Zocalo!

I love a Mexican Zocalo.  My first experience with the Zocalo was in Oaxaca. Every Mexica city,  town, village seems to have one. It’s the center park in the town. Generally there are city government buildings across the street on one side, and a beautiful cathedral right nearby. There may or may not be a mariachi band playing at any given moment.

Merida’s Zocalo is large and shady, lots of benches. We discovered a little ice cream shop just across the street and a bakery across another street, on the corner. The beautiful old city buildings are well-kept, and of course a magnificent cathedral right there.

We managed to wander through the zocalo almost every evening. It was on the way home from almost any direction! (or so it seemed. I was still getting my bearings until the next to the last day or so. Frank figured it out pretty quickly.) On the way to our hotel from the zocalo were lots and lots of shops that stayed open rather late. I manage to buy the girls’ scarves and our Christmas ornament—a Merida style mini hammock—along that street.

This is walking from Santa Lucia park toward the zocalo. The cathedral is the lit up building up on the left.

From Saturday through Sunday evening, there are dozens of food booths, and vender stalls. Love it! There’s the cathedral, on the left. To the center is a section of the cathedral that was taken over by the government and has been remodeled. It’s actually more modern looking, but still very lovely.

Our little ice cream shop was down along this building, almost to where the red building is.

On Monday evening we attended a Tango festival in a little auditorium at the right end of the building in the above picture. It was pretty good—just a local dance company consisting of about 9 young adults. They performed mostly the Argentine tango. Some guy sang a couple numbers in the middle. When we came out, a religious procession was under way. It seems is was a celebration honoring St. Sebastian. Who knew?!?! People came from many of the outlying villages, carrying banners and wearing wonderful native costumes. It was fun and first, then it went on and on and on….. Everyone wanted to be represented, I suppose.

Kind of a blurry picture of beautiful Guadalupe overseeing the festivities.