Puebla The Magical City in Mexico
A city with a European vibe and the oldest library in the Americas
A close teacher friend went to college in Puebla, Mexico. We are both retired now. She wanted to visit the college and see what it was like four decades later.
My husband and I love to travel, so we quickly said yes.
We live in the Rio Grande Valley close to the Texas border. Her husband’s brother is a travel agent and lives in Mexico, so he arranged our trip.
We flew from Reynosa, Mexico to Mexico City. Mexico City is a huge, busy airport, but we easily strolled to the bus station down the smooth floors without leaving the airport and purchased our bus tickets to Puebla.
The bus was luxurious, and they handed us a huge bottle of water as we boarded.
The ride to Puebla was an hour and a half. We took a taxi to our quaint hotel in the city center. Many buildings in Mexico have open courtyards, beautiful tiles, and rooms open to the courtyard.
The breakfast was delicious, with fresh fruit juice and many choices.
We toured the central city and the Museo Regional de la Revolución Mexicana. My husband’s grandfather was a captain in the army and his initials were on some of the documents. Knowing that my husband’s grandfather was part of all of this made it have more impact. We watched a movie that was a reenactment of the first shots in the exact location we were touring. I watched how the women protected their children and imagined myself in their position.
We next went to visit the University of the Americas. When we met with the music department director, we discovered what a small world it is. We had several mutual colleagues and students in common, some of whom now live in the US. My friend and I retired from a university on the border of Texas and Mexico.
My colleague and I sat down at the piano and tried out our rusty piano chops.
It is amazing how music memorized in youth stays in the brain. We still got it!
One day instead of taking a taxi we hopped on public transportation with people coming home from work. When we tell people we travel to Mexico, we usually get worried questions about the danger and drug cartels. The danger we encountered on public transportation was bumping our heads on the low ceiling of that bus. There was complete trust as people passed coins from the back of the bus to the driver for the bus fare.
One day we took a tour of Atlixco, a gorgeous city near Puebla.
We went to nurseries that distribute poinsettias of many colors to many places. The beautiful city center had murals of the legend of the volcano Popocatépetl which can be viewed from many places in and around Puebla. The legend has many variations of a tragic love story. The volcano is the warrior, Popocatépetl, who returns to find his beloved has died. He watches over his sleeping beauty eternally. The steam from the volcano is his rage.
We saw a building with dolls that came out of windows on the hour to represent all the dances and dresses of each state in Mexico.
We saw gorgeous churches.
Puebla is known for molé, and we had a delicious meal with five varieties.
There are big, uncrowded pyramids to climb, too.
The Biblioteca Palafoxiana, the oldest library in the Americas, is in Puebla. It has books dating from the 1500s.
We did not finish exploring the area in the week we were there. Nor did I begin to read any of the 41,000 books available in this library. So I will end here and read online to prepare for our next trip to Puebla.
