Morelia Travel Mini Series: 10 things to do in Morelia

Soooo, what is there to do in Morelia anyway?

Here’s a little list!

ᖴEᔕTIᐯᗩᒪᔕ

At the time I am typing this, it is certainly a really strange time for festivals, but the shows do go on! Some of them. With caution. (Unless you are in Tulum where they don’t believe in any form of caution.)

I was down in Morelia for a film festival which happened to coincide with the Day of the Dead. The whole film festival event had better sanitation and security protocols than anywhere I’d been so far. They were very serious about not being a super spreader event so I felt safe sitting in a movie theater with so many empty seats around me. (Can we social distance all the time?) Even with the precautions, I didn’t want to spend my time in a movie theater for hours when there’s a whole city to explore outside!

Marigolds. Lots of marigolds and their petals arranged and scattered around clay pots containing white candles and- even more marigolds. — *Una ofrenda con cempasúchi*l

The Day(s) of the Dead was DRASTICALLY toned down this year. The cemeteries were blocked off. Tourists were discouraged from going into the towns and villages that would normally put on the biggest, most authentic-est events. There were no parades. It was the equivalent of cancelling Christmas for the first time in perhaps 400 years. But people did find smaller ways to celebrate.

ᗯᗩᒪK, ᗯᗩᒪK, ᗯᗩᒪK

View of Morelia aqueduct from a public park. Trees, green plants, flowering plants, stone steps help make up the composition. — This aqueduct from the 1700s

Take your time strolling the streets. You have 120 blocks worth of a historic district awesomeness to explore. Enjoy the fact that you are in a people sized city.. Medieval people sized.. So you have to figure out how to stay away from clumps of people that get bottle necked on the often narrow sidewalks. But still, it’s amazing. There are streets you can leap across in a single bound. Just don’t get hit by a moped while trying that. There is a spacious shady park, an aqueduct, fountains, sunny plazas, mountains off in the distance… I could almost pretend I was in Europe. Which is super rad because I can’t go there now.

Oh, and if you keep your eyes open you will see butterflies flitting through the streets. They are the other migrant natives to this place. This is a land full of butterflies.

TᗩKE ᗩ TᖇOᒪᒪEY TOᑌᖇ

Can’t walk? Tired of walking? Want some history while you are wending through the ways? There are trolley and bus tours that hit up the many historical sites throughout Morelia. This is an UNSECO World Heritage Site after all so basically everything is a something to see with loads of history behind it. I didn’t take any of these tours, but they were very recommended.

IᑎᗪᑌᒪGE YOᑌᖇ ᔕᗯEET TOOTᕼ

There is ample opportunity to rot your teeth in Morelia, but Dulces Morelianos De La Calle Real is probably the best place to be for a sugar/history fix. You can listen to an explanation of the background and makings of the local candies; or you can just skip all that and head straight to shopping for cakes, chocolates and sugary fruit treats.

I got to try some ate de membrillo that was freshly made in a copper pot from one part sugar one part quince. I was hot out of the pan and thicker than apple sauce. Ate achieves a sliceable cheese consistency after being dehydrated in an oven for eight or more hours. My New Englander people even call it quince cheese. I had to look that up. I’d never even heard of it. Go figure.

ᗩᒪᒪ TᕼE ᕼOᒪY ᑭᒪᗩᑕEᔕ

[video: man on scaffold inside Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe replacing plaster ornamentations that have fallen off]

There are so many gorgeous places of worship in Morelia. Over a hundred of them! If you find one with a door open, go in. These buildings are great places to escape from the heat of the day and have some quiet for a while. You don’t have to pay money or bow or even be in favor of organized religion to appreciate all the effort that goes into these spaces. But you probably should show a little generosity. The grace of God isn’t the only thing holding up the roofs.

ᗰᑌᔕEᑌᗰ ᕼOᑭ

A large colorful statue displayed in a museum. It resembles Coatlicue, but is comprised of every kind of body part from every earthly life form. — Emilio Rangel, Genealogia 2008-2016. You have to see this in person to grasp how wild it is.

Whether it be art or craft or history you will find a museum for it.

You will probably learn all about Jose Maria Morelos whether you want to or not. I mean, the whole city’s historic center is basically a museum dedicated to the man; but if you want to really dig in to Mexican history (and you probably should) you can visit where Morelos was born and where he lived when the place was still called Valladolid.

So many art places were closed when I was in town, but I was able to see some captivating work and some amusing work at the Clavijero Cultural Center. By accident, Hugo and I found and active print shop, Nurite Grafico. Hugo made sure to buy a small print to support the collective.

Framed artwork of a donkey carrying two baskets of sunflowers. — medium: absolutely not paint

And as for the crafts, well, if you pay close enough attention, the crafts leave you in awe. I saw some paintings that you could take or leave, but then I looked closer and my brain melted. The ‘paintings’ were made out of feathers!

¡ᕼᗩᘔ EᔕᑕáᑎᗪᗩᒪO!

So there is a ten person bike you can ride with a tour guide all around the city. I wasn’t going to hop on with strangers so I have no idea how it was to be on this ride, but without a doubt it is a high energy experience for everyone. You can hear them coming from blocks away. The tour guides encourage the riders to “make some noise!” As you can imagine, there is a lot of shouting and cheering going on. I think this would be loads of fun to do with a little buzz and a bunch of goofy friends.

ᔕTᗩY Iᑎ

Two pairs of feet poking off the sides of beds. One pair is bare; you can see the tops of these feet. The pair other is wearing cowboy boots; you can see the worn soles of this pair.

You need to pace yourself with all the walking you will find yourself doing. So give yourself some down time. Stay in your hotel room. Watch some of the local tv programming. I was lucky enough to catch some flashy lucha libre. It was updated to suit the current pandemic conditions so the matches were held outdoors on a stage and the audience was in their parked cars beeping horns and cheering extra loud. The fighters would wear cubrebocas when coming out to the stage but they took them off to fight. Lucha libre is everything: dance, circus, wrestling, martial arts, fashion show, telenovela drama… You can’t really go wrong.

ᒪᗩᔕ ᗷEᗷIᗪᗩᔕ, ᒪᗩᔕ ᑕOᗰIᗪᗩᔕ

[gif: animated taco tilts forward and transforms into a hamburger then tilts up to become a taco again]

Try the local food and drink. I can recommend Tata Mezcaleria not only for the drink selection, but for the food. There wasn’t much for a vegan on the menu, but the chef – the ‘author of the menu,’ as it were- was up to the challenge of vegan-ifying a portobello dish for me. (Super kudos, my man Fermín! He’s on instagram if you want to follow him.) Hugo loved his cochinita pibil tacos.

GET OᑌT Oᖴ TOᗯᑎ

Sick of seeing statues of Sr. Morelos? Well, I did mention butterflies earlier. You can get yourself out to the Butterfly Sanctuaries! This was something I did not get a chance to do, but there’s next time, right?

And there are many towns and villages around Morelia that are home to dedicated crafts people producing extraordinary work. When I get a chance to go to the south of Mexico again, I would love to see the places where they do print making; work clay and copper; see deft hand weave textiles and baskets… And, you know, learn a couple things. As you do when you travel.

What’s something you would definitely do when you visit Morelia? Leave a comment!

And don’t forget to click the coffee link at the bottom of the page. I’m still reaching for my fundraising goal!

Morelia Travel Mini Series: The Perils

What travel story is complete without a bit of peril?

As if a global pandemic isn’t perilous enough!

A second floor view of the main plaza in historic Morelia. It is green and there are marigolds decorating the paths and the central gazebo for the Day of the Dead. — the view out the balcony window-door

One perk of being in the Morelia Film Festival was that Hugo received a night free at Hotel Casino. It’s right at the city’s main plaza. An exciting location. Not a place to get a good sleep. Unless you have noise cancelling devices.

The building, like so many of the buildings in the city, is built in the Spanish/Ancient Roman villa style where all the rooms are positioned around a central courtyard. The rooms are on the second floor. The downstairs of the hotel is a lobby/restaurant/bar so if you are staying there or not you can enjoy a meal.

Our pad came with a tiny balcony overlooking the main square with a view of Morelia’s famous cathedral. A Goya reproduction (or print) hung over the bed. The vibe was minimalist hacienda posh.

There was not a lot of floor space to be had, but dark wood of the ceiling was like 17 feet up. No, I’m not kidding. For being shorter people back in the day, they certainly loved all that vertical space.

Somehow, the room was almost too warm as the night went on. Either you put up with the heat or opened the window and put up with the noise. We took a middle option and turned on a fan that was provided for this very situation.
It took me a while to get to sleep. No big deal…

BUT THEN! –

A pain at my right knee cap.

It felt like I was sliced by something; not a jab, but a cut. Was there glass in the bed? My mostly asleep brain was being stupid.

And I was trying so very hard to stay asleep. I did everything I could to ignore the sting, but each time the sheets touched my knee there was pain.

The nagging signal that something was wrong brought me awake enough to bumble into the bathroom.

I saw there was a large red mark on my knee.

I was pretty sure then that I had been bitten.

Or stung.

By a spider.

Or something poisonous.

A pale person's knee. A silver dollar sized patch of skin on the knee cap is reddened. Dark hair grows through the skin. — The presumed bite/sting on my right knee. No, as a matter of fact I haven’t shaved my legs all year.
Deal with it.

The time was maybe about 4:30 in the morning. I’d slept for only a couple hours. It was a struggle for me to figure out what the hell I should do. I didn’t even think to wake Hugo in case the critter might still be in the bed!

Besides, he’s the one that gets bitten by the mosquitoes. I get bitten by the spiders. Them’s the rules.

I remembered to wash the area. Which I did. And then I applied some silver gel and a natural eczema cream. Those two things were all I had with me that made any sense to try.

And I waited for signs of symptoms and watched the red on my knee and started hunting the internet for comparable looking bites and kinds of biting/stinging creatures in Mexico.

Google search on a mobile device is the most ~~helpful~~ GARBAGE thing the company has ever produced. So I kept watching and waiting and scrolling through mounds of nearly useless information trying not to grind my teeth in frustration.

When I noticed that a part of the welt was a yellowish hue (which you can barely see in the picture) I started to panic a little and woke Hugo up.

Hugo pulled the sheets and blankets around and looked for some sign of a critter, but there was nothing.

I thought then to put some hand sanitizer spray on the spot to make sure it was really, really clean.

That, dear reader, was a m͓̽a͓̽g͓̽i͓̽c͓̽a͓̽l͓̽ encounter with a most- um- precise sensation. It wasn’t as strong as a white out pain, but it was nearly that high on the acute agony scale.

If I were a screamer, the whole hotel would have been awake at that moment. Fortunately, the pain did not last at that level very long and I was able to chill out again.

We both hit the internet one more time to look for more information about bites, where to find doctors, and managed to remain pretty dang calm. And we checked in with the bite.

We stayed up for a couple more hours to make sure I wasn’t having any other reactions. Nothing else happened. Thank goodness.

The spot wasn’t looking any worse so I slapped a plaster on it and made myself go back to sleep.

In the morning the bite was looking noticeably better so I opted to carried on with the day.

I didn’t have any muscle spasms, fever, necrosis or anything else. So there was no real need to see a doctor.

The wound healed like a burn/friction burn. After a week I still had a thick scab. It’s now a dark pink scar that’s smaller than a dime.

I am fine. I survived a brush with something small and feisty. And unidentified.

Have you ever been bitten by something unknown and/or poisonous? What did you do about it? Leave a comment!

Morelia Travel Mini Series: For Plant Eaters

Listen up, Veg-heads!

tm wearing glasses and eating a pastry with a wild, horrified expression — tm devours vegan pan de muertos from Tierra Mona like- Saturn eating his kids? The horror. The HORROR.

Plant-based dining is still an option in Mexico during a pandemic.

So- good news for people who want to eat less animal products.

A quick scan of google maps or happycow.com will give you an idea of the options you have. I wasn’t on a foodie tour so I didn’t make it a point to try all the meatless options in Morelia, but I can tell you about a few places.

I can certainly recommend Tierra Mona. I ate there a few times because it was near by the hotel I stayed in. The space is tiny so I would not recommend going there during peak hours. Be considerate. And try their dish of the day.

It impressed me that the folks who came to eat here weren’t only idealistic youths or trendy ‘strawberries’ -rich brats. (I like to call them strawberries instead of fresas. It’s more insulting, in my opinion.)

A local mother came in with her young daughter to have a no-meat burger and fries; an average looking, middle-aged Mexican couple who looked like they just discovered the vegan lifestyle exuberantly enjoyed their food; two older Americans came to eat and chat quietly. (Maybe they were Canadian?)

There was a French speaking couple, too. The butch of the pair seemed to be very comfortable in three languages: endorsing the food in English and then dealing with the check in Spanish. May I be that verbally- vocally confident one day.

low border of plants with green and white striped leaves in front of a stone wall. a tall thorn stemmed star-shaped flower cluster leans in to the shot from the left. — plants. because.

LU is a more upscale place I ate at. It’s attached to The Casino Hotel right at the main plaza in the city. They had their one item on the menu that I could have without modification. It was basically a fancy baked potato- but that is over simplifying the dish- which was quite good.

LU’s setting is nice too. It’s nicer if you sit inside, actually. I felt like the tables were far enough apart to sit comfortably without a mask and it’s quieter. The majority of the people chose to sit outside so it felt very crowded. Plus so much else was happening on the street. A generous heart could lose a lot of coin out there between all the beggars, performers, and hustling kids.

I made sure to hit up a chocolateria for some drink of the gods. Shokolate ended up being the place I landed at. Classic, real hot chocolate made simply with water (there were no plant alternatives to cow milk offered there) can be so satisfying sometimes.

If you find yourself in a joint that does not serve vegan options, try to ask if the kitchen can modify a dish for you. I was surprised when a chef was willing to make a vegan version of one of his dishes. I have been to some places where requesting a change would destroy the order of the whole universe… but I won’t get into that.

I think a person seeking meatless dining can do well in Morelia without suffering lack of options.