We stayed in another beautiful boutique hotel in some restored hacienda. Here’s Mark with the local cat Bubba (pronounced boo-bah) who spent a lot of time with us.

We loved Guadalajara, capital of Jalisco state and commonly thought of as Mexico’s Second City, and it really felt like you were in Mexico (to contrast it with, say, Puerto Vallarta or even San Miguel de Allende). Four days wasn’t enough.

First off, it’s a big city; at about 1.5 million people it’s the biggest “new” city we’ve been in since Yangon over a year ago. There’s lots to see: churches, museums, cool neighborhoods, and colonial architecture. There’s good food and definitely a good bartender or two. It’s even the home of mariachi! And the climate is spectacular, at least in early February; every morning felt like spring and even in mid-afternoon the temperature was never higher than the mid-70s.

One of the highlights for us was the Cabañas Cultural Institute, an art museum housed in a 19th century orphanage. The main exhibit there consists of 1930s murals by José Clemente Orozco. These are powerful images embodying all the anti-fascist passion you’d expect from a leading artist of the era. After that we saw two other exhibits in the building, one of which was just amazing.

Orozco’s “Man of Fire”, painted on the ceiling, is considered perhaps his finest work

This was my favorite of Orazco’s murals. I’m not sure what it’s called, but seeing those people being crushed by industry gives you a pretty good sense of what his work was all about.

Máximo Gonzalez is a Argentinean artist who lives in Mexico City. His exhibit in Guadalajara, “Pogo”, was closing just days after we saw it, so we were lucky. I’m not sure how to describe it, so I’ll just include some of the pictures we took. It was art that made us laugh and have fun and just ooh and ahh over the crazy things he does.

This was Gonzalaz’s “Walk Among Worlds.” Hundreds and hundreds of inflated globes in an outdoor space, identical except for their size and the degree to which they were – or were not – inflated.

This was a display of hundreds of plates, mostly or all cheap, everyday plates. They call it art.

This one just blew us away. A room full of cheap red plastic lights. And this was no exhibit to be admired from a distance: you just walked through it, pushing all those hanging lights out of your way as you walked to the next room. I’ll laugh every time I see this picture.

Another awesome spectacle were some of the churches. Our favorite was the Church of the Blessed Sacrament, started in the late 19th century and finished only in the 1970s. Beautiful stonework, soaring steeples, and – most important – amazing stained glass. Mark & I have seen a lot of churches and cathedrals and temples and on and on in our travels, so it takes something to impress us these days. This one had a true “wow” factor.

The 16th century Municipal Cathedral, symbol of the city

Church of the Blessed Sacrament, a more modern building with a real WOW factor

The main steeple in the church was nearly all stained glass, all the way up. That was impressive.

We walked maybe four miles to get to the Basilica of Our Lady of Zapopan, a church that pulls in many thousands of pilgrims each year to see the small statue, the Virgin of Zapopan (not this one). Unfortunately, when we got there there was a service going on, so we couldn’t go in and be tourists. We did, though, get a picture of this strange display of plastic children’s toys along with Mary. Strange.

Otherwise it’s a great city for walking long distances and visiting cool neighborhoods. This is a place we truly want to come back to. For now, though, after a total of some 10 weeks in Mexico, from the Yucatan to San Miguel to Puerto Vallarta and here in Guadalajara, we’re off to Chicago to help friends celebrate their 25th anniversary. And then it’s back to Asia; we can’t wait for Bangkok.

And no blog post would be complete without our favorite bartenders from the area, here Matthias & Andres. Great martinis – great – and the food at this place was outstanding. We love a place where we can have a good drink and then share a couple plates so we don’t eat too much. This one worked as good as anything we’ve had just about anywhere in the world.