Semana Santa...Guanajuato!

Last week was Semana Santa in Mexico, a week-long Roman Catholic tradition leading up to Easter (although here they don’t celebrate Easter). All classes are canceled during Semana Santa so we had the week off to relax and travel. The Friday that started out the week was Olivia’s birthday, so we decided to go out for a nice dinner. Thus, Olivia, Christian and I went to this amazing pizza place in the zócalo called Amalfi’s for delicious pizza and a bottle of wine. Afterward we went to a loft-like bar on the top of a hotel for fancy cocktails, and to finish off the night we stopped in Cholula to check out Container City (super cool arrangement of old train box cars that have been stacked and renovated to create a innovate collection of bars, shops and cafes).
We hung out in Puebla for the weekend, and on Monday Christian, Brittany, Olivia and I went to the Lucha libre fights. There was a group of blonde Americans that got a lot of verbal attention, although I think they were blissfully aware that the shouts and insults of the rambunctious teenage crowd were directed at them. Olivia bought a lucha mask and we all took pictures in the mask. The fights were hilarious and entertaining, with the shouts, chants and foot stomping adding to the rowdy atmosphere.
We had made plans to visit a friend of Christian’s in Leon for the week but due to a change in her plans we hastily changed our plans to stay in a hostel in Guanajuato (which is about 30 min south of Leon). So on Wednesday morning we set out, just the three of us, towards our destination of Guanajuato. Roughly five hours later we arrived to the quaint city of Guanajuato. Similar to San Miguel de Allende all the streets are cobblestone and incredible narrow. We drove around for at least 20 min trying to find our hostel using numerous directions given by people we passed, before we abandoned the car in a parking lot to set out on foot. It took less than 5 min to find what had taken us 30 min to circle countless times. Guanajuato is certainly not a very good place to try and navigate by car. We checked into our hostel and we were shown to our room by the hostess who we were unable to tell whether she was on drugs or just normally very slow and spacey. We were all pretty tired from the day of driving, but we walked down to a small little plaza and had dinner at a little café with a Van Gough theme. First night was pretty sleepless, as a Spanish couple in the corner snored the entire night. I didn’t know it was possible to snore that loud.
On our first morning in Guanajuato we walked around the narrow streets and peered into the numerous churches. We visited the university and climbed the mountainous stairs (comparable to mounting the pyramid of the sun in Teotihuacán) and got a great view of the city. Next we visited Diego Rivera’s old colonial style home, which has been converted into a museum. It has more than 100 original sketches and paintings by Diego. After that we took a bus to the Museum of Mummies. More than 50 mummies—preserved in the old mining soil of Guanajuato—are displayed in the museum, including baby mummies and the smallest mummy in the world. They all looked pretty creepy with their mouths open in screaming positions and their preserved skin sticking to their bones. But it was a pretty cool experience. Next we took a cool box-car-like apparatus to get to the top of the hill to see the statue of Pípila. The view from the top was magnificent and all of Guanajuato was visible. In the market place surrounding the viewing area I bought myself a purse in a beautiful embroidered style that I have been admiring ever since I got here. Thankfully for our second night the Spanish couple had left and we were able to sleep better.
Day three we had a few hiccups, starting with our hostel reservations. They told us we had made the reservations for Tuesday, Wed, Thursday instead of Wed, Thrus, Friday—thus we didn’t have anywhere to stay for that night (however later I looked at my reservations and I had booked the right nights, but oh well). So we decided to go to Leon and see where our travels would take us. Leon is about 45 min north of Guanajuato; so it didn’t take us long to get there. Known for its leather production, Leon was plastered with shoe shops. There was a mall completely dedicated to shoe boutiques. After checking out the abundant selection Olivia and I each bought a pair of leather sandals. Due to the unfortunate reservation mix-up and our inability to find hotel arrangements elsewhere we headed back to Puebla after Leon.