Morelia

We arrived in Morelia after driving through the mountains and coming down to an elevation of 1920m.  Morelia is the capital of Michoacán and has many well-preserved colonial buildings.  The streets are lined with these building and still looks nearly as Spanish as it did before independence.

Lodging

We stayed at Hotel de la Soledad on recommendation of the couple that we had met at Hotel Rancho San Cayetano.  De La Soledad www.hsoledad.com  This hotel is well-located with beautiful courtyards and full-size carriages in the first and second floor hall ways.  These carriages are reminders of when the building was a carriage house.  Our room was huge with angels painted around the windows. 

Points of Interest

Morelia’s cathedral dominates the zocálo; it took more than a century to build and is a combination of Herreresque, baroque and neoclassical styles.  At night, this cathedral is an awesome sight when the whole cathedral is flooded in light.

 After our initial walk around the town we decided to take a one hour tram tour of the city for 55 pesos each, which just happened to be in Spanish.  On the tram, we visited all the main buildings that we would want to be going back later to see.  We did stop at the Santuario de Guadalupe which has more gold than any we had previously seen.  The guide books say that you will feel you are inside a Fabergé egg and that is true. The tram only stopped for 15 minutes so we had to quickly take pictures and try to see every nock and cranny with out being left behind. The tour ended at the museum of candy called De La Calle Real, where we learned the way the local specialty fruit paste candies were made. 

 We had a day that we went to many museums and government buildings.  The Palacio de Gobierno has many very interesting mural painted by Alfredo Zalce.  They are up the stairways and on the second floor walls.  The Museum of Colonial Art has an extensive collection of cornpaste crucifixes, many of them very gruesome.  We felt that the Michoacán State Museum was one of the most interesting with everything from artifacts to agriculture and economic developments. 

 Down on the western side of the Clavijero Palace is the Sweet Market.  It is like so many other artisan markets with tons of little booths under one roof, the difference is that these booths are all selling candy that is local to the regions.  You can not believe the various types and basket presentations.  One neat thing is that there are samples so you can’t go away hungry.  

 We walked down about 10 blocks from our hotel to see the Fountain of Tarascas and the aqueduct.  The fountain is beautiful and we had noticed it several times on TV when they were doing commercials of the region.  The three women supporting the tray of fruit are Tarascan the main Indian tribe of the region before the Spanish came to the area.  The aqueduct was built between 1785 and 1788 to meet the city’s growing water needs.  Its 253 arches are very impressive especially when illuminated at night.

Restaurants

One of our great finds was Panaderia Trico which is a restaurant above a bakery and deli.  They have fantastic breakfasts and lunches for very little money.  We liked it so much we ate two breakfasts there and the second time we knew not to order so much food for juice or fresh fruit, coffee, and rolls were included with all egg dishes. 

 Three dinners were memorable; first we ate at the Hotel de Portal in the bull fighting room.  I call it the bull fighting room because there were all sorts of bull fighting posters from the Morelia ring.  It was interesting to notice the difference is price of the sunny side and the shade side of the ring.  We love huitlacoche, which is a black corn fungus and we had it in empanadas and as a stuffing of an avocado salad.  This restaurant is on the second floor of the hotel and looks out at the Cathedral.  On the third floor or roof is a bar where you can sit right on the roof’s edge, watch the sun go down and see the lights of the cathedral come on.

 We also tried the Caseta del Roses which was across for the music conservatory.  There is outside seating and inside too.  The outside was completely filled so we went inside, which was a good thing for there was entertainment later in the evening.  I had stuffed trout Uruapan style.  Uruapan is the avocado capital of Mexico so the boneless trout was stuffed with shrimp and had an avocado sauce.  It was delicious!