Guanajuato - Part 11/Last Day

On our last day, we had to be out of Casa Feliz at noon.  Since our flight to Los Angeles did not leave Leon until about 10:30 that evening, we decided that we'd spend our free time that day on a tour of Guanajuato, the large city near to San Miguel.

I loved seeing all the wild flowers along the way.  It is a remarkably pretty place.

Our tour guide for this trip was Daniel, an exceedingly nice young man.  In fact, he is the same nice young man who picked us up at the Leon airport when we arrived.   Daniel took us to the funicular so we could ride down into the Centro Historico, taking in the wonderful view of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guanajuato.

Guanajuato is a vibrant, colorful city with a very young energy.  I think that comes from the university students, who are everywhere.

This restaurant is right in the center of it all, across from the Juarez Theater .  We enjoyed a very delicious lunch here of enchiladas and grilled chicken.

The main aisle of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guanajuato

The University of Guanajuato's main building in housed in what used to be a convent.  It's a very grand, imposing building.  If you ran up and down those stairs several times a day, you'd never have to go to the gym.  Trust me.  It's a climb!  The view from the top of those imposing stairs is lovely.

One of the most interesting things about Guanajuato is that many of the streets actually run through tunnels, rather than on the surface.

The streets twist and turn, leading  you along from one pretty little plaza to another.

I loved these pigs, which were painted on the outside of a restaurant.  I think they must have specialized in carnitas!

This is the entrance to Kiss Alley.  There is a legend that star-crossed lovers shared their last kiss at this place, before he father killed her and the young man killed himself in grief.   The story in the link is totally different from the one that we were told, but you get the idea.  Proud papa, daughter in love with someone Papa does not approve and tragedy is the ending of the tale.  The two balconies at the far end of the alley are only 29 inches apart.

The ruins of the old Garrapata and Guadalupe mines.

 Guanajuato is surrounded by mines.  The richest of these mines was the Valenciana mine, which was started in 1774 and is reputed to have provided two thirds of all the silver mined in Guanajuato.  That is an astounding figure as this is one of the main the areas that provided the Spanish with so much of their (ill-gotten) wealth.

 The mines were all built to be fortresses, to protect the workers and the product from thieves.

Here is a photo of the friendly and charming Daniel, our excellent guide.  I had to take this photo because he told me that he'd had his photo taken at this very spot when he was one year old,  in his mother's arms.  I said that he'd have to give this photo to his mother, as she would like.  I was sure that I emailed it to him as soon as I got home and got the photos edited.  This is the Monument to Christ the King on top of Cubilete Mountain.  It was begun in 1923 and is very impressive.  As you might imagine, this is a pilgrimage place for devout Catholics.

The statue is 66 feet high.

The view over the Bajio valley was lovely.  As the light faded, it was time for us to prepare to take our flight home and say good bye to Mexico.  It was a wonderful, fun, exciting and fulfilling trip from start to finish and one of the best I've ever taken.

I can't wait to go back!

San Miguel - Part 10

Both Nonie and I love to paint ceramics.  David and Jessica, of Galeria Quinta Irma, invited us to come and enjoy a little interlude, painting our own piece of their pottery with them.

Nonie opted for a couple of tiles.  She used Mexican designs from the Dover publication Design Motifs of Ancient Mexico by Jorge Enciso.  We have both been fascinated with this little book that is chock-full of wonderful, graphic designs from all over Mexico.

I did a fish platter.  I have this "thing" about painting fish on ceramics and have been doing so for quite some time now.  I will admit that the design that emerged for this piece is utterly different from my usual weird-o fish (as one of my daughter's once described my work).  I wan't at all sure about this process, using the glaze that David prepared with cobalt and water.  They paint onto ware that they throw, that is then glazed with a white glaze in the majolica style.  The color is applied over a milky white glaze and bakes in when the piece is fired.  So, with this technique, with a heavier application of the cobalt, which is one of only six colors that are "allowed" with the traditional Talavera ware,  you get a darker blue.  You start light and work towards your dark values.

Here are the colors we were using.  Nonie's tiles are vibrant with many colors, mine just various shades of cobalt.

Here are some of the pieces that were painted yesterday and fired over night.  Nola's two tiles are on the bottom left, David's two mermaid tiles (with which he gifted Nonie!) are on the right.  The fish platter is mine and the colorful cat pitchers to the right are Jessica's wonderful, whimsical pieces.

Not a great result, but I am happy with my first attempt at this traditional way of painting ceramics.  It was a real pleasure to sit there in companionable silence with the three of them, working away for a little while.   David and Jessica are so generous with both their knowledge and their art, and have shown us every kindness imaginable.  I am truly honored to have met them.

This is a memory of San Miguel I will treasure!

San Miguel - Part 9 Cooking Class

Nonie and I took a cooking class today from Sazon Cooking School, which is affiliated with Casa de Sierra Nevada Hotel, here in San Miguel.  The Casa de Sierra Nevada is an Orient Express property, so you know it's quite the thing.  I can say that their cooking school is quite the thing, too!

Our experience started with a visit to the local market.  We bought some carnitas....

....and our chef, Emanuel Cervantes, showed us many ingredients that we needed to buy to take back to the very well-equiped kitchen.

We got some flors de calabaza, squash blossoms, for our quesadillas.

And since this is the season for pomegranates, we sampled a cup of the seeds.  I love pomegranates.

We shared an ear of roasted corn with chili and lime juice.  Both Nonie and I think lime juice on roasted corn is delicious and we plan to eat our corn that way from now on.

We stopped at a tortilla factory to buy masa so we could make our own tortillas and sopecitos "baskets."

Now, this may not look like much of a photograph, but it is very important to me.  I was gawking when I should have been walking and managed to sort of fall/stumble/collapse to one knee on the way back to the cooking school from the market.  I was fine, no problem, but my camera took quite a hit on the sidewalk.  GULP!  The above photo shows that all was well and Nikon does build a very sturdy product.  (Thank you, Nikon, for saving me once again!)

Here we have a plate of corn smut(huitlacoche), ready to be cooked.  

The Chef had several pans going at any one time and we had fun watching him keep all things properly stirred.  Nonie said he was rather like a Chinese acrobat who could keep may plates spinning on sticks at one time.  The pan in the foreground is full of cactus paddles, nopales.

The Chef  preparing the squash blossoms.

Nonie making tortillas.  Hers were pronounced "perfect."  She always has been a show off.....

Here we have a mochajete (a basalt stone bowl used for grinding spices, making salsas and guacamole) full of the local salsa, Salsa Ranchero.  It's spicy and delicious, and surprisingly easy to make.  I am going to have to invest in my own mochajete when I return home.  (Frankly I would love to have one from here but I hesitate to pay the price of shipping home something so heavy.)

The huitlacoche quesadilla heating through....

....and the Chef putting the little sopecitos baskets on to heat up.

Here's the guacamole I made (with a lot of direction!).

The chorizo is cooked and ready to be added to the sopecitos.

Behold this  full-to-the-brim plate of good eats, as Alton Brown would proclaim, that we had for lunch.  From the top, moving around the plate clockwise, guacamole with tortilla chips and pork skins, sopecitos with refried beans, carnitas or chorizo, lettuce, creme fraiche and lettuce, then two kinds of quesadillas (with the huitlacoche and squash blossoms), the green vegetable is nopales (cactus paddles cooked with garlic, onions and tomatoes) and finally some pollo in the center from the little shop that sells delicious roasted chicken.  It was a meal fit for a Queen.  Surprisingly easy and quick to prepare, this traditional Mexican meal stresses fresh, local ingredients quickly and simply prepared to let the flavors of the ingredients shine through.  You don't need a lot of fancy flourishes when the food is so good to begin with.  Chef Cervantes knows his ingredients and how to showcase them.  

Chef Emanuel Cervantes

Photo by Nola Unger

And here is the Chef's somewhat clumsy assistant....