Today was our last full day in Mexico. We leave tomorrow morning. Pretty soon I’ll be back checking homework and preparing lessons. Sigh. Spring Break needs to last longer.
We met up with Bob for breakfast at our hotel. Yvonne and Lori joined us for some tea. Bob was interested to hear Lori talk about being in Guadalajara for two weeks back in the 1970s and how much the city has changed. Yvonne was interested in all the things Bob knows about tropical plants like heliconias. We made plans to meet Bob and Luis later for lunch.
John and I went with Yvonne and Lori over to the plaza. Bob had suggested that we might find a couple stalls in the market where we could find decent handicrafts. We looked first in the official handicraft market behind the cathedral. These shops are in a couple big white tents.
There was some nice stuff in there, but nothing that would easily fit into luggage to take home. We stopped by the opera house again
and this time it was open. What a grand old theater!
We continued on to the market, but it was claustrophobically crowded and mostly consisted of clothes. Nobody wanted to search all the different levels of the market in search of elusive tinware or blown glass. We needed to get back to Bob’s place. I was all for taking a cab, but Yvonne wanted to try to get there in a horse-drawn carriage. I was sure that the hackman would turn is down, but he agreed to it.
Back at Bob’s place, we discussed going to lunch at a hacienda outside of town. Bob warned us that our route would take us through the ugliest parts of the city. John and I went with Luis and Bob while Yvonne and Lori followed in their rental car. It took a while to arrive, but it was worth it! The hacienda is a beautiful neocolonial building
with a dining room on one patio.
The pool is quite sweet, but the real attraction here is the amazing view of a nearby gorge.
The food was good quite good. Service, even by the normally languid Mexican standards, was deliberately slow. So everybody walked off at different times to explore the grounds. There is a chapel here
and no doubt weddings are the bread and butter of this place.
It was too soon time to get back into the car and drive back to our hotels. Our flight is incredibly early tomorrow morning. I’ll have to get to bed before nine if I have to get up before four in the morning tomorrow. Adios, Mexico!
