On the morning of Sunday, January 29, 2017, we flew out of MSP to Houston. The flight was unusually early getting into Bush International, which meant that instead of a seven-hour layover, we had more like eight hours. We hid out for a while in a quiet part of Terminal C, then took the Skyway train to Terminal B and had coffee at Peet's (good). Then we took the train back to Terminal C for a mid-afternoon lunch of an apple-chicken salad and margherita flatbread at Le Grand Comptoir (good). Then we walked to Terminal E for our flight to Merida, Mexico.
I had been to Mexico nine times and Mary Joy eight, but we'd never been to Merida, though the "White City" sounded interesting, both in itself and as a jumping-off point for the Mayan ruins at Uxmal. The problem was that flying there normally costs 600 or 700 dollars. The alternative, which we had considered several times, was to catch a much cheaper flight to Cancun, then take a four-and-a-half hour first-class bus ride to Merida. When, however, I discovered flights to Merida from Minneapolis-St. Paul for under $300, I jumped on them, though, luckily, not fast enough to get the $294 flights on American: instead, after those were gone, I found $271 flights on United.
After a two-hour flight, we arrived in Merida, went out the front door of the airport, ignored the loud taxi touts, and went to the booth, where we bought a taxi voucher for 200 pesos (about $10). We waited about ten minutes before a taxi came along and we took the twenty-minute ride downtown to our hotel, Luz en Yucatan. It is not luxurious, but comfortable, pleasant and amazingly inexpensive. We checked in and went pretty much straight to bed.
The next morning, Monday, January 30th, we went down the street for breakfast at Chaya Maya (good--though they don't open until 8 a.m.) We walked down to the Plaza Grande and just barely caught the free Spanish/English tour of the buildings surrounding that square, starting in the Palacio Municipal (City Hall), passing by the front of the city's oldest building (from 1549), the Casa de Montejo, and also visiting the courtyard of the former Archbishop's Palace (now a modern art museum), the Cathedral of San Ildefonso, the oldest Cathedral in Mexico, and the Palacio de Gobierno (State of Yucatan headquarters), with its impressive murals, painted in the 1970s by local artist Fernando Castro Pacheco.
We walked north of the downtown to the Paseo de Montejo, which Lonely Planet characterizes as "an attempt by Merida's 19th-century city planners to create a wide boulevard similar to the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City or the Champs Elysées in Paris." It is, on the whole,a lovely street with some lovely buildings. As we approached the northern end we saw a very, very large building with a sort of long, green metal sculpture in front of it. "Is that the Mayan Museum?" I thought. No, it was Walmart.
It was about a half-hour stroll each way, and on the way back we stopped for a fruit sorbet at a sorbeteria. It was very pleasant to sit there. The temperature was maybe in the upper seventies or low eighties Fahrenheit.
On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at Parque Santa Ana and the Santa Ana church. Our own hotel was on the same block as another colonial-era church, Santa Lucia, with the lively Parque Santa Lucia across Calle 60 from the church. We decided to have dinner at Chaya Maya, choosing Yucatecan dishes: lime and chicken soup (sopa de lima)--good--followed by cochinita pibil for Mary Joy and relleno negro for me. We weren't impressed by the main dishes. Someone later told us that the large, crowded (by both locals and tourists) Chaya Maya had once been very good, but was now more concerned with quantity than quality. Though it was hard for me to decide how good my relleno negro was, since I was put off by the taste of the principal spice used.
That evening we walked the four blocks to the Palacio Municipal, where every Monday at 9 p.m. the city puts on the Vaqueria, a free, hour-long concert of Yucatecan music and dance. The rather elderly dancers, from the city's Ballet Folclórico Adulto Mayor (Older Adult Folklore Ballet), put on a great show.
I had been to Mexico nine times and Mary Joy eight, but we'd never been to Merida, though the "White City" sounded interesting, both in itself and as a jumping-off point for the Mayan ruins at Uxmal. The problem was that flying there normally costs 600 or 700 dollars. The alternative, which we had considered several times, was to catch a much cheaper flight to Cancun, then take a four-and-a-half hour first-class bus ride to Merida. When, however, I discovered flights to Merida from Minneapolis-St. Paul for under $300, I jumped on them, though, luckily, not fast enough to get the $294 flights on American: instead, after those were gone, I found $271 flights on United.
After a two-hour flight, we arrived in Merida, went out the front door of the airport, ignored the loud taxi touts, and went to the booth, where we bought a taxi voucher for 200 pesos (about $10). We waited about ten minutes before a taxi came along and we took the twenty-minute ride downtown to our hotel, Luz en Yucatan. It is not luxurious, but comfortable, pleasant and amazingly inexpensive. We checked in and went pretty much straight to bed.
The next morning, Monday, January 30th, we went down the street for breakfast at Chaya Maya (good--though they don't open until 8 a.m.) We walked down to the Plaza Grande and just barely caught the free Spanish/English tour of the buildings surrounding that square, starting in the Palacio Municipal (City Hall), passing by the front of the city's oldest building (from 1549), the Casa de Montejo, and also visiting the courtyard of the former Archbishop's Palace (now a modern art museum), the Cathedral of San Ildefonso, the oldest Cathedral in Mexico, and the Palacio de Gobierno (State of Yucatan headquarters), with its impressive murals, painted in the 1970s by local artist Fernando Castro Pacheco.
We walked north of the downtown to the Paseo de Montejo, which Lonely Planet characterizes as "an attempt by Merida's 19th-century city planners to create a wide boulevard similar to the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City or the Champs Elysées in Paris." It is, on the whole,a lovely street with some lovely buildings. As we approached the northern end we saw a very, very large building with a sort of long, green metal sculpture in front of it. "Is that the Mayan Museum?" I thought. No, it was Walmart.It was about a half-hour stroll each way, and on the way back we stopped for a fruit sorbet at a sorbeteria. It was very pleasant to sit there. The temperature was maybe in the upper seventies or low eighties Fahrenheit.
On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at Parque Santa Ana and the Santa Ana church. Our own hotel was on the same block as another colonial-era church, Santa Lucia, with the lively Parque Santa Lucia across Calle 60 from the church. We decided to have dinner at Chaya Maya, choosing Yucatecan dishes: lime and chicken soup (sopa de lima)--good--followed by cochinita pibil for Mary Joy and relleno negro for me. We weren't impressed by the main dishes. Someone later told us that the large, crowded (by both locals and tourists) Chaya Maya had once been very good, but was now more concerned with quantity than quality. Though it was hard for me to decide how good my relleno negro was, since I was put off by the taste of the principal spice used.
That evening we walked the four blocks to the Palacio Municipal, where every Monday at 9 p.m. the city puts on the Vaqueria, a free, hour-long concert of Yucatecan music and dance. The rather elderly dancers, from the city's Ballet Folclórico Adulto Mayor (Older Adult Folklore Ballet), put on a great show.
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