We had been in Oaxaca for four days and had barely set foot in the city! So we set out with the general idea of getting to the Museum of Oaxacan Culture in the church of Santo Domingo. We had a nice (light) breakfast in a little cafe, and then strolled up the main pedestrian street, Calle Alcala. Our eye was caught by a store displaying gorgeous rugs. It turned out that this was a collective from Teotitlan del Valle, offering very fair prices. Let’s just say that our group contributed to the economy of the village.
Here are a few views of the town’s colonial center.
Patti made the good suggestion to save the museum for the hot early afternoon hours, so we spent the next couple of hours exploring the streets west of Santo Domingo.
We encountered some interesting political art…
And some quiet corners…
We returned to the hotel for a quick bite and something cool.
Refreshed, we headed for the museum…only to find that it, like all the museums at the archeological sites, had been closed by Covid.
We decided to lick our wounds at one of the loveliest hotels in town, the Quinta Real, a converted convent. This was the nun’s wash house.
We then did a loop to have a look at the most famous church, La Nuestra Senora de la Soledad.
Ever since the coffee at the Quinta Real, I’d been feeling a bit woozy…I thought it was the heat. By now I was really dragging, and retreated to the hotel with Sue. The others saw something special: the carnival parade put on by a number of the surrounding pueblas.
As it turned out, I had some kind of food poisoning of unknown origin: water? Food? Who knew? I was a bit sick until late evening, but was so exhausted that I more or less slept through…thus missing what our culinary shock troops described as one of the best meals of the trip at the restaurant Origen!