We had a 9:30 call time this morning for our drive out to Puebla in order to make our noon mole lunch. We were originally planning on a 2 day stay in Puebla and I'd gotten all excited about some of the things we would eating...so I felt compelled to add in the day trip still. I forgot to take a photo of the actual murals on the walls -- they were quite entertaining. We picked out Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter, and Marilyn Monroe, among others. It was a very nice restaurant decor and ambiance wise. Unfortunately we had a waiter who had a really hard time understanding our order. I think he wasn't used to people just sharing lots of food. It unfortunately meant we had a couple botched orders...too bad because the food was actually quite good!
I appreciated being able to order multiple moles - really helped us all figure out which were the best. Here's a pumpkin seed green one next to a sweet red one next to the classic mole poblano. Green was the winner hands down.
This one included a chile one and a chocolate based one -- the red tomato-y one was probably the winner in this round.
Food presentation was well done. Here's a salad.
And this was our very last "celebration" dinner for Laoye. I think he aged at least 5 years based on the number of birthday songs and desserts we went through. 😆
Puebla was a very cute town. Lots of colonial architecture, bright colored houses, no skyscrapers in the downtown area that is focused around the Zocolo. I kind of wish we had kept our original itinerary to stay here overnight for two nights. It seemed like the type of place we would have enjoyed wandering around in more. It was so much cleaner than CDMX, the streets were all more organized, there were a bunch of stores I would have loved to stop in. Maybe it just felt more overall manageable than the huge overwhelming nature of Mexico City. Like we went to some of the best restaurants there and yet no one would know them - everyone seemed to know the Puebla spots. The whole of downtown was like a square mile.
But before we explore Puebla in greater detail, first a detour to the largest pyramid in the world: Cholula. You ask why you've never heard of it? Well, it's a bit of a misleading title. Basically there IS a gigantic pyramid...but over the years it was forlorn and grass grew over the top...so now its just this big hill that you can climb and the Spanish explorers built a church on the top so you can't really excavate the pyramid underneath either. The view from the top was nice. Here's the famous volcano of Mexico City in the background - typical cone shape of all volcanos.
L and R had been expecting pyramids to climb like at Teotihuacan -- they were a little upset that we ended up doing a hill climb instead. But their disappointment didn't stop them from looking amazing for photos still!
L tried to go see the ruins underneath, because children under 13 and seniors were supposedly free...but sadly that was only for Mexican citizens. So she had to settle for climbing up to see the church.
Panoramic view was pretty nice from the top --- this is in the downtown Puebla direction.
Inside the church. Impressive -- but I have to say, even for someone religious, it's hard to feel excited about too many churches -- they all start seeming quite interchangeable...
After stretching our legs on this brief walk, we headed back to the Pubela historic city center for our self-designed shopping/eating/sight-seeing tour. It started with a visit to La Pasita, legendary for being the oldest bar in Puebla with some very eccentric drinks.
I should have taken a photo of the menu, but one shot was literally just a question mark because they couldn't tell you what was in it. We went for some classics (the one with the cheese cube) and some not (pineapple and apple, I believe).
Apparently Baba felt the classic was decent (I did not agree, it was not good). I thought all of them were way too sweet. I guess the shot of tequila we had at Mayahuel was really sweet too...maybe this is a Mexican tequila thing?
After our shots, we walked around the eastern side of Puebla a bit, starting with the Alley of the Frogs (known for its colorful buildings and weekend market).
There were some street musicians but otherwise pretty quiet. Much less crowded compared to Mexico City. We stopped at La California, which supposedly had a great "cremita" pudding. I was really anticipating this...(notice that my smile below in the picture is BEFORE we tried it). It was sort of like a creme brulee? But not that good. I would not recommend - unless you just want to say you tried it.
We stopped in a few pottery places next where I got a spoon rest and Jiuma picked up a small plate. Then we headed to the Chapel of the Rosary, known for how gilded the interior is:
Again, I was a bit underwhelmed...so we went to the Alley of the Sweets instead, hoping for a better fit for our tastes -- it literally is a small street where each shop sells candy and desserts.
Full of smiles with anticipation...but...I have to say the little candies and cookies looked better than they tasted, at least in my opinion. Perhaps Mexican candies/sweets is just not our thing? (Outside of churros).
We kept going, now in search of substantial food, Puebla's famous food scene needs to redeem itself! We passed the Zocolo along the way:
Also got the twins some bubble tea -- turns out "half sweetness" in Mexico is like no sugar at all. 😆 Next time we will know!
We made it to one of the top cemitas places in the city -- these were in fact pretty good. They are these HUGE sandwiches, bread freshly baked, ingredients plentiful, and it was fun watching them all get made right in front of us.
Look at the size of that thing! Bigger than L's head!
And the final stop was for some al pastor tacos. Jiujiu really wanted to catch a taco place with the gyro-type set up for carving the meats.
These were actually quite good as well. Jiujiu says best tacos of the trip after the ones they got while we were at the museum. I personally really enjoyed the pineapple -- though overall I have to say I like my carnitas and shrimp tacos more than al pastor.
And with that it was adios to Puebla and back to the city. The 2.5-3 hour drive each way was pretty endless...luckily R and I passed the time very easily by binging on Pursuit of Jade episodes the entire way. 😆
Was the day trip worth it? I enjoyed going to Puebla - I really liked the little Mexican town feel. The one shopping street next to the Zocolo actually reminded me a bit of Myeongdong! The rest of the town also reminded me a bit of Belize, but without the golf carts. 😆 Jiuma thought the Alley of the Frogs reminded her of a place in Colombia.
But was it with the drive? Possibly not. I'd probably recommend it as an overnight trip if others are visiting CDMX.
We were home by about 9pm - highly recommend our private driver service again for large groups - super nice folks and very convenient. We managed to stay up for a few more hours of cards (Jiujiu and Jiuma introduced us to this new game, the Crew, which is a collaborative/collective-goal concept, pretty fun! Might be a Christmas gift in the future!).
And then off to bed. Tomorrow we depart for home. 😢
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