Doing the Laundry in Puebla

Oh hi! We left Mexico city by first class coach (sooo much better than Berrys). We made the journey to Puebla, Wij slept and I looked out the window for four hours at the changing arrid mountainous landscape. Mega cactus forests on massive mountains and hair pin bends-yikes!

We had read that Puebla was the city of Angels. Very actively religious, Puebla has 70 churches in the centre alone. The city is also famous for the ceramic decorative handpainted tiles that adorn nearly every colonial building. Today Pueblans are still proud of the spanish influence, much more so than other parts of mexico. When we arrived a massive carnival was in full swing, with traditional dress and the whole Zocalo (square) filled with music and people.

We booked into the Hotel San Miguel a total throw back to the 70´s in every way... really funny decor, but budget oh god yeah! We needed to do our washing here and the next day set off to find a laundromatt. I had read in the Lonely Planet that one of the top end hotels would let you do a service wash. We went off and asked. They were a bit surprised, but looked us over agreed, monies changed hands and we were ushered away from the colonial open plan entrance hall and up in a single size wardrobe 'service elevator? with an unconvinced porter. Up and up we went the three of us wedges in to this intimate space, to the top!

The porter pointed us through a rooftop conservatory full ofplants and to a small sunny room that opened onto a massive roof terrace. This was were the washing machines were!!! This could only be the most spectacular place to get out laundry done! Check out the views...


A lovely scene, someone else pottering about with the radio on across the road... little finches in cages.


One of the 70 churches.


Many more churches...and the cathedral in the background, which appears on the 500 peso note.


Amazing architecture...


Good lord!


How fantastic?




Delicious.


Handpainted tile murals, I was loving it!


We found a great little cantina and had a few beers with the owner, who then plied us with free tequilla. We sat in this beautiful internal courtyard looking at the blue sky.


Here's the front of the cathedral with some impressive lighting.


Beautiful iron work.


And finally, beautiful boy, rocking on in our very uncolonial 70´s room. LMAO! Nice twin beds for us then... and a lot more freaky patterns that you can´t see here.


We pegged out clothes up on the spindly balcony like shoddy bunting. Fortunately it was there when we returned and not strewn across the road!

That was pretty much our contribution to Puebla. We didn't stay long, it had a bit of a stiff atmosphere... we headed of to the apparently chilled out Oaxaca... bye Puebla.