Posts Tagged With: Guanajuato

At 8:14am, an alarm clock goes off and with these old style homes, you can pretty much hear everything that goes on out on the streets and anywhere inside. We went to sleep listening to the faint chants of Christmas carols from afar. Wandering around the house trying to find the stupid alarm with no luck, I gave up and went back to bed for another hour with the world’s most annoying “Beep beep beep beep” on repeat before it stopped itself at around 9ish. The hostel owner also promised to make us breakfast, which was included in our room charge, but he never showed up.

Fine, whatever, so we wake up and freshen up, only to find that…. there’s no cold water!?!? And hence, there’s no water to flush….but somehow the hot water still comes out (albeit lukewarm), so we had to fill the tank ourselves everytime we needed to use the bathroom. Stupid. Anyways, we tried contacting the hostel owner to fix this problem, but more importantly we needed his help booking us a cab for tomorrow morning’s early trip to the bus station. We called but his phone is off!! Okay, what the fuck. Eventually in the afternoon we finally got a hold of him, and he said he’d book our cab….. we really hope he and the cab company makes good on their promise, otherwise we’ll have to wander around the town at 6am in the morning trying to find someone willing to take us to the bus station…..

Anyways, so we had a surprisingly awesome breakfast nearby, and went on a search for buying bus tickets since we already booked our hostel for tomorrow. The language barrier made things difficult, and since it’s the holiday season most places are closed! In the end, we couldn’t get the tickets and we’ll just see if we can get to our destination.

The day was spent wandering the city, but by now we’ve pretty much seen all that needs to be seen. Taking pictures around town, this city is still very photogenic everywhere you look!! And today, we’re experimenting with black&white!! Fun!

By afternoon, we were really tired of wandering around the city so we hunkered down at a Starbucks and watched a movie. I thought I had a Chinese-dubbed copy of “My Name is Zohan”, thinking we’ll past the time with a good laugh before Christmas…but turns out instead I got “My Name is Khan”!!!!! Turns out, the movie was extremely good, and we highly recommend it. It’s much more serious, but it was really good.

Our stay in Guanajuanto ended with a relaxed dinner sitting on the patio of the central square. You can easily spot the Canadians in the square wearing tshirts (us) and the locals who were out in their down parkas. Haha.

Happy Holidays everyone!!!!

Luckily it’s a Sunday, as we had to take the subway with our backpacks to the bus station, which is no easy task even without our packs because of the massive amounts of people that take the metro. The bus station is super organized, but it was definitely holiday season now as the place was PACKED. We moshed our way through and picked up our student tickets we purchased online. Hooray for still looking like students!

After our travels through rural China and Nepal, we have low expectations of the bus service here….but oh my were we totally off. After going through about two luggage searches and security pat downs before reaching the bus, we were given luggage tags for our bags and a snack bag with a choice of drinks! The seats were SO comfy, with enough space to outstretch your arms and legs, with a seat recliner that goes almost flat!!! They even have not one, but TWO bathrooms (male + female), with fancy looking doors to keep the unpleasantness out. Anyone that’s taken a Greyhound with a useable toilet knows those stalls are disssssgusting. The only downside was that, we didn’t know they’d provide food so we brought our own lunch =P

Arriving in the tiny streets of Guanajuato in a taxi, we were flagged down by a guy in a dress shirt yelling our names. Turns out, our hostel was actually the old home of a young local who went abroad to do ‘stuff’. Instead of taking us to the hostel right away, he actually took us to this local bar to chat over a beer, on the house! Awesome! The hostel was cheaper than others as the place is still under renovations but our room is pretty sweet. And we were the only guests, so we got the whole place to ourselves! It sounds nice, but at night it gets a bit creepy as the place reminds me of those abandoned homes in zombie movies, complete with dusty bookshelves and old bottles of liquor on the wall….

Randomly walking along the street we managed to find this amazing restaurant close to our hostel for lunch. It was extremely good, almost on par with some of the best food we’ve had in Toronto! Thinking the whole town had awesome food, we visited a place recommended by the New York Times. Worst meal so far in Mexico, and we’ve had some pretty sketchy foods coming out of metal pots at the street corner. Totally ruined our high praise of the Times.

The town though, is just amazing. Wandering around the cobble stone streets, it almost feels like we’re treading through a quaint town in Europe. With ZERO straight roads, this place was built around a silver mine, and some of the roads are actually underground tunnels!! It’s really interesting, except when you get lost… which is very easy. With colourful architecture, several main squares and lots of happy people around it gives the place an awesome aura. It’s one of those magical places where you’re wandering, and you have this urge for ice cream, and voila, an old man with his antique ice cream truck is around the corner. We sat down several times, just watching people go by and soaking in the atmosphere, and listening to the church bells ringing from afar.

After dinner, we walked out the restaurant and somehow we were greeted with a group of musicians singing and playing instruments, all dressed in medieval attire! Behind them, was a mob of tourists following the music, and we joined in the fun and listened to them sing, until they led the group to the stairs leading up to the local university, at which point the performance turned into a speech/play in Spanish, and we were totally lost so we left. At night, the town looks just as amazing being lit brightly all over.