Up and out without breakfast and only time for cubiletes con queso and a cup of decaf to go in order to make our trolley tour of the city. We hadn't purchased tickets in advance and the tourism office where we learned of the tour appeared closed. When Chris went to check another travel agency to see if they sold tickets for the same tour, a girl approached me in the plaza and I practiced my rusty and not so trusty Spanish and, in a surprise move, was able to communicate with her. Well, I communicated with her well enough to determine that the office was abierto, not cerrado and that there was still tiempo to comprar the tickets. I don't think we could have discussed Kant, but I was still pleased.
The tour was in English and Spanish and the tour guide did a nice job of balancing, although when it was their turn the Spanish speakers on the trolley did seem to be laughing a whole lot more than the English speakers. I recommend the tour, however, because it was full of information about the architecture of the region which is breathtaking and largely from the 18th century and the guide pointed out original features compared to more contemporary ones and explained the social significance of many of the buildings we've been passing on our walks. We revisited Benito Juarez Parque on the tour and learned that it was the area in which the town was originally settled by two Franciscan monks and their dogs (who sniffed out the underground springs in the area and dug until water sprang from the earth), and today we noticed dozens of egrets in the tree tops within the park. It seemed anachronistic to see such large white birds flying in a cityscape: anachronistic but phenomenal. The tour continued higher and higher up in the city and deposited us at a vista from which we could see the entire metropolis below us and it was a stunning vantage.
On our way back to the beginning, the guide pointed out a market we hadn't been to yet and so Chris and I made our way there on foot at the conclusion of the tour. Seeing the produce, we decided on the spot to make soup and salsa and bought tomatillos, several different chiles, cilantro, carrots, cabbage, onion, garlic, celery, limes and more. We could have gotten four dozen perfect red roses and/or birds of paradise and/or a new belt and/or a cow's liver all in the same market, but we didn't. Instead, we snaked from doorway to doorway and found an artisan market behind the perishable one and wandered in and out of booths with more than even interesting people could imagine.
We had lunch out, around the corner from home, in a courtyard restaurant passing through the door of which seemed to transport us to another world entirely and then picked up some last minute items for our dinner feast, including a rotisserie chicken that came from a doorway in which there was nothing but a floor to ceiling built-in rotisserie with dozens of chickens roasting and dripping their fat onto a pile of onions and peppers a few of which the woman scraped into a bag with each chicken purchased.
Back home, Chris did a little research on the internet before making a spicy-hot tomatillo salsa in a mortar with a pestle and I threw the rest of our purchases into a pot to simmer for the afternoon. He played his guitar and uploaded photos, and I read until it was time for happy hour and we went around the corner for a drink (well, two, because of it being happy hour and all). I had a beer, but Chris ordered a margarita which turned out to be a glass of tequila with salt around the rim and possibly one lime squeezed into it. I'm still not sure if he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I guess I'll know if he orders another one tomorrow. Our dinner was a success and a perfect combination: the salsa swirled into the soup really made it.
We don't have any sort of a plan for tomorrow, but I'm excited to make one with each new step we take.
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