Emily and Linda’s Travel Blog

Thursday we had a laid back day (pretty much the usual attitude when we travel). Breakfast of chilaquiles (scrambled eggs with tortillas and salsa)at the hotel.  We appear to be the only guests so far, so we get a lot of attention from the very gracious staff. Then off to the Parroquia and the town center again. The Parroquia cathedral is notable because it’s Gothic in style. 

We ambled around the area, watching the buskers in the square and poking around in the shops

We were particularly taken with this pod of whales (ballenas) by Juana Gomez. We’re pondering going back to buy one of the medium-sized ones to ship back home. 

Next stop was the Centro Cultural de Ignacio Gomez also known as the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, a famous art school founded in the last century.  It’s housed in a former convent with a beautiful courtyard garden (I seem to have lost the courtyard picture)  

Inside, we stopped to see a huge indoor mural painted by David Siqueiros. He was a contemporary and colleague of Orozco and Diego Rivera and taught for a while at the Bellas Artes, giving classes to Canadian and US veterans in the 1940s. The mural was intended to be called The Life and Work of Generalissimo Don Ignacio Allende, but it was never completed so now it’s known as “El mural inconcluso” or the unfinished mural and is studied as a window into his technique since he sketched out the grids and outlines for the remaining part of the work. 

There’s also a lovely cafe along one of the garden’s arcades where Linda had an aggressively skewered, but delicious crab-cake burger and I enjoyed salmon with esquites (grilled, spiced corn). Max declared herself still “llena” (full) from breakfast so no other dish to show  

By then we were ready to head back to the hotel for a siesta.