{"id":49755,"date":"2025-04-20T20:50:24","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T01:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=49755"},"modified":"2025-04-24T22:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T03:51:08","slug":"oaxaca-day-5","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=49755","title":{"rendered":"Oaxaca Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Oaxaca Day 4 Part 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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!<\/p>\n

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\nSpeaking 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.<\/p>\n

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\nAgain, 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.<\/p>\n

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\nThese temporary stalls that they’ve been setting up the past few days are finally completed.<\/p>\n

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\nBugs, bugs bugs!<\/p>\n

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\nJust 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?<\/p>\n

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\nLooking for a lunch spot. We are debating between eating at a street stall or an actual sit down restaurant.<\/p>\n

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\nMaybe one of these stalls for lunch?? Maybe not? We couldn’t decide, so we’ll just keep walking around.<\/p>\n

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\nIt’s turned into a photo safari. This NW part of Centro is much less touristy and it’s quiet and beautiful.<\/p>\n

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\nThe 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.<\/p>\n

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\nI want this gate.<\/p>\n

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\nWe’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.<\/p>\n

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\nSo picturesque.<\/p>\n

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\nOh, what’s that? Museum? Store? Either way, we are checking it out.<\/p>\n

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\nTurned 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.<\/p>\n

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\nLove the color contrast.<\/p>\n

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\nOld aqueduct? Just looked it up on Google, Xochimilco aqueduct built in the 1700s and no longer used. Cool.<\/p>\n

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\nThey’ve built homes\/shops\/doorways under the old aqueduct.<\/p>\n

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\nThis is my favorite mural that I saw in Oaxaca. Just love it.<\/p>\n

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\nLove the paint application of heavy paint and slight drip. Beautiful.<\/p>\n

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\nRL really loves this gate.<\/p>\n

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\nRL found a little antique shop.<\/p>\n

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\nThere’s another market up here. Mercado Sanchez Pascuas. After the mildly depressing tourist markets, we were a little bit hesitant to enter this one.<\/p>\n

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\nThe 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.<\/p>\n

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\nThey had a dining section here as well. Just your regular people going about their breakfast\/lunch.<\/p>\n

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\nWhen 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.<\/p>\n

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\nI took this photo for the smoke, but upon looking at it on the computer, noticed all the power lines.<\/p>\n

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\nRestaurant spot for lunch…or not. They were still only serving breakfast. Typical Oaxaca, it’s past 11am and they are still only serving breakfast.<\/p>\n

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\nSince 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.<\/p>\n

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\nI am guessing that short lady in white making the tortilla is Carmen?<\/p>\n

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\nWhile 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.<\/p>\n

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\nSuccess, got the tacos. 3 tacos for 84 pesos, so just about $4. Cheap!!<\/p>\n

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\nLet’s take these tacos home and give them a try.<\/p>\n

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\nWe 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\nDressed, and ready to go eat soon.<\/p>\n

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\nThirsty 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.<\/p>\n

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\nThis 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.<\/p>\n

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\nWalked 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.<\/p>\n

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\nSaturday evening, people are out and about.<\/p>\n

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\nAl 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?<\/p>\n

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\nDinner spot. Michelin one star restaurant, our second Michelin one star restaurant on this trip.<\/p>\n

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\nAfter being cold during dinner last night, I brought my jacket just in case…ended up not needing it though. Of course.<\/p>\n

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\nI want to say these are cacao fruits, with the cacao beans inside used to make chocolate.<\/p>\n

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\nBeautiful traditional interior.<\/p>\n

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\nThen 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.<\/p>\n

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\nWill 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.<\/p>\n

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\nFamily style dining here.<\/p>\n

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\nYou 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.<\/p>\n

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\nIt seems like all their clay ware has been handmade.<\/p>\n

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\nIn 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?<\/p>\n

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\nVery beautiful and colorful.<\/p>\n

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\nOur first dish, a tamale.<\/p>\n

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\nWith real corn husk smoke!<\/p>\n

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\nWoah! 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.<\/p>\n

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\nStew with two different kinds of flowers.<\/p>\n

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\nIt was a cauliflower hiding in that puff.<\/p>\n

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\nNom nom nom.<\/p>\n

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\nThey opened up the roof once the sun got down low enough not to shine in directly.<\/p>\n

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\nGet 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.<\/p>\n

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\nAfter dinner, we came out to a street full of cyclists and music blasting. I am guessing it’s some sort of bike tour.<\/p>\n

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\nPlume of smoke still hanging about.<\/p>\n

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\nOne last photo of Templo Santo Domingo because we retire back to our hotel room to pack.<\/p>\n

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\nWalked by this mezcal bottle bus again.<\/p>\n

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\nDid 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Home, Sweet Home<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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! … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":48974,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-49755","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49755"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49957,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49755\/revisions\/49957"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}