Oaxaca Day 4 Part 1 | One Day at a Time

Continued from Oaxaca Day 3 Part 2.

Even though we are on vacation and I don’t set my morning alarm, I still wake up pretty early in the day like 6 or 7am. Can’t sleep in as well as I used to during my younger days.

I usually don’t eat breakfast, but this is one breakfast I won’t skip. I think this may be one of my favorite breakfast ever. The eggs divorced, I think it’s the dish I’m going to take back with me to Austin and make at home.

This is such a relaxing and enjoyable start to my day. What’s better is because of the high walls, it’s bright but we aren’t in direct sunlight. Perfect weather with a light jacket. Perfect breakfast. Perfect wife.

Love not having a super packed schedule. Didn’t make it out of the door until past 10am. Our hotel is at the northern edge of Centro. Today we are walking South about 15 blocks to a few of the main markets in town.

RL still sporting her sunglasses that she got in Morocco. It’s got a broken frame, but it don’t phase her none.

It’s Friday today, and we are seeing more and more booths set up around this part of town. We also are seeing a few more people. We’ve been the only guests staying at our 4 room hotel until today. Other guests are checking in for the weekend.

Such a beautiful and colorful old city.

Approaching Zocalo, the main square, again.

Mercado Benito Juarez.

Most of the shops are still closed at late morning.

They are making some sort of ice dessert here. All these guys are spinning tubs of it in buckets of ice.

At the next block is Mercado 20 de Noviembre. This is probably the most famous market here in Oaxaca. Just looked it up and it was constructed in 1882!!

Our plan is to eat at one of these stalls for lunch.

There are some people handing you menus to eat at their stalls, but overall the pressure is pretty low. It’s nothing like the Jemaa el-Fna square in Marrakesh. I would rate that experience with touts as a 11. This is maybe 1 or 2, easy peasy.

We’ll come back to November 20 market in a little bit. We are going to visit the handcraft market just around the corner.

Most stalls were still closed. RL was expecting something a little different here. We are here to look for souvenirs for our kids, but it’s just a little depressing in here.

Of the few stalls that were open, the shop tenders just looked at us with these desperate eyes to buy something from them. I haven’t felt this silent pressure/hunger until here. We ended up not staying here long as it was just a little depressing and the wares were the same as basically all other shops in town.

This part of town is definitely less posh than the North part of town where our hotel is located at.

OK, back here and now looking for lunch. I’m determined to eat at one of the food stalls here in the market.

Which one do we pick though? There are many, and they serve similar items.

This is the one. A combination of enough current customers and the type of food that I’d like to eat settled it for us.

Plus, they’ve got a cool table.

The giant tortillas for tlayuda.

Could be flooring, or could be table top.

RL got a mole tamale. It was sweet!

I’ve been craving meat, and this will cure that craving. Yum.

As we were leaving the market, we walked through this alley of grill meat stalls. They all had the same price and serve basically exactly what I just had for lunch.

They also all had the same small grill and will grill your meat right after you buy them.

Back to the Benito Juarez market next door. Now that we’ve had lunch and it’s later, hopefully more shops have opened up.

Lots of souvenir bottles of alcohol.

Mole!

They sold these little wood stick at all the souvenir shops. I just looked it up, it’s a molinillo, a whisk.

So many bottles of liquor.

Bugs! They eat quite a bit of bugs here for traditional Oaxacan cuisine.

Back at zocalo, and there’s some sort of protest going on with everyone holding red flags. I believe it’s a protest for all the missing people in Mexico.

After that kind of hectic visit to the market (definitely our most hectic event this trip), we walked by this coffee shop and decided to have a little coffee to slow down.

Another beautiful courtyard. Unfortunately, the sun was beaming down and it was getting hot even with the sun cover on.

No problem, got our coffee to go. Mine even came prefilled in a glass bottle. Fancy.

Would have been fun to watch a lucha libre event. Maybe next time?

I really love all the mural all around town. America needs more murals. RL want to paint some murals on our fence back home.

Stopped by one of the street stalls to buy some art. While RL went to work, I stood in the shade of this tree with this bright red bark.

Painting acquired. Not our first rodeo. After Morocco, we’ve got experience in transporting art rolled up and in a tube. Easy Peasy.

Look at that red bark.

Our hotel, along with many doorways in the city, were getting decorated this morning.

I asked the staff of the hotel to write in google translate what it was about and this was the reply.

After that morning of activities, it’s time for a nap. After nap time, we had made a reservation to see the garden by Templo Santo Domingo. Originally I thought that garden was open for visiting at any time, but apparently you can only visit during one of the tour times. There were some morning times, and then there’s one at 5pm. From what I read, you just show up 15min before and get in line. Tours are in Spanish, and maybe an hour? I guess if that’s the only way for us to get in, we’ll just have to do that.

At garden entrance, we are the first ones here. The lady guarding the door spoke no English, and we were confused to what’s happening. Where do we wait, where do we get a ticket?

Finally the guide showed up and she spoke some English. The tour is free, and we wait at one of these chairs until it’s time to start. They also allowed no plastic water bottles, so everyone had to store or throw away their water bottles by the front. Are they worried people will bring poison in their water bottles to kill the plants or something?