Friday, January 25, 2013

Return to Oaxaca Part I - Oaxaca City

We have only good memories of Oaxaca from 2003 when we excurted to the archaeological sites of Mitla and Monte Albán, visited a few churches, walked the pedestrian mall, and ate dinner on the Zocalo. This time we wanted to see more of the sites (churches and museums) in city center plus daytrip to a local market or two, stroll on the pedestrian mall, and eat on the Zocalo.

Oaxaca has lots churches. We visited as many as possible. The highlight for us was the Ex-Convento of Santo Domingo. The church still functions as a church, but the former convento is now a fabulous museum called Centro Cultural Santo Domingo, combining great exhibits with the massive, simple architecture of the ex-convento, and surrounded on two sides by a botanical garden.

A couple of nights we ate dinner on the Zocalo or just had drinks. Oaxaca is very lively after dark with good people watching: vendors, tourists, musicians, kids with balloons, and folks out for an evening stroll.

The vegetarian restaurant scene was good to us; set lunches at Trigo Verde and a couple of dinners at La Manantial Vegetariana where we had traditional Oaxacan mole, vegetarian style.

Here are the photos:

The family tree of St. Dominic painted on the ceiling of Santo Domingo.
Oaxaca, Mexico

Church dome.
Oaxaca, Mexico

Teatro Macedonio Alcalá at night.
Oaxaca, Mexico

Tlayuda - Oaxacan Pizza - on the Zocalo.
Oaxaca, Mexico

Zocalo at night.
Oaxaca, Mexico

Pedestrian Mall at Night.
Oaxaca, Mexcio

Templo San Felipe Neri has an Art Nouveau interior from an early 1900's renovation.
Oaxaca, Mexico

Another awesome lunch at Trigo Verde.
Oaxaca, Mexico

The beautiful fountain and clothes washing station at the Ex-Convento of Santa Clara, now a hotel.
Oaxaca, Mexico

Some shots from Centro Cultural Santo Domingo.
Oaxaca, Mexico

Oaxaca, Mexico

Oaxaca, Mexico

Oaxaca, Mexico

Oaxaca, Mexico

Oaxaca, Mexico

The Textile Museum.
Textile Museum - Oaxaca, Mexcio

Vegetarian Mole at La Manantial Vegetariana.
Oaxaca, Mexcio

Finally, one afternoon Sun-Ling got stung by a bee and her hand swelled up more than a little. If it's not dogs, it's bees.
Etla, Mexico



4 comments:

Crash Eddy said...

Seven moles? So have you tried all seven? I read in your link there is controversy about the 7th and it's not vegetarian, chicken. Sorry about the bee sting, S-L.

WQZ said...

Luckily it's not your ring finger. I was stung once on a finger tip when I was little. It turned into a purple mushroom, very painful. Don't remember any special remedy. Hope your swell and pain subside soon.

John your night shots are superb. May I learn from you when you return?

WQZ said...

I really like the 1st shot from centro cultural santo Domingo. Where do the blue light on the floor come from? The lower walls don't seem to be painted blue.

john said...

@Crash - The only mole we tried was in a vegetarian restaurant. The sauce was chocolate-based with hot peppers and other spices, and lathered over strips of fried soya (or was it seitan?).

@WQZ - Thanks for the kind words about my night shots. I have a few tips I will share with you when we return...The blue light shows up when I use an automatic setting on my Lumix camera called "high dynamic". The effect is somewhat like HDR - I like to call it a "faux HDR" setting. Recently I've been using that setting a lot on cloudy days as it brings out the blues (as you noticed) in the cloudy sky.

@everyone - SL's hand is back to normal

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