quite ornate and beautiful. There was mostly portraiture in the way of art on the walls, but there were also religious scenes, including one painting of a monk standing between the Virgin Mary on one side and Jesus on the other. She was squirting breast milk into his mouth from her side while Jesus squirted the blood from his wounds into his mouth from the other side. I can just imagine Senora Barrera thinking, "Now where should we put the holy bodily fluids piece? Ah! The hallway."
The rooms in the hacienda were interesting, but the grounds were spectacular. The whole of the place is 237,000 square feet and is garden after garden, many inspired by geographic regions and others by a particular fruit or flower. There was the Jardin de Arabe, Jardin de Romans, Jardin de Naranja, Jardin de Mexico and 13 others like them. It was one of the more beautiful gardens I've visited and being set in among the walls of the hacienda and aqueducts and courtyards, it's possible to feel you have stepped back in time. We brought our books and picked a garden with benches to read in for an hour or so and then picked another in which to have our picnic. Days like today remind me of the good fortune we have in the luxury of time. On a different kind of trip, we would have to walk the gardens instead of use the gardens. I'm glad we were able to spend so much time there today.
We took a taxi back to town and tried once again to visit the inside of the Teatro Juarez and met some bad news: it is closed for the remainder of our stay here, so (good news!) we will have to return to Guanajuato another time in our lives.
We went to a tiny museum on the same block as the theater, a former convent which has mostly been destroyed but it is interesting to note that it was below street level. There are several sites throughout the city that make clear the street level has changed multiple times, in some cases becoming lower and in other cases becoming higher. We walked and talked, heading to the opposite end of town and in and out of shops and churchs (including one that had a painting depicting the circumcision of Jesus--is it possible I don't look up enough in American churches or is something going on here?), until I couldn't take the sun anymore. Today was a perfect day and the sun pierces the skin differently on these clear bright days than it does when it is hazy. We returned home for siesta and then headed back to the centro for dinner.
There hasn't been a meal yet we have both absolutely savored, so Chris did some research online before we went out. While there is no Yelp here to help us make a decision, he found some travel sites that had restaurant reviews. We went to Cafe Ofelia on Calle Truco just behind the Basilica in Plaza de Paz where they serve margaritas in a glass the size of a bucket that comes with a straw and a spoon in case you're not quite sure how to attack it. The guacamole here, in general, is better than at home because of the more balanced ratio between avocado and everything else, but this was the best yet. Chris ordered the traditional dish of GTO which is enchiladas mineras, a favorite of the mine workers. They are cheese enchiladas in a red sauce with grilled chicken, roasted carrots and potatoes on a bed of shredded lettuce and topped with queso and crema. He enjoyed his meal thoroughly and I ordered something else the name of which I cannot remember but which was also very good. If you find yourselves in GTO and interested in Mexican food, go there. We're back now and Chris is watching a baseball game with Mexican announcers, and I'm about to pick up my book and likely fall asleep before I get to the bottom of the page.
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