On the road again...to Guadalajara

We left early by luxury bus to begin our road trip as we head towards Mexico City. The bus headed north than east over the mountains towards Guadelarja. The landscape along the way was beautiful...

There were many farms and ranches...

But not many towns to be seen as there were many miles of this gorgeous countryside, it is dry season now but in rainy season it must be many shades of green.

 

The trip to Guadalajara took about four and half hours and we stopped on the outskirts of the city at a very modern bus terminal. As we were driving in we were surprised to see the signs of a modern city unlike the only other Mexican city we have visited which was Merida.

 

Guadalajara is the second largest city in Mexico with a population of about 4 million including the suburbs so we naively thought it would be very crowded and dirty but that is not the case.

We arrived at our AirBnB casa, owned by Julieta and Mario, a young professional couple who have made the city their home. Their house is located in a very nice neighbourhood that is close to downtown and very walkable.

Our room is located at the back of the house with sliding glass doors to an outside space.

One of the neighbourhood streets...

Everywhere the streets are cleaned and the houses very well maintained.

After we settled in we went out to explore the neighbourhood which has lots of great places to eat and seems to be filled with young people from the many universities in Guadalajara.

We also were told by Mario that there are a lot of artisan beers made here so we tried a few...

 

The next morning we walked to Centro and were very impressed with this city...

Large Gothic cathedrals that would look at home in Italy

 

Creative murals on many corners...

 

Shaded places to meet friends...

 

Lovely plazas everywhere we looked...the city is so pedestrian friendly.

Lots of sculptures everywhere..

 

Including huge ones in roundabouts.

The avenues are wide and leafy with Arches reminiscent of the Arc de Triumphe in Paris, in fact there were many times today we remarked how this place felt like a European city.

And of course there is always a market...

And things to be sold....

 

This area is also known as the birthplace of tequila so of course we had to take a tour of one of the oldest factories here..

The beginning of the process is harvesting the fruit of the agave plant which takes 7- 10 years to grow. They are put through a process of steaming to extract the agave honey and then through a distallation process to create tequila.

We received a short course on the types of tequila produced and how they should be consumed, apparently not in a shot glass!

 

It was quite an interesting tour and at the end Don had made a new friend...

 

We also spent some time in the town of Talaquepaque which is well known for its arts particularly pottery and blown glass. It is quite a walkable town with lots of pedestrian only streets, galleries, museums and shops.

 

A beautiful town square that was filled with rose gardens...

A small church which was preparing for a funeral when we were there. It was interesting to see the mourners walking behind the hearse all the way up to the church.

There was lots to see such as this mural in the town hall...

And this sign outside the town hall...

They were collecting guns and at the end of the table they had a saw to cut them in pieces.

Great street art...

Leaders of the Revolution...

Guadelarja is also known as the birthplace of the mariachi band but unfortunately the only one we saw was this one....

 

Here are some pictures of the shops, galleries and the ceramic museum...

 

I loved the colour of this display in the museum.

 

Absolutely gorgeous paintings everywhere...

And so interesting ceramic work.

Some random shots of people I noticed... this woman was teaching the boy how to bead the animal she was making.

 

This nun was reading a book about amor (love).

There were so many sights to see in Guadalajara and area and we were really glad that we visited here, not knowing what to expect but being surprised everywhere we looked!

 

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