March 20, 2019
We had our first experience of the Mexican bus system. A pretty long cab ride took us to the enormous, labyrinthine bus station northeast of the center, where we managed to find our way to the buses for Puebla. The bus itself was incredibly comfortable: the buses are divided into a number of categories, and we had chosen one down from the top. Terrific seats, great AC.,,if only we could have understood the movie.!
In little more than an hour we were at the bus station in Puebla, and a few minutes later having a coffee on the Zocalo.
The cathedral, set in a rather arid square, is magnificent inside; it was begun in 1557 but consecrated only in 1649.
From the Zocalo we wandered through the really lovely Spanish Colonial center; the place radiates a kind of calm joy, punctuated now and then by something colorful!
Every visitor to Puebla is directed to “Sweet Street,” an entire lane devoted to candy stores. Down this street one also finds something less sweet: one of the first sites of the Mexican revolution. In 1910 three siblings, Carmen, Máximo, and Aquiles Serdán fostered one of the first conspiracies against the Porfirio Diaz government; their house was surrounded by federal troops, and both brothers died in the ensuing gun battle. The house is still pocked with bullet holes.
From Sweet Street our path led us to the Teatro Principal, the oldest standing theater in the Americas, built in 1742.
We then set out in search of the Puebla branch of Talavera de la Reina, which proved a bit hard to find…which was just fine, given the beauty of the streets in Puebla!
We did finally find Talavera de la Reina. We had brought a large vase home on our last trip and wanted to get a couple of small pieces. Puebla is the center of the Mexican production of this kind of majolica, which started in the town of Talavera de la Reina, near Toledo, Spain and was then brought to the colony in the seventeenth century.
We finished out day with a visit to the Biblioteca Palafroxiana, the oldest public library in the Americas. The library is based on an initial donation of 5000 books by Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, the bishop of Puebla, in 1646. A century later, a purpose-built library was opened; the collection grew to 45,000 volumes and includes some gorgeous holdings.
The bus ride back was beautiful; the road to Puebla passes out of the Valley of Mexico through a pass alongside the twinned volcanos that mark the valley’s southern border, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl; the former is still active–in fact, we missed a spectacular eruption by a matter of days. That’s them in the background!
