Conocer a Guadalajara (Dia 3)

Day 3. TAPATIO TOURS.  I have to say, this was not the day we were looking forward to.  We assumed this would be a great way to see the city... nothing more, nothing less.  When in fact, it turned out to be one of our most interesting adventures.  The benefits?  1) You don't have to worry about directions, 2) You can stare at the natives (they're expecting it anyway and it's not like they can do anything when you're several feet above them), 3) You can take as many pictures as you want and generally act like a stupid tourist (cause guess what, you can't tell them you're not when on your on a huge red tourist bus), and 4) it has AWESOME views.

So before I move on, a quick fact.  Tapatio is slang for Guadalajaran.  So you want to say, "Wow, that is one good looking Guadalajaran"... easy. "Hola Tapatio/a bonito/a". Done and Done... more or less. :-)

Ok, so moving on.  Clearly, we got some great pictures... again we weren't holding back.  Everyone knew we were tourists  (if they couldn't tell by the abundance of blonde hair and blue eyes...) so why miss a single picture?

We stayed at the Westin hotel, so we walked down to the corner of an intersection by the Expo and hopped on the Guadalajara tour.  Ok, a quick sidetrack.  There are four bus routes (Guadalajara, Tonala, Tlaquepaque, and Zapopan), you get on one and pay a one time charge and get wristbands (for hopping buses).  We got on the Guadalajara tour half way through (the buses all pretty much go through the central hub in the center of town).

  

Our first sight? One of several cathedrals in the city.  It was gorgeous, and one of my favorite cathedrals.  For the life of me I can't remember the name, but then again you shouldn't be too surprised since my memory is notoriously poor anyway.  We saw some very interesting parts of town and the Guadalajara tour ended up being probably one of our favorites.  They suggest taking it at night as the city is beautiful lit up, but since we started so early, we weren't in the mood to keep going by the end of the day.      

As we were pulling into the center of town, we were finally able to get a really good picture of the brooms that some people use here.  I'm pretty sure if I'd had one of these, I wouldn't have spent so much time trying to finish my chores as a kid.  One good swipe with this broom and you're done with the kitchen.  I'd like to compliment the picture taker here (no it wasn't me... geez I'm not that hard up for compliments) as she also got the weed whacker guy mowing the lawn.  Yes, lawn mowers are not the fashion here.  I've seen 5-6 out in force at the IBM grounds "mowing" the lawns... though I think they finally got a lawn mower, so it's not as common a sight at IBM anymore.  Anyway, brilliant work in general, I'd say.

So, after that, we got dropped off at the city center.  We'd been there the day before, but the next bus for Tlaquepaque didn't leave for another hour or two so we walked around and saw a few more sights that we weren't able to fit in the day before.

 I took this picture because I love these orange-blossomed trees and I thought it was beautiful with Teatro Degollado in the background.

So, the bus to Tlaquepaque finally arrives and of course we have to get our picture by it.  Yes, of course we look brilliant.  We get on the bus and take our seats.  I should mention that most of us took the left side of the bus, but of course the one that has tree allergies sits on the right side of the bus in which you literally have to duck in between the seats so you don't get wiped out by leaves, branches, etc.  It did make a very entertaining ride and I'll admit, I was mostly watching people duck instead of looking at the sights.

We arrive at Tlaquepaque which is a well known tourist trap for artisan shopping.  I think it's a wonderful place to visit.  So quaint and adorable.  It was a pretty expensive place to buy stuff, but we enjoyed window shopping.  There was the cutest "fat man" store and of course we had to take pictures on the big chair.  Overall, a definite must do.  I just wish we'd had more time to spend there, but our bus for Tonala was heading out only an hour after we got there.

Tonala is a small town on the outskirts of Guadalajara and is well known for artisan crafts.. cheaper ones than Tlaquepaque anyway.  We spent even less time there because the bus that took us there was leaving in 40 minutes and it was the last bus to Guadalajara.  Trust me, we did not want to stay there.  The way there was dusty with quite a bit of traffic... not to mention it wound it's way through some less than savory neighborhoods.  Also, there's not much to see in Tonala as far as beautiful architecture is concerned.  It definitely had the "this is off the beaten path for tourists" type feel.  Nevertheless we did find some cheaper souvenirs to buy and overall it was a very educational experience, I believe.

We headed back to the center of town to grab the bus for the Zapopan tours.  This was a very nice tour, but since it was the last one, we were getting pretty tired and grumpy.  The highlights of this tour are the Basilica, the Arcs of Zapopan and the great view of the city at the top of a hill.  It was much more enjoyable than the dusty ride to Tonala, but we'd been going for about 8 hours at this point, so we were pretty worn out.

We got back to the center of town to wait for the Guadalajara tour and I took one last picture of the cathedral and the park next to it on our way back to the hotel.

Again, the Guadalajara tour was probably our favorite and the "first half" (since we jumped on the bus mid-tour in the morning) didn't disappoint.  It stopped by what the locals call the "Minerva", which is a huge round-about with this in the middle.  You can see in the photo to the left what used to be the old gates of Guadalajara.  This is a beautiful piece of Guadalajara and should not be missed.  It's even more impressive at night, but we didn't have time to do that.

Justice, Wisdom and Strength.  Guard of this loyal city.

We finished off the day by going to a Mexican gourmet restaurant called "La Tequila".  A very nice restaurant with some very good food.  I think the favorite dish was the steak fajitas.  We headed back home in one of our worst taxi rides.  I'm pretty sure the boy had just started work as a taxi driver and had no idea that he made everyone uncomfortable.  He blasted his music, had all his windows rolled down and flipped off another car as he cut across in front of them.  I don't think I need to mention he drove rather recklessly.  Needless to say, we were all glad to step out of that taxi and no he did not get a tip.  I figured his tip was that we all survived.