Watts Family Goes to Mexico: Downtown Puebla

We often like to get out of the house and explore downtown Puebla. There are fun markets to walk through and museums to visit and churches to see. We love it!

On one of our visits downtown, we stopped in this cute restaurant for dinner.

I had chiles en nogada. Doesn't it look beautiful? It's a poblano chile stuffed with meat and fruit and covered with a creamy walnut sauce, pomegranite seeds, and cilantro. Notice that it is the colors of the Mexican flag. This is the seasonal dish and they even have a Chiles en Nogada festival at the end of August.

Here you can see some of the other food that we tried. Karl tried green mole, while Stephen and Elena had the traditional mole which contains chocolate. Joseph and Daniel have chicken, french fries, and salad.

We pulled up alongside this bug on the way home from town, and just had to get a picture. Even the trunk in front has corn stuffed in it!

This carousal ride was an attempt to make our trips downtown more appealling to the younger boys. Stephen and Elena like going downtown, but the younger ones aren't always as excited. Stephen is wearing his soccer shirt of the Mexican national team.

Joseph and Chiara and Daniel (behind Chiara). If you look at the left edge of the picture, you can see some of the tents that are set up in the market. There are several areas downtown where merchants can set up booths. They bring tents similar to what we would take to the beach and set out their wares. One guy was there selling just key chains for 10 pesos each, which is about 75 cents. We wondered how it could be worth his time to spend the day selling key chains. It's a different economy here. When you come to a stop at major intersections there are always people selling things -- pastries, gum, fly swatters, toys, flowers, etc. When the light turns red they walk from car to car offering you their products. There are sometimes entertainers at the traffic lights. They juggle or blow fire or something and then walk among the cars collecting tips. Another common sight at the stoplights are windshield washers who will wash your car windows for a small tip.

On Friday, October 2nd Karl got the day off because they were having union meetings. We headed downtown and arrived to see this parade of workers carrying signs. They were remembering the Masacre of Tlatelolco where federal forces violently squealched a student protest prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. There were a lot of people in the march, and we couldn't really read the signs, but some of them seemed to be protesting current issues.

Here's the cathedral by day.

We watched as school girls pushed each other into this fountain and boyfriends carried their girlfriends in. It seemed to be a popular activity for the day.

The boys in our family just couldn't resist joining in the fun. Joseph was the first one wet, of course, and Stephen was close behind him, and then they went after Karl!