Continued from Oaxaca Day 4 Part 2.

Out last full day here in Oaxaca. The only plan we’ve got today is for an early dinner reservation. Today is our actual anniversary date. Happy 11th year anniversary RL, I love you!

Speaking of love, I love you breakfast. This is the best breakfast I can remember having. Everything about this breakfast, the food, the setting, etc. etc. is just so good.

Again, not ADA compliant. With that said, most of the sidewalk in Centro is very well maintained. We didn’t make it out of our hotel until it’s almost lunch time. Today is our day to take things even slower than the previous days.

These temporary stalls that they’ve been setting up the past few days are finally completed.

Bugs, bugs bugs!

Just mostly the same thing that we see in all the other shops around town. Who buys these items? I guess Mexicans from other parts of Mexico?

Looking for a lunch spot. We are debating between eating at a street stall or an actual sit down restaurant.

Maybe one of these stalls for lunch?? Maybe not? We couldn’t decide, so we’ll just keep walking around.

It’s turned into a photo safari. This NW part of Centro is much less touristy and it’s quiet and beautiful.

The food stall that we were looking to eat for lunch was not open today. I guess we’ll keep on looking for a lunch spot.

I want this gate.

We’ll come here for lunch, but this is such a beautiful street. We’ll keep walking and exploring for fun before we circle back here for lunch.

So picturesque.

Oh, what’s that? Museum? Store? Either way, we are checking it out.

Turned out to be a store, no photos allowed. They sold basically the same things that we saw in the markets all over town, but at like 10x the price. Probably better quality, but not 10x better quality. Nope, not for us.

Love the color contrast.

Old aqueduct? Just looked it up on Google, Xochimilco aqueduct built in the 1700s and no longer used. Cool.

They’ve built homes/shops/doorways under the old aqueduct.

This is my favorite mural that I saw in Oaxaca. Just love it.

Love the paint application of heavy paint and slight drip. Beautiful.

RL really loves this gate.

RL found a little antique shop.

There’s another market up here. Mercado Sanchez Pascuas. After the mildly depressing tourist markets, we were a little bit hesitant to enter this one.

The moment we entered, it was a whole different vibe than the other markets. It was smaller, quieter, cleaner, and not depressing at all. People were just about setting up their shops and doing their shopping. Just a normal neighborhood open air market devoid of all tourists other than me and RL.

They had a dining section here as well. Just your regular people going about their breakfast/lunch.

When we came out of the market, I noticed a giant plume of smoke out in the distance. Wild fire? Agricultural fire? Either way, I hope it’s far away and won’t affect our flight home tomorrow.

I took this photo for the smoke, but upon looking at it on the computer, noticed all the power lines.

Restaurant spot for lunch…or not. They were still only serving breakfast. Typical Oaxaca, it’s past 11am and they are still only serving breakfast.

Since the sit down restaurants are still only serving breakfast, we’ll give this street cart a try. Lots of customers, so hopefully it’ll be good and clean.

I am guessing that short lady in white making the tortilla is Carmen?

While I was waiting for the tacos, RL notices another pay phone. I guess that makes two pay phones that we’ve seen in this city.

Success, got the tacos. 3 tacos for 84 pesos, so just about $4. Cheap!!

Let’s take these tacos home and give them a try.

We forgot to get salsa so got some of the verde salsa from our hotel that they use for the eggs divorced. Tacos were good. RL really liked hers. I was just ok with mine, but happy to try tacos from a street stall.

After a quick lunch, it’s nap time. We’ve got an early dinner reservation at 5pm. It’s really early, but that’s the only reservation time we could get. We thought about changing it to a later time, but ended up keeping it since we figured tomorrow we’re leaving so we might as well call it an early night tonight.

Dressed, and ready to go eat soon.

Thirsty after my nap. I feel like I’ve been drinking so much fluids here. It’s been a dry climate, and I think we are losing more moisture than we think.

This is the space right next to our hotel. It’s apparently a wedding venue, and they’ve got music blasting. Knowing what I know about Mexican weddings, this will be one long and loud night for us. Usually would annoy me a lot, but I figured I’ll get the full Mexican city center experience today.

Walked by the garden on our way to dinner. The wedding inside the garden is also bumping with music. Typical rich Mexican wedding, everyone is dressed super formal and super glitzy.

Saturday evening, people are out and about.

Al Pastor!!! This is the first al pastor vertical spit I’ve seen on this entire trip. It’s everywhere in Mexico City, but hard to find here in Oaxaca. Maybe if I’m still hungry after dinner, I’ll drop by here and get a taco to go?

Dinner spot. Michelin one star restaurant, our second Michelin one star restaurant on this trip.

After being cold during dinner last night, I brought my jacket just in case…ended up not needing it though. Of course.

I want to say these are cacao fruits, with the cacao beans inside used to make chocolate.

Beautiful traditional interior.

Then we were led to a side room to sit at a table with direct sunlight beaming down on us. Not only that, it’s the only table in the middle of the room with one chair back facing the hallway. Terrible terrible seat, seriously.

Will not let a terrible table ruin our dinner. There were other open tables, so after a firm request to be moved out of the strong sunlight, we were moved to this table on the side of the main dining area. Ahhh, much better.

Family style dining here.

You can see our first table right over RL’s shoulder. They sat some poor couple there not too long after we moved our table. The sun would beam on them for the better part of dinner. Glad we moved, and I feel a little bit bad for them.

It seems like all their clay ware has been handmade.

In another side room they had a display of tomatoes. One of the dishes we ordered today is a mix of Oaxacan tomatoes. If they run low, do they start taking tomatoes from this display and serve to guests?

Very beautiful and colorful.

Our first dish, a tamale.

With real corn husk smoke!

Woah! All the different tomatoes on one giant plate. This one dish was like 4 times larger than all the other dishes we got. I thought this was the star of the show with all these tomatoes and different flavors. Some were crunchy, almost like a radish.

Stew with two different kinds of flowers.

It was a cauliflower hiding in that puff.

Nom nom nom.

They opened up the roof once the sun got down low enough not to shine in directly.

Get in my mouth. Too bad I couldn’t stuff my stomach anymore. Wish I could eat more of the tomatoes. They were all so novel and delicious in their own way. Eating that one tomato salad in Spain a few years ago really changed my opinion of tomatoes and the amazing flavors that you can get with them.

After dinner, we came out to a street full of cyclists and music blasting. I am guessing it’s some sort of bike tour.

Plume of smoke still hanging about.

One last photo of Templo Santo Domingo because we retire back to our hotel room to pack.

Walked by this mezcal bottle bus again.

Did some packing, and took advantage of our outdoor tub for the last chance tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll be heading home back to Austin. Short, fun, and easy trip. I would say one of our more romantic anniversary trips due to the slower speed and the more conversations we had.

Well, it was a romantic trip, but tonight was not romantic. Not for us at least. The wedding next door was blasting music. First mariachi music for hours, then club music. By blasting, I mean BLASTING!!! Then there was a club or bar close by that we could hear with a different type of music. But there’s more, there was a third loud music source that we couldn’t pinout that we could hear as well. Maybe another wedding? Cacophony was the word that came to mind. After 4 pretty quiet nights here, tonight everything got turned up to 11.

We both had trouble falling asleep, even with ear plugs. It wasn’t until 1am that I fell asleep, and I needed some xanax to help me get there. Unsure when they shut down the music, but it was finally off when I woke up at 4am to use the restroom. Despite the loud music and hard time falling asleep, I really just embraced the experience instead of stressing out about it. Helps that I know we’ll be home tomorrow night and will be sleeping in a quiet house.

To be continued at Home, Sweet Home.