Last Night in Guadalajara

 

Horse-drawn carriages lined up at the Plaza de la Liberación near the Cathedral

It is better to have vacationed and then return home than never to have vacationed at all.

I went up to the area of the Cathedral because there was a well-regarded "Tortas Ahogadas" restaurant near there that I wanted to try. Last night in Guadalajara and I still had not eaten the local specialty the "tortas ahogadas" (literally: drowned sandwich). It's a meat sandwich soaked in red sauce.

Cathedral at dusk

The problem is that it was a little after 7:00 p.m. and the restaurant I wanted to try was closing. A lot of restaurants in this area are breakfast/lunch only so you had to be aware of the hours.

Finally got a peek inside the Templo de San Agustín.
There appeared to be a wedding in progress, which I did not want to interrupt, so I did my shutterbugging from the street.

Another "tortas ahogadas" restaurant closer to my hotel was shuttered for the night.

On the Plaza de la Liberación, looking at the Cathedral

Teatro Degollado on the Plaza de la Liberación.
The sun was setting in the west and Teatro Degollado faces west, so the light was better in this direction.

But there is a happy ending to my "last night in Guadalajara" food quest: the line was a little shorter than it had been at La Chata, the restaurant that my hotel had strongly recommended to me.

So La Chata it was!

One interesting thing about this restaurant is that the kitchen is open and right in the front of the restaurant, for everyone to see. The restaurant is always packed so it makes sense that the kitchen is always packed.

I waited in the line for about 15 or 20 minutes (which, as I said, was an exceptionally short line), but was seated soon enough,

Tables were packed.

The chips and salsa came with a choice of four salsas. The red was "off the charts" hot. The green was a creamy avocado/guacamole based sauce. The brown was quite tasty. Never tried the pico de gallo. It's chopped tomatos.

The avocado/guacamole sauce cooled my mouth down from the red salsa, so I could enjoy the brown salsa.

I ordered the enchiladas in a mole sauce.

 

The chocolate flavor was intense. Not sweet at all. Not bitter at all. But strong. And yet I could taste the other flavors in the sauce. The chicken inside the enchilada was perfect. Tender and not the least bit dried out.

The horchata I ordered at the beginning was downed very fast -- I was thirsty from all my walking around -- so I ordered a dark beer to cool down my mouth from the hot salsas. Another Victoria, por favor.

I should have braved the line sooner. The food at La Chata was excellent. And there were many more menu items that could have tried,

It is getting time to fly back home. It's always a little sad for me when a vacation comes to an end, even a mini-vacation. A three-day, four-night trip to Guadalajara was a perfect mini-vacation.

Sunday in Guadalajara, Part 2

There's a naughty child running loose in the Fountain of Naughty Children.
More on that later.

So we left off Part 1 with a giant head in the middle of the street. 

It's not just any giant head, it's "Escultura Cabeza Gigante," or "Giant Head Sculpture." And it's quite the photo spot.

Here is the view looking southward down the mostly-pedestrian Avenida Fray Antonio Alcade:

Google Maps officialyl calls this Giant Head: "Escultura Cabeza Gigante (Árbol Adentro de José Fors)," Giant Head Sculpture (Tree Inside by José Fors). Yes, there was a tree at the top of the head. If you need to ask why there's a tree atop the head, ask instead why the giant head?

Things continued to stay interesting as I walked northward on Avenida Fray Antonio Alcade. I was walking toward an interesting church tower and happened upon a pink carousel:

 

This is the Carrusel Monumental de Guadalajara. It's apparently permanent here in Parque La Reforma:

That's the interesting church tower off to the left of the Monumental Carousel.

Off to the left of the tower is a smaller church.

El Divino Redentor.

It's Presbyterian. Moving along ...

A metal bull. 

The church with the high thin tower is Santuario de San José de Gracia.

It's Sunday. Mass was going on. But I snapped a picture of the church insides from the church's outside, which I think is OK.

Again, didn't want to interrupt the mass. El Santuario de San José de Gracia makes a nice backdrop for what I am guessing is quinceañera photography.

The tell-tale sign that it is quinceañera photography and not wedding photography is this: no groom.

I returned to the area of the Cathedral, heading for the state museum, where I stopped to listen to a blind trumpeter playing a very respectable version of the Cuban jazz standard "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White". I tipped because (a) I like the song, and (b) the trumpet part ain't easy.

On to the Regional Museum of Guadalajara.

The museum had artifacts from the local indigenous cultures:

Always pottery. Always anthropomorphic pottery.

Seeing the building was worth the price of admission.

The price of admission was, again, gratis, which is one of my favorite words in Spanish,

I do like the central courtyards in these old, repurposed structures.

They old extinct animal bones.

I believe this is a mastodon. Could be a mammoth. Do I know the difference? I'm not a biologist, as the saying goes.

More indigenous artifacts:

In that last set, the one on the left really looks like a hipster with that bored "too cool for school" facial expression. I guess the indigenous cultures of long ago too were cursed with hipsters. 

Time to exit the small Regional Museum of Guadalajara and time to enter ...

Plazueta de los Mariachis. No wonder I did not find it on Friday. It's not a "plaza," but a mini-plaza. A "plazueta."

It did have a giant stylized trumpet player.

And a mariachi on a horse.

And the bust of a famous mariachi.

And that was it. I was told there would be strolling mariachi bands here. There wasn't. Dis. A. Pointing. I wanted mariachi music.

So as I am strolling back to the cathedral area, I again happen upon the notorious Fuente De Los Niños Traviesos: Fountain of the Naughty Children.

And the naughtiness is not limited to the statuary children.

Thankfully, the flesh-and-blood naughty child is with one of the children who has a respectable source of water: a frog. Soon, however, a non-naughty adult pulled the naughty child out of the fountain area and order was restored to the universe.

And just up from the Fountain of the Naughty Children is the Monumento A Beatriz Hernández: Monument to Beatriz Hernández.

I don't know who Beatriz Hernández is, but she must've done something heroic. Purple tree (got to find out what these purple trees are) and Cathedral in the background.

I then noticed this interesting building.

Templo de Santa Maria de Gracia. The dome is a bit weather-beaten, but I liked the statuary at the roof line:

Are they saints? Apostles? Prophets? I don't know. I need to find out. But I've walking in the hot sun and it's time to take a break for the afternoon.