Pátzcuaro

After spending about 20 dollars on tolls and traveling for about 3 ½ hours we found ourselves in the beautiful town of Pátzcuaro. We were at an elevation of 2175 meters and the air was thinner than the coast and cooler too.   The guide book says that arriving in Pátzcuaro is like arriving in an ideal place for discovering the roots of the past, full of traditions that have been passed on from generation to generation.  Our hotel was a 17^th century muleteer’s house that once belonged to Don Francisco de Iturbe.  Hotel Mansión Iturbe www.mansioniturbe.com

 It is a historical monument that was opened as a hotel in 1970.  The ceiling of our room was at least 15 feet and the beams were definitely hand hewed.  As soon as we had our things in the room, we went outside to explore the town.  We were right on the Vasco de Quiroga Square so it was very easy to walk around to see the sights.  I wanted to make sure that we got to visit the House of Eleven Patios which is filled with artisans, the market place, the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de La Salud and the library of Gertrudis Bocanegra. You get the real flavor of the town if you just sit at any of the street side tables and have a glass of wine or a cup of coffee as the locals do and enjoy the late afternoon sun.  The town is alive with activity!  One evening we watched the drum and bugle core perform on the town square, another night there was just music, but it seemed like this square was always active. Another day we watched the school band practicing in the park.  

Points of Interest

Using Pátzcuaro as our home base for three nights, we traveled south 17 km to the small town of Santa Clara del Cobre which specializes in copperware, with dozens of workshops crafting objects from copper.   We visited the museum of copper and the more famous workshops of Ignacio Punzo and Abdon Punzo.  After seeing their beautiful designs we wondered into another shop that drove us to their workshop so we could observe the artistic process.  D’Arte-Sano www.dartesano.com We ordered a small cocktail table from them for the boat but that never really materialized, and of course that is another story best left untold at the moment. Driving back to Pátzcuaro in the late afternoon we realized that we did leave some copper pieces for other adventuresome tourists who sought out this darling little town. 

 Our last day in the Pátzcuaro area was spent going north 15km to visit some ruins of Tzintzuntzan.  It was the capital of the Tarascan league at the time of the invasions by the Aztecs in the late 15^th century.  This archeological site sits on a large terrace of carefully fitted stone blocks and offers great views of the town, Lake Pátzcuaro and the surrounding mountains.  There is not a lot of ruins but they still are awesome to think that people were able to carve these stones and then to move them upward to form a pyramid shape. 

 Each town around the lake is known for a different type of craft.  The modern town of Tzintzuntzan is known for their straw decorations.  As you drive into town you see the artisans’ stalls to the left with their hanging decorations.  Each string might contain 20 straw bells and cost $2.  I ended up purchasing several with the idea that someday we would have a small Christmas tree that we would decorate with straw ornaments. At the Ex-convent of San Francisco you will find a religious complex constructed partly from stones from the Tarascan site up the hill.  In the yard you will find olive trees that are believed to be the oldest olive trees in the Americas.

Restaurants

We had some wonderful dinners in Pátzcuaro; it would be a shame not to mention some of our favorites.  First of all breakfast was included with our stay so each day we started breakfast at the hotel restaurant.  The first thing they did after you sat down was bring you a cup of coffee and a small basket of cookies that I would have called Mexican Wedding cakes or crescents like my mom made at Christmas time.  Wow, were they good and you could take them along with you as you left the table.  We had fantastic dinners in two other places, one called Priscilla’s and the other one was the Red Door.  We had a beautiful Caesar salad and steak with huitlacoche at Priscilla’s and paella at the Red Door.