After an exciting and sometimes challenging month in Mexico City, it was time for a change. Carolyn and I, and my sister Elyse, needed time in a smaller place, yet still one with plenty of cultural opportunities. We were finally ready to flee the great metropolis of CDMX and introduce Elyse to Guanajuato, one of our favorite small cities.
Our taxi took us through busy streets to the sprawling Estación del Norte to score our tickets. And we were soon settled aboard a big and comfortable ETN Executive Class bus with plenty of room: only three seats across, arm rests for all, and much more leg room than we get on airplanes these days. After winding our way carefully for almost an hour out of México City’s famous tangle of traffic, we were finally onto the freeway and cruising swiftly across the broad Mexican highlands.
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Guanajuato is a place we always consider for a return visit, and Elyse was intrigued at the idea. When looking for good classical music and jazz concerts, modest and fun museums and art galleries, fine dining, good wine, a vibrant late-night street music scene, and romantic winding brick-paved streets, it’s hard to beat this town.
There’s plenty to do in this old colonial city nestled in a canyon. But the place itself is really the main attraction — this town of tunnels and narrow streets with an ancient and medieval feel. Their motto says it well: “Un museo llamado Guanajuato” (“A museum called Guanajuato”).
Our most recent trip here was two years ago, and we wrote an account of this charming city. Guanajuato has been one of my favorite places since I first came here in the early 1970s, lured by descriptions of “alleyways so narrow the dogs have to wag their tails up and down.” It’s always good to be back.
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For a place to stay, we received a good recommendation from Kino-pals Bill and Nancy Berg. It was a nice two-BR casa on a hill in the Embajadores area, with a garden (read blooming and bearing orange and grapefruit trees) outside our wrought-iron patio doors, and a nearby street mercado every weekend. It’s also not far from the rich classical architecture of the Teatro Juarez and the lush Jardín de la Union, the real center of things. We checked the photos online and quickly booked it for a month — a good move.
The myriad sounds of Guanajuato — a local school band practice, street vendors, cars and buses, the whistle of a traffic cop, all the expressions of daily life, that essential quotidian pulse of the city — drift upward from city streets and in through our open windows. We’re above the neighborhood, yet still part of it, and we feel more connected than when staying in a hotel.
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And another stroke of luck: our Hermosillo friends Dr. Jaime Torres and Norma Becerra, the newly-published author of a guide to diabetes, happened to be in town for a couple of weeks. And they had a car!
So a couple of days after our arrival, we caught a ride with Jaime and Norma to spend a few days in nearby and ultra-picturesque San Miguel de Allende. We were curious to see if anything had changed much since our last visit, but little ever seems to change here. (We wrote about it back then. )
San Miguel has long been a quaint place to visit, but it really started to become famous after several of the ‘Beat Poets’ made their pilgrimage here in the 1960s. And it became legendary after Neal Cassady, the main character in Jack Kerouac’s book On the Road, died near here along the railroad tracks late one rainy night in 1968. Cassady’s legend (in English and in Spanish) has only grown larger ever since.
These days, the town’s picturesque curving roads and ancient colonial architecture remain an undeniable attraction for travelers and for a sizable population of expat residents. La Biblioteca, the local expat hangout, hosts a variety of events, like the very popular local home and garden tours, spa-town visits to Tequisquiapan, and the vineyards of Querètaro. There’s a quiet garden restaurant in the Biblioteca, along with a film series, guitar concerts, and a good bilingual library.
And the town itself has now become a center for high-end shopping – a kind of Santa Fe, or Sedona, in the hills of central Mexico. It’s easy to spend considerable time, and money, in San Miguel.
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But it’s really Guanajuato we came to revisit, a place where the wonderfully odd Museo Iconografico del Quijote is a main attraction. The museum was established by a Don Quijote-loving Spaniard who escaped the criminal Franco regime during the Spanish Civil War to settle in this valley, and it contains roomfuls of every kind of Quijote-related art. Most of it is quite good and a poignant reminder of why the saga of the flawed and crazy old knight remains a foundational piece of literature so many centuries after its first publication in 1604.
This city even holds a ‘Cervantino’ festival every October, with thousands of performers on the docket. And it gets international rave reviews.
Currently, there’s also a new exhibition at the MIQ by “Eko” that ‘reimagines’ the writings of Cervantes and his befuddled idealistic Don Quijote in a baroque-modernist way. It’s a sometimes startling and bizarre reinterpretation of essences of the ancient story, and it’s skillfully executed.
Guanajuato is a place where we don’t really need to be entertained, and we spend some of our days just relaxing and reading good books, or enjoying small museums and ordinary street life. But almost every evening there’s something worth doing. On Monday nights the MIQ becomes an ‘art movie house,’ a favorite place to catch a classic film like “New York Stories,”or “Paris, te Amo,” for example. The interesting guy who sets up the films wears a T-shirt reading “Bad Decisions make Good Stories.”
Then on Thursday nights the MIQ offers a fine program of classical music duets, trios, and quartets. Over our month-long stay, we attend concerts of Rachmaninov, Reineke, JS Bach, Béla Kovács, and Nino Rota, played by talented musicians from around the world.
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The beautiful Teatro Juarez is another a busy venue, with classical music, puppet plays, children’s performances and more, made special by the rich interior design of the place. It happens that August is “Mes de Rachmaninov” (Rachmaninov Month) here in Guanajuato, so it’s a best chance to restock our brains with his powerful notes. We stand in a long line that winds down the steps of the Teatro to get our seats, and the place fills with a mix of bright young Mexican families and Gringo retirees like us. The classics are well appreciated here, and we enjoy the evening’s ‘Rach concert.’
Oh, and did I mention? These events are either free or very low priced.
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A cool little coffee house would be another main reason we return to Guanajuato – and Cafe Tal makes the trip worthwhile. There’s really no sign outside, other than a couple of coffee bags draped over window railings. And with a name that translates to “Such Coffee,” how can you miss? The inside is Berkeley-Portland-Seattle funky. “Lost cat” and “Apartment Wanted” signs are stuck to a small billboard. Carolyn and Elyse were usually ready for a cup of stiff mid-morning java, or some other gorgeous concoction; so we stop there often. And the ‘Beso Negro’ (Black Kiss) — a molten cup of rich dark chocolate — is not to be missed.
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“Callejoneando” (‘Alley-ing’) is one of the main evening attractions here. A student madrigal group departs each night from the Templo de San Diego, just beside the Teatro Juarez, for an adventure of music and jokes as we go callejoneando our way through the twisted back streets of the city. It’s all in Spanish, but it’s a lot of fun, even if you don’t understand it. The event finishes at the ultra-narrow Callejón del Beso (Alley of the Kiss), where couples kiss to the chanting of the crowd: “¡Beso! ¡Beso! ¡Beso!”
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After a wonderful hour or so of such rollicking lunacy, we return to the plaza at the Jardín Union and adjourn to the ultra-modern “One” bar for a quiet rooftop nightcap overlooking the city. And afterward, we make our weary way back through ancient winding streets to the apartment.
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On most Sunday afternoons we find ourselves at the Café Midi, on the upper floor at Casa Cuatro, for jazz and a fine dinner. The place is owned by a lady from Montpelier, in the Roussillion on the Med, so she knows her southern French cooking quite well.
On one afternoon, there’s a colorful procession in the street just below us. The music from the street is so loud that the jazz band sensibly takes a break as everyone crowds to the balconies for a better look.
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Cubilete is a mountaintop shrine that’s said to be located in (almost) the exact center of México. And again, we’re glad that Jorge and Norma invite us to go along with them. Part of the pilgrimage tradition entails a stop for some good simple food at one of the many little cocinas near the top; we soon have our fill and proceed onward to the main event still looming above us.
There are plenty of pilgrims making their way into and around the shrine; and there’s a large ‘crown of thorns’ hanging over our heads in the narrow passageway, for added effect.
The mountain is mist-shrouded on the day of our visit, and the massive statue that appears and recedes in the fog appears to be either Christ with outstretched arms or a huge soccer referee shouting “Goal!!!.” I’m not terribly religious, so I kinda prefer the latter.
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After the shrine, we side-tripped for a bit of shopping for fine leather goods in nearby León, and a visit to its impressive Cathedral. This is one of those not-in-the-guidebooks detours we often make, and it’s worth the effort.
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Alas, the time came for Jaime and Norma to depart back to the working world, and we’d be getting no more free rides to nearby attractions. So on a quiet morning, we catch a cheap cab (standard fare: 40 pesos) to the Museo Gene Byron. The artist and her husband were both accomplished in various media, and built their own rambling ‘hippy-esque’ home in a tree-filled ravine near town. Today the creative works of this couple still fill the house. The caretaker led us through the home, with a set of massive old keys in hand. It was a return to a bit of Old México, and a fine place to lose ourselves for an afternoon in the glow of a now-distant age.
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A wander down Calle Pocitos is a fine way to spend another day, beginning at the Universidad de Guanajuato (yes, UG!). There are plenty of fine little shops, tavernas, gallerias, and cafés along the way to keep most anyone amused. And we pass a few of the charming old ‘pocitos,’ the stone faucets people used for drinking water when I first visited here a few decades ago.
Along Calle Pocitos you’ll find the Museo Casa Diego Rivera. Rivera was born in Guanajuato, but he was not really appreciated by conservative local folks during his life due to his radical politics. (How many of the great artists have not been radicals? Shaking things up is pretty much their job, isn’t it?)
One wonders what the more conservative locals might think of Rivera and Frida Kahlo today, whose portraits currently grace the most recent version of the 500 peso bill. The tiny micro-printed quote reads (rendered into English), “It’s been said that the revolution does not need art, but that art needs a revolution. This is not so. The revolution needs revolutionary art.” – Diego Rivera
But in recent years the locals seem to have embraced his legacy and welcomed this new museum that mostly features his family life when he was young. There are also good works by various contemporary artists on display, and it’s worth a visit to better understand the roots of the artist; but you’ll have to look for most of Rivera’s major works in Mexico City and other parts of the world.
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No visit to Guanajuato is complete without a visit to the huge statue of “Pípila” standing high over the city. This is where the first major battles of the Independence movement took place, and Pípila was the hero who in 1810 braved deadly fire to torch the heavy doors of the Spanish fortress. Carolyn and I have hiked those steep back alleys to the top on previous visits, but this time Elyse lobbied hard for a ride on the Funicular; and we rose quickly over the rooftops to the summit with a minimum of effort on our part.
The views from the top are truly magnificent and a great photo opportunity, and you get a better understanding of the city. Then you’re given the very attractive option of exploring more of the hidden city while navigating a warren of alleys back to the bottom.
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With a month to spend in Guanajuato, we have plenty of time to explore things that Carolyn and I had never gotten to in the past. So, with Elyse in tow, we grab another cheap taxi to go spend an afternoon in the impressive palace and beautiful grounds at San Gabriel de Barrera. This sprawling place was the private residence of a mining magnate and his family. It was expanded over several centuries and generations before it became open to the public.
After wandering the casa and imagining life during that era, we find our way through the many quiet gardens, each with its own theme, from French to Roman to Japanese, etc. It’s another peaceful respite from the city.
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On the last Friday of our stay we caught another performance of Rachmaninov by the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Universidad de Guanajuato. They were also premiering a fine piece by a local composer and Universidad de Guanajuato grad. On the high staircase just outside the concert hall, we encountered a young and sprightly Chinese lady who was touring the country and documenting her travels. That’s her with arms spread to embrace the view, with her photographer-guide to record the moment.
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Yet soon enough, our month nears an end. There’s still so much to appreciate here that we now tend to pause for the simplest of pleasures, hoping the time will linger. We now seem to notice more of the little things we may have passed by each day during our brief time in this special city. We recall yet again the playful waters of those beautifully lit fountains beneath huge spreading trees at the Jardín Union, and all those many evenings of fine food, wine, and conversation under the clear desert skies of central México.
We’ll always have fond memories of vivid sunsets over the canyon rim – a red-golden sky glowing just beyond the row of noble statues standing guard over the Teatro Juarez and awaiting our return. — PRW