Mexico Day 5: Valladolid

I rolled out of bed earlier than Caitlin and Marie and tried to slip out as quietly as I could (not easy on tiled floors let me tell you) and headed out to find a cafe where I could catch up on the blog and have a cup of café… I wasn’t up particularly early (around 6:45am) but this is definitely a late starting town as almost nothing was open… I waited outside Cafe Pitagoras (home to the delicious chocolate and orange pancake that is not at all a pancake and has no chocolate to speak of) for them to open at 7 as it said on their sign but that wasn’t happening so I eventually meandered back to our hotel and set up shop in their kitchen… There were no filters for the coffee maker so I settled on making a pot of green tea and set about updating the blog and organizing some of the pictures I’ve taken. After a while, people started emerging from their rooms and it was interesting to see the mix of people staying at Casa Hipil:

  • an older Eastern European couple who grunted at each other and did not smile once in the 15-20 minutes they were in the kitchen eating breakfast,
  • an American or Canadian family of 4 with younger kids who headed out looking like they’d survived a night in the trenches of WWI… when mom discovered there were no filters for coffee she shot me one of those looks that only a sleep-deprived mom traveling with kids is capable of… you know that “I’d really like to murder one of my children but I can probably make it through another day if only there’s coffee but there isn’t any and now I’m afraid I may actually kill the little turd” look… they shuffled off with kids in tow only to return about 40 minutes later in much better spirits (Mom excitedly told me about the fantastic coffee shop they’d found nearby),
  • the Spanish-speaking family who emerged from their room laughing and horsing around and blew through the kitchen in a blaze of giggles and laughter (I want whatever they take each morning!)
  • the family I couldn’t tell anything about because they did not utter one single word to me or each other in the time it took them to leave their room, stalk across the little courtyard and shuffle off into the morning sunlight… It was one of those mom, dad and two young-ish kids arrangements where the cute little kid is stuck at the very back trying to lug her little suitcase and mom, dad and older brother are on a mission and are halfway out of the hotel while little sis is gamely bringing up the rear…

I finished updating the blog while people-watching and decided to head up to the room hoping enough time had passed that the she-beasts would not kill me if I woke them… Turns out I’d woke Marie when I left and she’d spent the morning getting caught up on emails and stuff while Caitlin slept but they were both awake and ready to roll…

We were only staying the one night at Casa Hipil (they were fully booked for the rest of the time we’re in Valladolid) so we were lugging our bags around the corner to a much fancier hotel – el Mason del Marqués – which has a pool and a restaurant and all and is located in a 17th century building looking right out onto the main square… We were much earlier than our 3pm check-in time so we just did up all the paperwork and gave them our backpacks to store for the day and headed out to find something to eat. We settled on the Hotel de la Luz – which overlooks the main square. It was an interesting choice. The food was not very good, the service was indifferent at best and we all sort of thought that the setup looked like a rundown Vegas hotel with the pool in the middle of a kind of past its prime courtyard surrounded by rooms.

After breakfast/lunch we checked out the old church (San Servacio) near the town square. It was built in the 1700s to replace an earlier 16th century church that had been desecrated during an uprising… It was a pretty typical colonial era Catholic Church albeit not as fancy as many we have seen… It was laid out pretty simply with only a few chapels off to the sides but the basilica style high ceilings and domes were quite impressive… Somewhere along the line, we wandered through the main square where they have these cute concrete seats that face each other for having conversations… Marie and Caitlin beat each other up instead… It was disturbing. Tourists and locals alike were concerned… There is photographic evidence…

After the church we made our way to the Convent de San Bernardino along a nice cobbled walkway lined with cute shops (way too expensive for us) and restaurants. The avenue is called Calle de los Frailes (Road of the Friars) and used to link the main town of Valladolid with a small Mayan village called Sisal where the Convent was located back in the 1500s. The convent was pretty cool – lots of darkish rooms, a pretty decent sized church, lots of dark wood and tiled floors. The whole thing is built over a cenoté and there were some cool pictures of stuff divers had brought up from the depths (the actual artifacts have been relocated somewhere so it was just pictures). We wandered around for an hour or so then headed back down Calle de los Frailes the way we’d come… We stopped along the way at a cool little garden cafe to have a couple of cervézas (it was afternoon by now) and to play some cards. It was really nice – a big palapas roof provided lots of shade, the drinks were super cold and there was a nice breeze blowing through the place… with gardens and being set back from the Calle a bit, it was very peaceful and relaxing…

After a couple of drinks and a game or two of cards, we headed back out into the heat and kind of wandered around a bit aimlessly – we were sort of shopping but not with any kind of intensity. Valladolid is packed with shops of all sorts – from cell phone shops to tourist souvenir shops to shoe stores and hardware stores and everything in between… but nothing was really grabbing our attention so we just kind of wandered around checking things out… We might have been a little bored but not in a “my trip is ruined, I hate my life” sort of way but more the “we set aside a bit too much time for this area and don’t really have anything to do but it’s all new so let’s explore” sort of way… Tomorrow we’re going to head to Ek Balam and the cenote so that will fill up the day but for today we were little at loose ends…

After wandering around for a bit, it was late enough for us to check in to our room at the Meson del Marqués so we headed that way and picked up our keys and followed the bell man up to our room… We weren’t in the old part of the building (family sized rooms rarely are it seems) but our room was nice enough… two double beds and a single looking out onto the courtyard (which is their parking lot) but close to the pool and cool and quiet. We changed into our bathing suits and headed to the pool thinking we’d splash around a bit then grab a beer and Caitlin and Marie could suntan… The pool was cold… not cool… cold… and there was little or no sun… and no chairs on which to lounge. So we drank cervézas and played cards for a bit then headed back to the room to change and get ready to head out for the evening… While we were hanging out in the room, the power went out so we sort of hung out in the dark… The hotel staff placed candles on the stairs and whatnot so no one killed themselves (and apparently they dropped candles off in each of the rooms while we were out because there was a candle and a pack of matches on the dresser when we returned at the end of the night… I can’t imagine a hotel in Canada providing candles under any circumstances).

For dinner we settled on a place that had been recommended to us by the night guy at Casa Hipil – El Atrio… We’d originally ditched it because the prices looked a bit high but on closer inspection they weren’t bad so we gave it a shot… It was a bit of a miss to tell the truth… The service was poor. The food was okay. What had started out as a nice little upstairs room with a nice breeze turned into a packed little corner of hell when a huge family with about 8 kids turned up and filled up most of the available spaces… It wasn’t horrible – we’re on vacation so very little is ever truly horrible – but after last night’s restaurant with it’s lights and trees and excellent food and service, it was a bit of a letdown.

After dinner we headed out looking for a liquor store so Caitlin could stock up on some tequila but there weren’t many to be found. We eventually headed back to one we’d found earlier in the day that had a good selection but we were put off by the very high prices… So we decided to grab a cab (30 pesos) to a Chedraui – the chain of grocery stories we’d shopped at in Puerto Morelos – and see if they had anything. We ended up getting a 700ml bottle of 1800 Anéjo with a 375ml bottle of Liqor 43 for about $30cdn (a good deal when the 1800 sells for close to $70 back home if you can find it… the 1800 Reposada is common in BC but not the Anéjo). Marie even used her customs allotment to buy some (I do not have an allotment on this trip after Caitlin used hers coming home from Africa to buy me a very nice bottle of Talisker scotch). Happy with our purchase of cheap(ish) booze, we grabbed another cab from out front to take us back to the hotel where we dumped our purchases… Oh yeah, we might have picked up a bottle of cheap ($10) tequila to “sample” over the course of the remainder of our travels… After dumping our booze in our room, we headed back out to check out the night market in the town square and kind of wandered around it for a while. Marie and Caitlin stood for a bit in a lineup for a little stand making crepes with banana and caramel but it wasn’t moving at all (and was very long – these things are popular!). They decided to let some time pass but by the time they went back, the line was still just as long and the beleaguered crepe makers were telling everyone they were closed… At some point during the evening we kind of chilled out in the lobby of the Meson del Marqués for a bit (I think we were looking into how much it would cost to take a taxi to Ek Balam the next day and the concierge guy was playing dumb about the cheap collectivo taxis and trying to get us to go with a friend of his for twice the price). As we were waiting for him to come back with a price (it was double what the collectivos charge), a stray dog ran in off the street, made a beeline straight for Caitlin and promptly curled up at her feet and went to sleep. It was love at first sight… She named him Oats and is genuinely heartbroken that we can’t bring him back with us… Oats didn’t pay any attention to anybody but Caitlin and if she was allowed to have a dog at her place in Vancouver we would be waiting for Oats to have his shots and figuring out where we were going to sleep in Playa… It was very hard to walk away and leave him curled up on the floor…

At this point, I’d had enough wandering around and my shoulder (I’d done something to it before we left or else it’s an ergonomics things from using laptops, etc. and cycling and typing on this little iPad keyboard isn’t doing it any favours) was killing me so I decided to head back to the room and lay down while Marie and Caitlin went in search of some cold drinks to bring back to the room. When they returned (cold beers in hand) we played a few hands of rummy and sampled the cheap tequila we’d purchased (it was definitely cheap tequila) before turning the lights out and sacking out in our tiny little bed. I think Caitlin stayed up watching episodes of Friends she’d downloaded to her phone… In all, a bit of a lazy, unstructured day but not a bad way at all to spend a day of vacation. Valladolid is an interesting town…

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