Puebla

We left Puebla yesterday and didn't have too much time to spend there. It took us about 6.5 hours to arrive to Puebla from Queretaro. It was a pretty straight shot from Queretaro to D.F. and then it all went to hell. It took us about 2 hours to get around Mexico City to head on the road to Puebla. As we got closer to the toll road a sign said the road was closed so we took the camino libre which meant we were stuck behind stinky polluted big rigs. About an hour into the road we could see the Puebla cuota road in the distance WITH CARS. It was torture. So here we are on the camino libre behind every smelly big rig from D.F and we could see cars zooming by us on the camino de cuota. It was painful. About another 30 mintues later we found an on ramp and then made our way smoothly into Puebla.

Puebla is an interesting and busy city. I was expecting it to be small but it is anything but small. After the big earthquake in 99 many from DF moved there so it is a pretty sizable city. It was very busy when we arrived even though many shops and businesses were closed (except for restaurants and trinket shops around the Zocalo).

We decided to take a taxi with a very new "in the taxi world" driver to the emerald district where the restaurants and bars are located. All the restaurants were closed except for a chinese buffet place and this Gaudiesque fish place. We chose the fish place which turned out to be an ambience hell hole. They started pumping up techno music while a soccor game was blaring out from one corner of the room. Plus the gaudiesque tiles and sculptures started to merge together. Then it appeared the flourescent lights from the restaurant got stronger and more radical. Daniel started to look yellow to me. Yellow! It was like a bad LSD trip. I couldn't speak. Daniel couldn't speak. We just stared at the walls, the TV, the bright tiles and the speakers. It was scensory overload.
We should have gone for the Chinese. Really should have gone for Chinese.
Our food came (which actually was good) but we purposely swallowed the food down to get out of there. Once we got outside we sat in blessed silence for about 10 minutes to recover from the experience. We began to walk back to our hotel then it started to rain, really rain. So we took another taxi back to our hotel, picked up a 6 pack of Tecate and watched Superman in our room. It was quite a storm and a really bad movie. Don't bother watching it unless you are caught up in a storm and have nothing to read.

Puebla has very cool colonial tiled architecture. There are many many churches. There was a church on just about every corner, and one, um Protestant church (as one Puebla native told us and those protestants, they don't believe in symbols or saints). For the small amount of time we were there we spoke with a lot of people there. Super friendly and eager to tell you where to go. Everyone we met had lived in CA at some point or had a relative in LA or the Bay Area so it was very easy to keep the conversation going.

I did find some keys at an antique shop. I just need to sand them down then they'll be perfect. Here are some pics of buildings in Puebla.