Morelia

From Toluca we took a bus to Morelia, which is famous for it’s churches, cathedral, and cobblestoned streets in downtown, all of them well kept, beautiful, tall, and gorgeously lit up at night. Also, José María Morelos was born and lived here. As our third destination this place is quite dreamy: no rushing, little traffic, warm weather, quaint cafes, and sufficient internet connection. In general, everybody here feels comfortable about BEING here. The 24 hr, 2 for 1, school neighbouring beer during the week might also factor in the comfort.

We spent three days here, all of them in downtown, and all of them relaxing around the area. Day one we arrived late in the afternoon, were received by our second Couchsurfing host and his friend, and were given a brief tour (with cliffnotes) around ‘Centro Histórico’. The plus about arriving late was that the heat was going down and the churches were lightning up, which is as warm a welcome as anyone deserves of this city.

As I have no way of avoiding mention, churches are abundant in this city the way Starbucks shops are abundant in any USA town or city (or OXXOs are in any Mexican city). So you have three major activities here that revolve around downtown: church gazing, museum visiting, and cafe sitting. Day two was spent chillaxing in cafes and walking around the city.

We are very thankful to Morelia’s relaxing ambient, we ACTUALLY felt like we were vacationing rather that tightly following a schedule, and even though we were carefully tracking every penny we spent, we have few regrets and even printed our first set of postcards (four of which our respective parents should be receiving any day now). There is so much to look at and enjoy here, the colonialness of it all is just amazing. Coming from a city where the oldest buildings are probably from last century, I am very envious of Morelia. And speaking to one of the guides at the Centro de Atención Turístico made me even more envious of the amount of history Morelia and the rest of Michoacán has.

 

Day three was spent visiting museums (one of which had a huge and eerie collection of old pharmaceutical devices), taking iconic pictures, and buying locally made sweets. You know, acting like the tourists we are. It was a curious experience because we are out of the tourist season, so we were half enjoying as natives and half as tourists. We also successfully sold 10 postcards at a cafe! And received one $10 peso donation from a person who was either too tipsy to understand what we were selling, or just felt very generous.

I really do recommend everyone visit here at least once. It’s a beautiful and rich city, you could spend hours and hours getting lost (and then found, please, be safe) around the streets, alleys, fountains, arches, and of course, churches. There is plenty to explore and no rush about it.

 

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