Morelia Weekend

We snuck off to Morelia for a weekend recently. Morelia is the capital of the Mexican State of Michoacan.

A very old beautiful city. Check out the library and aqueduct pictures.

I’ve never been to Spain (hope one day to go) but Morelia reminds me of the videos I’ve seen of Spain.

Not many gringos live in Morelia. It’s a bit off the beaten path for foreigners. It’s a conservative town that may just be the cleanest prettiest city in Mexico. At least it’s the prettiest one I’ve seen yet.

I understand it has a lot of historical meaning for the Mexican people.

We stayed in a small hotel named CASA GALEANA, with just 12 rooms about a 5 block walk from the very large main plaza.

We paid just under $34 USD (equivalent) for a small, but spotlessly clean room with private bath. The price included the tax. Breakfast was 2 eggs sunny side up, frijoles, chilachiles ( a wonderful blend of cut up pieces of tortillas, cheese, and salsa), coffee de ollo (rich strong sweetened coffee), fresh squeezed OJ, and large white corn tortias (almost like flour tortillas, but better).

Breakfast at a very nice restaurant with table clothes, etc. for the two of us was under $6 USD with tax and tip for the two meals.

We could have stayed at a super fancy hotel right on the plaza if I had wanted to spring for $168.70 for an upscale room at a place that looked like a castle, but opted to just stroll thru this hotel and enjoy the opulence from the lobby.

We walked around Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. The streets were filled with folks already shopping for Christmas. We found a lot filled with beautiful artificial trees ranging in price from $50 to $150 USD.

The downtown area has wide boulevards, large parks, plazas, fountains and loads of cool sidewalk cafe’s set under large overhanging roof structures (like large covered verandas) perfect for sipping a cupachino while people watching.

It seems to be a thriving city with very few poor folks on the streets. Dallas has many more pan handlers than Morelia. Lots of upscale as well as middle class type stores.

And, one of my favorites, lots of sidewalk soft-serve ice cream places. The Mexicans love all kinds of ice creams.

The mornings were cool and fresh, and my long sleeve shirt felt good, the afternoons were warm in the sun and comfortable in the shade while at night the blanket on our bed was welcome.