Day Two 1/27/26 (Tuesday)

 


We had breakfast at the hacienda restaurant, on their outdoor patio. The patio was pretty full with a mix of English- and Spanish-speaking people, couples and families with children. Then we walked around the large, park-like grounds to look at other areas. They have 3 pools, a gym, a spa with yoga/meditation terrace, and nature walking trails with beautiful vegetation. Then, we decided to explore the neighborhood beyond the hacienda walls so we walked through the village to the local supermarket to buy necessary supplies (i.e., wine). We saw many small mom and pop eating establishments on the way, and also many cats and dogs.

Phil picked us up around noon to go to the relatively new and modern museum of the Mayan culture – Mundo Maya. Near there, in the Costco parking lot there is a cenote that they discovered when they were building the Costco store. Now it is fenced and protected and you can look at it … so we did. Once we got to the museum, we found out that it was closed on Tuesday so we only admired the building from the outside.

 

Phil’s daughter Noa (+ her husband Chenda and their two sons) live nearby in an area called Montebello so we drove to their place, which is a lovely very modern house, and met their rumbunctious boxer Raul and one of their two cats. We left the car and took Uber (with a Cuban driver who was a Trump supporter) to Centro Historico to visit a small Museo Maya housed in a beautiful Canton Mansion on Avenida Montejo, which is the Champs Elysees of Merida. The museum also included the history of the Canton family and of the mansion itself.  Afterwards we stopped at a restaurant called Tho in another historic house on Montejo, an Asian/Mexican/European fusion. We sat in the courtyard and near us was a young couple with two adorable labradoodles, one black and one brown. The black was a boy as he was wearing a blue vest, and the brown one had a girlish pink vest. We were looking at them and laughing so the young woman brought both of them to us and put the boy (Stefano) on Al’s lap and the girl (Rafaella) on my lap. Such an unexpectedly nice gesture…

 

Then we walked along Calle 47 to newly created Parque La Plancha. Calle 47 looked very different in 2016 – many buildings were ruins and it was basically empty. Now all the colonial buildings are beautifully renovated and house fancy restaurants and bars. The street is called the gastronomical corridor of Merida. The area where Parque La Plancha used to be an empty area left after the train depot was closed. It was neglected and full of garbage. Now, it’s a gorgeous park with walking and biking trails, two museum and places for people to relax.

From there we walked to the Plaza Central and the Cathedral, stopping to take a look at a modern round Mexican Music Center, and at El Jaguar bar for some happy hour mezcalitas. We thought that there was supposed to be a mariachi concert on the plaza at night, but when we asked, we found out that it was scheduled for the following Tuesday. We took an Uber (with a very nice young driver named Moises whose day job was fish distribution) back to Noa’s. Had some light dinner and Phil drove us back to the hacienda.

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