Trompo Magico

This morning, we visited a children's museum, Trompo Magico. What a great place for kids! It's gigantic, with opportunities for imaginative play, as well as science, music, art; you name it! We will have to go back, as we only had time to explore the area for the smaller kids, and there's also an area for the bigger kids (which looked really interesting for adults, too!).

p.s. We figured out how to allow you to make comments without having to be a registered user. So for those of you for whom this has been an obstacle, you may now comment away!

Tonola

On Sunday, the front office lady at our apartments, Adriana, and her fiance', Gabriel, invited our family to visit Tonola, where there is an enormous street market. I realize that in every posting we talk about how fabulous everything is, but it's true, and this place was no exception! There were blocks and blocks of street vendors selling everything from art, furniture, and dishes to clothing, toys, jewelry, and food. I think you could find anything at this place! It's really too bad that I'm limited on what I can take home, because I found so many things I'd love to buy (although Trent would tell you that's a good thing). There was also a blown glass factory in the market, and you can see the glassware being made right there; this was very cool to watch.

Tequila, Jalisco

Today, Oscar took our family on a personalized tour of Tequila. We started the day's trip with a stop at one of Guadalajara's famous street-side taco stands for breakfast.

Wow! What a treat!! There's nothing like a GDL taco!!! I've never tasted Mexican food like this, it's simply the best. BTW, technically a taco is anything you put in a soft corn tortilla.
Next, we drove about an hour (65 km) northwest of GDL. Along the way we enjoyed the mountainous views and saw lots of native blue agave crops (also known as "maguey" by the locals).

On the way, we stopped at a roadside market to have a taste of what makes this place tick -- Tequila. The drink we had was made with the juice of 2 limes, 1/2 grapefruit, 1/2 orange, Squirt soda pop, ~ 1 teaspoon of Sea Salt, and a couple shots of Tequila. Again, simply wonderful.
Casa Herradura ('herradura' means 'horeseshoe') is the first major plantation/factory on the way into town. The distillery was founded in 1870, and it still contains all the historic equipment, which makes for a very interesting tour.

Finally, we stopped at a roadside stand for something called "cimota," which is similar in taste and texture to a potato. As everything else you eat around here, it's best with lime, chile, and salt.

Find the Dog (round 2)

Today we learned that the roof of your home IS a common place to keep your dog around here. We were out doing a little sightseeing, and spotted these two dogs on the roof of a house. Go figure.

Thanksgiving Dinner

A number of our friends have asked us what we did for Thanksgiving, so here it is: Nothing, and it was great. We had briefly toyed with the idea of doing a turkey and the fixings, but no one was in the mood to spend the day in the kitchen, and we also hadn't seen any turkeys in the grocery store. Since Thanksgiving is obviously not a holiday that's celebrated in Mexico, the kids had school and swimming lessons that day, and we also had Spanish lessons that evening. We opted to celebrate Thanksgiving with a seafood feast at La Ola ("The Wave") on Friday night, instead.

Downtown Guadalajara

Yesterday, we paid a brief visit to downtown Guadalajara. The architecture and history here are fabulous; I'm including a few snapshots to give you a taste of it. There's a state capitol building, churches, numerous monuments, a market, and more. It's a much larger area than I had expected, so it will take more time to explore it. We will go back for another -- longer and more detailed -- visit later.

Touring with Oscar

Yesterday, our new friend, Oscar, picked up our entire family and took us on a tour of Guadalajara's Zapopan area. First, we started off at a fish market where they bring in tons of fresh fish every day. We received our first cultural lesson for the day when we were parking: A man approached the car and asked Oscar if he wanted him to care for his car while it was parked. Pay close attention here if you ever plan to drive a car in Mexico -- ALWAYS SAY YES. If you don't, your car and all its contents are fair game for the criminals, and it only costs you 2 pesos (about 20 cents) to avail yourself of such protection. Oscar, of course, opted for the protection. We ate at a place right there in the market, and we had a feast of ceviche' and the seafood cocteleria that's pictured here: It's shrimp, avocado, onions, tomatoes, and cilantro, and it's served warm. YUM.

Next, we visited the Cathedral at Zapopan. A few more cultural lessons were had here. As we approached the cathedral, we saw people getting down on their knees and 'walking' on their knees all the way to the altar, where they would pray. Oscar explained that this is what people do when they are requesting something, like to cure their sick child, for example. We also bought fresh sugar cane squeezed with lime juice, roasted garbanzo beans, and ice cream from the street vendors outside the cathedral.

Then it was off to the local zoo. There were lions, tigers, bears, monkeys, Mexican hairless dogs, parrots, eagles, and more. All of these were within reach, if you were foolish enough to get that close.

We finished off the day with a trip to a roadside taco stand, where Oscar ordered up tons of food for us to try; things we wouldn't have known to order, but which were fantastic!