Queretaro

On March 19th, according to Santiago's calendar which he is using this year at home to learn more about the months of the year, we all drove to a small town 2 hours away from the city, called Queretaro.

The drive was not bad at all, the roads were pretty good and the kids kept themselves busy drawing, reading and finger knitting. The scenery was pretty similar to California in the summer. Very dry since it doesn't rain here in the winter time and lots of the views were very similar to Central Valley California.

When we got there, the first thing we noticed was the amount of flowers blooming, especially the "jacaranda" trees which we have a lot of here in Mexico as well, but those and the bouganvillias that are just covered with flowers took most of our attention at first. What a spring show!!

It reminded Jose and I of the colonial cities in Colombia and Venezuela like Cartagena or "el hatillo" where the cobble stone streets and churches in every corner give you a feeling like you are stil in the 1800's. Founded in 1531, Santiago de Queretaro as it is officially known, has been protected in order to keep its appearance.

The churches were magnificent and they all had a statue of "La Virgen de Guadalupe". The sound of the bells reminded me of my home town. We used to live very close to the Main Cathedral in Ibague and you always knew what time it was!!

The kids had a great time walking around and of course finding an ice cream store was abig hit!!
Mami enjoyed her favorite coconut "paleta" and both Santiago and Danny just looooove chocolate. Daddy most of the time doesn't get an ice cream, but this time, he went all out and had a lemon "paleta" which he liked.

Now, in my opinion, these are the most beautiful women in Mexico...they are always sitting there in their beautiful hand made outfits, working on a sawing project and they just are so sweet to me.

We bought them one of their dolls which are very typical of Queretaro. We named our doll "Juanita" and she is just a work of art!! Her arms and legs move so she can sit down!

Besides the beautiful architecture and flowers, the weather was just perfect...not too hot an definitely not cold....just right!
As you can tell by now, we fell in love with this place. It has the enchanting feeling of a colonial town and the city itself, outside of the "historic" side is very well established and with lots of farms near by.

Daniel loved the fact that he could wear short sleeves "up and down" as he says it!

Santiago noticed they were advertising a show, late at night, 8:45pm which is way past their bedtime and takes place in a big house where the actors play and enact some of the most famous myths and legends of the town. From what we could gather, it was a bit scary for Santiago's age and we decided to skip it to keep everyone having sweet dreams that night! Needless to say, he was not very happy about our decision. But oh well....mami and daddy just love you sooo much!!

At the end of the day we were pleasantly surprised to end up in the main square where a classical music concert was taking place.