This morning, we planned a self-led walking tour throughout Oaxaca, aiming to see many of the museums in town. Since the Centro area is relatively small, we opted to basically retrace our steps from yesterday, adding in a couple stops along the way. Again, we loved the festive “papel picado” we saw along the way.

First up was a stop at the bakery Boulenc, which has the best almond croissant in North America (according to a random Eater article). We confirmed the croissant was good, but aren’t sure if “best” was the right accolade.

About a block away, we found ourselves at our first stop: the Museum of Prehistoric Art. Located in a beautiful home, each of the ‘galleries’ features art from various cultures across Mexico over the years. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of description for most of the pieces of art, but the craftsmanship and detail of the pieces were fantastic.

In addition to the beautiful figurines throughout the collection, there were a couple pieces that stood out. These included:

• Figurines representing a very early version of Día de los Muertos, otherwise known as the Day of the Dead
• A beautiful wall carving
• A 15th century “plan” for one of the cities
• An early depiction of a ‘head’ that still had a semblance of paint on it
• A display showcasing pottery displaying cultural norms for a society where ‘elongated’ heads were the desired norm; the pottery showed both an extremely uncomfortable-looking birthing posture (I’m glad that isn’t the norm today!) as well as the desired head
• A depiction of a “house” / village

I also appreciated that they had an indigenous display out front with incense burning, which was a nice ‘prehistoric’ touch.

Once we finished the museum, we decided to wander towards the town square or Zocalo, passing the beautiful Iglesia del Carmen Bajo on the way.

We continued through Oaxaca’s colorful streets, and with a little bit of help from friendly drivers pausing to allow us to cross the road (!) finally made it to the festive town square.

The primary sight in the square is the Catedral Metropolitana de Oaxaca Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, which is naturally surrounded by hawkers of every kind. Amusingly, we heard an exchange between competing hawkers (in Spanish, it may not translate as well), where one hawker was called a “squash” or “pumpkin” (‘calabaza’ – basically saying he’s an idiot) and promptly retorted something adjacent to (please read between the lines), “I hope your mother (a great woman), is doing well.”

The Cathedral itself is beautiful and quite large. The site itself began construction in the early 1530s, opening in the mid-1640s for services and completing construction in the mid-1700s (before they added a belltower and some other amenities in the 1800s). The architecture is stunning – I found the frosted, carved glass panes in the heavy wooden doors to be especially haunting, as were the votive candles lit in each alcove.

We continued to meander, passing the Templo de la Compañía de Jesus and heading for our next stop: the Centro Cultural de Mezcal. We were slightly underwhelmed by the museum portion, which essentially has a high-level overview of the process and history of distilling mezcal. The most interesting piece to me was the overview of the different types of agave / maguey plants that can be used for the production of mezcal. It’s clear their big emphasis is on actually trying the mezcal, but as we hadn’t had lunch yet we opted to return later in the afternoon.

Around the corner, we found our next destination, the Museo Textil de Oaxaca. Online, the museum appears to be more of a textile history museum, but in practicality it ended up being more of a modern art museum (there wasn’t much description, but it seemed to be anatomy-inspired art pieces). The downstairs gallery did have some local textiles, such as lace and rugs, with brief descriptions of some of the patterns. The upstairs gallery was textile related, but focused more so on Peruvian textiles (still quite compelling and beautiful!).

After our morning of museums, lunch was up next, although most places open around 1pm so we had some time to kill. On the way, we passed a number of additional sites, including the vegetable market, vegetable stands and another beautiful church. The vegetable market is part of a complex of markets here in town – there is also one next door for knick-knacks and a third (most famous) for food called Mercado 20 de Novembre.

To spend the time, we decided to duck into a lovely local cafe, Cafe Bre, for some coffee and free wifi.

For lunch, we opted to return to Levadura de Olla again to sample more of the local cuisine. Don’t worry – we’ve planned a full food tour for tomorrow that will hit a lot of the local restaurants, so we’ll get to sample a lot more over time!

Items we tried this time included:

• A güero bean soup with queso fresco
• A quesadilla filled with mushrooms, potatoes and covered in a delicious adobo chili sauce</li>
• The “fish of the day” (a meaty, white fish similar to swordfish) that was accompanied by tomato rice and a delicious almond cream sauce
• A barbacollita tamale, which had maiz, pozole and chicken inside, covered with a delicious adobo chili sauce
• Tepache, a fermented pineapple drink
• Enjambre, which is essentially pulque (fermented nectar from the maguey plant) sweetened with honey
• Pozontole, a delicious and foamy cocoa-based drink

We also had a front row seat to the “comal” which was fun to see!

Everything was unsurprisingly delicious! After lunch, we decided to continue our exploration and return to the Centro Cultural de Mezcal, where we did a mezcal tasting of local Oaxacan mezcals.

They included:

• Creyente Joven, made from Espadín agave
• 400 Conejos, a reposado made from also made from Espadín
• Yuu Baal, a mixture of three types of plants including Espadín, Madrecuishe, and Tobalá
• Alteres de mi Tierra, made from Maguey Barril

I was surprised by how different each of the four tasted – and how different they were from some of the mezcals we’ve already enjoyed in Mexico (I think my preference is still Ojo de Tigre). Of the four, I really only enjoyed two of them (the pure Espadín ones) – the other two were a bit too medicinal and/or herbal for my preferences. I also enjoyed seeing the crosses on the bottom of every shot glass here. Apparently, these specific shot glasses are called “veladoras” and they (traditionally) would have originally contained votive Catholic prayer candles and then been reused once the candle had burned down.

Since we’d basically hit all of the museums we’d hoped to, we were planning to stick around and enjoy reading in the beautiful courtyard. However, we soon became a snack ourselves for the first mosquitos we’ve encountered in Mexico and opted to find an air conditioned place to relax instead.

We made our way over to the Casa Hidalgo hotel, which purported to have an air conditioned interior bar. Given the lack of A/C anywhere but hotels, we had scoured Google for any images in which A/C was present. Unfortunately, the bar at this hotel with A/C was closed (or fully reserved, it was not at all clear despite multiple attempts to get clarity), so we settled in the open air courtyard to read for a bit and later moved up to their rooftop terrace. Because of the afternoon rain, we were the only people on the terrace. They were prepping for a popup bar, so, despite the lack of guests, there was a DJ blasting music and a photographer capturing images of their new cocktails (and, amusingly, our shoulders appear in soft focus in the foreground of several shots). The rooftop view was beautiful, though, and the music got us in a festive mood (I was also amused to see that they make ‘Coronita’ beers here (mini Coronas used to top cocktails!).

Opting to try something less ‘fancy’ for dinner, we retraced our steps and headed back past the textile museum to Casa Mook, which is a local restaurant serving up Oaxacan classics for cheap. We opted to get the “Tabla de Tacos” aka 8 tacos for <$10, including 2 each of tacos de vapor, al pastor, tasajo, and bistec. We also got the Molcajete Oaxaqueño, which included chorizo, scorched onions, Oaxacan cheese, cecina (dried beef), and beans.

Everything was delicious and the service was friendly – highly recommend! The staff was also very friendly and amusingly joked with me about how spicy the peppers were – I, of course, opted to bite it and immediately understood the reason for the warning.

On the walk home, I was amused to see one of Oaxaca’s other famed tourist sights – party buses shaped like mezcal bottles (you can’t make this up!).

Thankfully, it seems Marsupial is having a quieter Saturday night, so we will hopefully be able to fall asleep in peace.