Guadalajara

Maths can be fun.

This reminded me of the building from Desperado but there were no machine-gun toting mariachi's here.

This was close to our hotel. I don't think this company trades in Europe :)

It's worth mentioning that our hotel was stunning, and again it was only a Holiday Inn. I really think they're branded up-market in Mexico. It's strange seeing rather affluent clientele.

The bed with a selection of 4 different types of pillow. Still no match for the 7 offered in Tokyo however :)

One of the things I wanted to try in Mexico was authentic tapas, and here they are. Don't they look amazing?

The hairdryer however looks like a souvenir from a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. That one where Nicholas Cage has to escort a bunch of prisoners on a plane and it all gets messed up when they break out. I can't remember the name of it though.

We now had plenty of time to explore Guadalajara so we set out with the obligatory bottle of water and ventured forth.

This is the city cathedral built towards the end of the 16th century. It is renaissance on the outside and gothic on the inside.

and this is a dime bar, smooth on the outside, crunchy on the inside!

There was a small protest event taking place having a go at the local city government. I don't know what it was over though. The bands didn't sound too bad though.

That's the municipal palace with a small group of security outside to protect the residents from the marching protestors.

and here's the marching protestors getting in their faces. I like how the guards have taunted the well-behaved mob by leaving the doors open.

A pano of the square in front of the cathedral and palace. More guards on the bandstand thing in the centre.

A better shot of the cathedral.

One of the restaurants around the square where we stopped off for another drink. The speciality drink here is a pitcher of tea, alcohol and some Mexican spices. We played it safe and went for fruit juices and coca cola, not pepsi.

If you want your shoes shined, Guadalajara is perhaps the best place to go as there are loads of stands here. Admittedly it's a long way to travel though but at least you're guaranteed not to be left waiting.



Liking this piece, I'm wondering if there any shadow animals hidden within the design. I think I can see a dog!

One of the churches, unfortunately the streets are so compact here that its not easy to get a shot of the dome, unless I had some way of getting up onto the rooftops of the buildings around it.

However I saw no easy way of doing that.




Heading further away from the main centre and the buildings got a little rougher so we headed back in, not wanting to stray into the rough part of town.

Another major church in the city.

Here's the place to come for religious statues. I was disappointed that there was no buddy christ.

not available in Guadalajara.

This the cities rotundo, probably just a place to relax.

The Plaza de Liberacion is another main square in the centre of town. There's quite a few of them, giving the whole area quite a pedestrian feeling. The structure in the back is the main theatre building.

No idea who the statue is of or who it signifies.

Heading down towards the main cultural centre of the city. It's worth mentioning that I had no idea where we were going. In places like this I think its always a good idea to use tall buildings as waypoints and see what you come across along the way. Checking in Google Earth it seems to have worked here as we hit all the most touristy parts. However I thought we were heading North on the day when in fact we were going East.

The Spanish for "flags" is "banderas". So by that logic "Antonio Banderas" translates as "Tony Flags". For those smart-arses who respond with "but his name is actually Jose" then that would translate as "Joe Flags", which is even worse.


This is Plaza Tapia continuing East, not North, from the Cathedral.

Dancing fountains. We sat here for a little bit to chill and were sold a couple of tickets for a student fashion show taking place later in the day. We didn't see it but did want to promote the entrepreneurship on the part of the students.

Given the heat the fountains were very popular. The music accompanying the fountains was pretty good too, and whilst I knew when I hit the Bellagio at the end of the trip I'd be seeing the best it was still pretty cool to enjoy these.



Nice looking church structure especially the balcony garden bit. It's the Templo de San Juan de Dios

Mariachi band statues.

I'd waited ages for this horse drawn cart to make its way closer. Initially it was in the middle lane but by the time it got into range he'd pulled over so I lost the effect I was looking for that was to have the horse surrounded by traffic. Nevermind!

Art like this would look great with the sun immediately behind it. Wrong time of day though.


Heading back to the main squares now and the sun was starting to go down giving better photo opportunities.

The sun drops quick in Guadalajara. Actually we'd stopped back at the piazza restaurant for another drinking session, this time in the company of a family musical act we didn't quite understand.



A slightly better shot of the flag carrying woman. Yes we were walking a second lap but this was in searching for an ideal place to eat. This was going to be our last night in Mexico as tomorrow we'd be heading for Texas so we thought we'd find something a bit classy and Mexican. We ended up in quite a nice place not far from this statue where we had a really nice Mexican meal washed down with Tequila, which we didn't ask for btw. The gravel voiced waiter was looking to impress us with it so we'd buy a bottle.

We then headed back to our splenderous hotel where we found a note under the door telling us that the electricity was going to be switched off in the morning due to work taking place in the area and on that happy note we called it a night.

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