Querétaro

We were both a little nervous traveling 3+ hours to a new town with no hotel reservation two days before Christmas. We felt a little bit like Mary and Joseph, without the mysterious pregnacy or camels. Our bus tickets were on Premiera Plus, a good but not great bus line here. The bus was nice, better than any Greyhound bus in the states, but we ended up stopping in 4 places that wouldn't appear on many maps. Combine that with the traffic we hit at serveral spots, and our trip ended up taking almost 4 hours. The first thing we did at the bus terminal was venture over to the ETN desk and booked a return ticket on the 1st class bus. That would turn out to be a great move.

Now the bus station in Querétero is about 10 km out of town, it was feeling a little more difficult to get a decent place to stay for the night. We learned of a new way to catch a cab: You wait in line to prepay for your cab ride at this tiny little booth, then venture outside to wait in another line that allows only one person to get into a cab at a time. Now Querétero is a city of about 500,000 people, and bus travel is the cheapest and easiest way to get around here. Imagine the line. Anyway, we got our cab and ventured to the first hotel on our list.

Driving through the historic district here, it is no wonder people love it. Lots of pedestrian only streets and amazing architecture and historic sites. We got the Hotel Santiago and as luck would have it, they had a room. Let me tell ya, a little privacy and your own bathroon can do a lot to recharge your batteries. We loved the place and it was only three blocks from the center of town. We had an upper floor room that overlooked one of the cathedrals. It was a great place to call home base for two days.

The next morning we slept late and ventured out in the city under perfect blue skies and 75 degree weather. We found a little Creperia and had crepes and coffee and sat in the sun. There is a plaza right near the creperia and we sat in the sun and watched the people pass by and ask themselves "How tall is that guy". Sure didn't feel like Christmas in Seattle or Spokane!

The streets were lined with shops and other vendors packed the pedestrial walks with all sorts of trinkets and stuff. We walked around and saw the cathedrals and the amazing 70m tall aquaducto that runs 4+ km through town and is still used today.

After a short siesta, we went back to the center of town to finish up our shopping and sightseeing and catch the Christmas parade that draws a boatload of people into the city square. They had floats and dancers and all sorts of music groups in the parade. All the floats were pulled by brand new John Deere tractors. Dad, you would have loved it. We were just in front of the Cathedral de San Franciso, where the monks were ringing the bells (spinning the huge things by hand) and there was a carnival type atmosphere complete with cotton candy and popcorn, only the popcorn has spicy salsa on it. Quite a fun cultural experience.

We found a little italian pizza place to mix up our menu a bit and had a few cold ones to close out the day.

Sunday morning we awoke (late) to another beauitful day. We were running a little late getting ready to leave and had to grab a bite at the closest place to us. We ducked into a place called Vips and found out in the middle of our meal it was a chain owned by Wal-Mart. So much for authentic local food. But it got us something to eat and we just made our bus out of town. The ride back was wonderfully uneventful with luxurious seats and plenty of room for my long legs, and it only took 2 1/2 hours to get to home.

Then we relaxed and got ready for our Christmas Eve dinner... Stay tuned...