Oaxaca for the long weekend

We like to take a short trip on MLK weekend. Doreen gets the day off, it is just far enough from the holidays that you don't feel like you are cheating, and it is usually pretty easy to get flights.

So this past weekend we took a flight to Oaxaca, Mexico.

United has one non-stop a day, and it flies the little planes:

I don't really mind them too much, as long as we get the exit row or the bulkhead. You gate check your bags, and it loads and unloads really fast.

We stayed in the Quinta Real on the advice of friends. The hotel had been a convent, built in 1576. In the 1860s, Benito Juarez took over all Catholic property, and booted the cloistered nuns into the street. Since then, the building has been a jail, a storage facility for public records, the Weights and Measures department for the state, a courthouse, and much more. In the 1990s, it was converted to private use, and then turned into a hotel.

It is very pretty:

And it is on a nice street:

It still has the big chapel, which is now used for entertainment. There was some folkloric dancing in there when we arrived.

That first night, we walked to (you can walk to everywhere in the historic district of Oaxaca) a restaurant called Catedral.

It was a very nice place, and a nice meal. We started with a Tlayuda, which is sort of like a huge quesadilla. (They have quesadillas, too. Not all of them have cheese in them interestingly enough)

 We found them very delicious. We also had two different kinds of mole. One was an "Amarillo" mole, which is not yellow:

The other is called Manchamanteles, which is a pork mole (the above is beef):

We also drank several different mezcals. They serve them in these mezcal glasses:

which has a cross in the bottom. So when you are done, you are crosses up!

Earlier in the day, we stopped by the Templo de Santo Domingo and noticed this statue of the Peruvian saint, San Felipo de Neri. Notice he is holding a cacao pod, and holding a broom.

Here is the outside of that church. You can see Doreen below

The walls of many of the buildings in Oaxaca are decorated. This one uses colored beans:

An SP near the Basilica of Our Lady of Solitude,

Baby Jesus

We had a fun meal here (enchiladas and entomatados, see below. Total cost, 100 pesos. Or about $5.00. And a ten peso tip to the guitar player)

Enchilada

Entomatado

Wandering through the market (Mercado de la Merced) we saw the font of all Moles:

And Spices:

It was a good day.

Milan on the flop

The final leg of our trip took us back to Milan.

Driving in any city where you don't know exactly where you are going can produce anxiety. But with Doreen navigating, and the Google Lady telling us where to go we were able to get to the hotel and drop off our bags, and the drive to the rental car drop off location without any problem at all.

And Milan is not exactly a "grid" city!

The drop off location was very close to the main train station in Milan. We have been there before, and I just love the brutal, fascist architecture. (what does that say about me?)

 Bold train stations are great. Soaring spaces, and plenty of room.

You can no longer get to the trains without a ticket, but you can use your imagination to think about what it looks like.

Or, I could dig back in my archives and find these images:

those are all from 2000

Now, we are no longer traveling rough.

This is the view from our hotel:

 Much more upscale from where we have stayed in the past.

 It is very close to this monument to Leonardo da Vinci.

The bike share program in Milan has kid's bikes, too!

wandering around the city, we found this plaque. It was on a building that used to be a hospital, the very hospital where Hemingway recovered from his wounds as an ambulance driver, and subsequently came up with the novel "A Farewell to Arms"

We've been in Milan before, but we've never seen The Last Supper.

This time, we had tickets.

It is in this church:

and it looks like this:

 You only get 15 minutes with the painting (dry fresco). YOu had to go through two different air locks to get to the thing

This is inside the church associated with the painting.

Since this was the last day of our trip, we walked down to the Piazza del Duomo, and found a great place to have a spritz, looking at the square

 and the Duomo itself

 What a view!

 Then we came home.

Luckily, Lulu remembered who we were.

Mira, Venice, and Palladian Mansions

Leaving San Cassiano was sort of sad. We enjoyed the town, had some good meals, enjoyed the hiking and the people.

But time marches on, and so did we.

On the way to Mira (our base in The Veneto) we drove up to Mt Grappa, the scene of intense fighting in WWI.

The road to the summit was perilous. 

There must have been 50 switchbacks, and in some cases our little Fiat Panda barely fit on the (two way) road. We were lucky we didn't face a bus coming down.

It was scary.

THEN, when we got to the top, the clouds moved it. I didn't take any photos at all. Apparently you can see all the way to the Adriatic from there. But we couldn't even see into the Veneto. 

We did, however, see this guy cutting hay by the side of the road.

We saw this is San Cassiano as well.

Mira was a place to park ourselves while we ventured about the region.

For example, to Venice!

While it is nicknamed La Serenissima it is very crowded in the main squares.

We sought out the by-ways.

But we did stop for a Spritz on St Mark's Square.

I had to try on Doreen's cool blue glasses when she stepped away.

And we always like the mosaic of St Mark's body being smuggled past the Turks in a basket full of pork.

a very cool place

Doreen then had the good idea to take a cruise down the Grand Canal!

It was very hot, but a fun (and beautiful) ride

I love Venice. If I were a rich man, I would buy one of these palazzos.

Maybe near The Rialto Bridge

What a place

The Bridge of Sighs

St Maria Salute.

The Doge's Palace

We left venice and returned to Mira.

The next day, we rode bikes to see the Villa Foscari, one of the first villas designed by Palladio.

Pretty.

Nice grounds

Quite a place

Here is Doreen, pretending she lives there.

Then we rode our bikes back.

Here is a strange thing that Google did to us before we left.

A nice, quiet day.