slowly she turned

^This is the beautiful Templo de la Merced that we could see from the roof of our hotel. I wish that we had gone in when we heard the mass on Sunday as we walked by, because from the photos I’ve seen, the interior is gorgeous. I started to crop the electric lines from the next photo, but realized that I like all the lines and angles of the shot.

Another thing that we were learning about Mexico was that many shops and restaurants do not take credit cards, so first thing on Tuesday morning we headed to an ATM to get cash to pay the driver who would take us to San Miguel de Allende at noon.  That’s when we found the true heart of Querétaro’s Centro Historico.

I nearly walked into a policeman holding an automatic weapon when I was trying to take a photo of the Mexican flag above the government buildings. Then I saw a lot of other police armed the same way. This shocked and scared me, but being from the United States, I have no comment.

^This photo isn’t great, but I loved the cats on the supports to this balcony.

I tried very hard to get in at least one visit to a museum, and we eventually spent twenty minutes in the Querétaro Art Museum (https://whichmuseum.com/museum/museo-de-arte-de-queretaro-19634). It is housed in a beautiful old Baroque monastery.

We had to hustle back to the hotel to check out and meet our ride, and so we were rushed. Querétaro would have been worth spending more time there. If I ever go back, I will.

The UNESCO World Heritage site for the Historic Monuments Zone of Querétaro: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/792

Then we were on the highway through acres of cacti to San Miguel de Allende for the rest of our time in Mexico. Right away we noticed a difference in the highway – there were one and a half lanes on each side instead of double lanes. The side lanes were used for bicycles and motorbikes but also cars pulled over into the side lanes and straddled the line when faster cars passed, who straddled the center line of the highway. It seemed dangerous but made sense as long as the traffic was light.

We were very beat after our morning rushing around Querétaro so after a ride into San Miguel de Allende which took very steep narrow (but beautiful) streets down to our hotel, we found a great Italian place to eat mid afternoon, where the warm foccaccia could make you tremble and weep. We went back to this place later and it was just as good.

We then crashed for the evening in our air conditioned room at Bito’s Hotel Boutique. This would turn out to be the ONLY air conditioning that we would experience in Mexico. So many places were outside and/or in courtyards and the temperature was usually in the mid 80s. We spent a lot of time in this very comfortable room!

I went to the roof and took photos in each direction. The Cathedral is closer than it appears! I decided to try to take a photo of the sunset each day.