July 10, 2016 Breakfast at Posada de Luna, Lunch Pizza and salad at Dean Martini’s Dinner Artichoke at El Manantial

July 10, 2016 Breakfast at Posada de Luna, Lunch  Pizza and salad at Dean Martini’s  Dinner  Artichoke at El Manantial

A little more restful day today, Sunday.  We started with a pleasant breakfast at the Posada.  The cook had purchased Huitlacoche and squash blossoms, so we had a discussion of how to prepare them with Reina.  It was finally decided to cook them on put them into a Quesadilla, which seems to be the preferred way to prepare them in Mexico.  We were served two quesadillas, one each of Huitlacoche and one of squash blossoms with some beans.  I also ordered eggs over easy garnished with salsa verde, which turned out to be a good idea because the quesadillas were benefited by the addition of a little salsa verde and some bacon.  We were served tea and coffee and fresh orange juice. A lovely and special breakfast.

  My plate of Quesadillas, bacon, beans and eggs with salsa verde

  The chef and prep cook in the kitchen at Posada de Luna

  Suzette sitting in the alcove where we eat beside the pool area

After breakfast we went in search of the Biblioteca.  We first went to the wrong place, the Public Library, but soon we were directed down Insurgentes to another building called the Biblioteca, which it turns out is an English speakers’ community center.

  The entrance to the .Biblioteca with seated volunteers

   A ver agile young musician

We were greeted by a number of volunteers speaking English and the Garza group who has arrived just before us.  We took a parasol covered table and found eight chairs at around 11:00.  Soon a band in Renaissance dress uniforms began to play music until 12:00, when the rather large crowd was loaded into two buses for the house tour.  The tour visited two houses.  One was the Mask Museum house, whose owners Bill and his wife are consummate collectors who built the house to hold their collection of masks and other mostly indigenous art objects.  Here are a few pictures:

The mask museum is also a B&B and has a gallery that sells masks, which seems to be a path serious collectors often take when overwhelmed by the response to their passion to collect.  They form relationships with the indigenous people, who bring them masks and other objects, which the collectors purchase to maintain the relationship until the collector reaches the point where he must eventually sell to make room for more stuff.  That seems to be the point Bill has reached with his pursuit of masks of indigenous cultures in Mexico, although I saw some Alaskan and African masks.

  The street at the Mask Museum about 1/2 of the way up the hill

  The kitchen of the Mask Museum house

  View of the dining and sitting room from the kitchen of the Mask Museum house

  The view from a bedroom of downtown SMA

  The view of town and inner courtyard of Mask Museum from the second floor balcony

   A woven silk design by an artist in the Mask Museum Gallery

The second house was on the other side of town in the San Jacinto Colonia near the Instituto. It was also a rental property that had a backyard that backed up to a church that made a dramatic backdrop.

I realized two things as a result of the tour.  One is that the tour is probably many English speaking tourists first introduction to SMA’s ex-pat community and many ex-pats are involved in the real estate business and tourism,  which are both very active businesses.

The center of town was closed to vehicular traffic, so we had to walk back to the Biblioteca.  When we arrived, the Biblioteca had closed and the Garza Group had left.  I had seen in a number of bars televisions tuned to the final of the EUFA between France and Portugal, so We decided to get a beer and watch the game.  We retraced our steps to a small bar named Dean Martini on Relox Street and found seats in an upstairs lounge area with large plush seats, a T.V. and tables and chairs.  There was a group of folks celebrating a woman’s 31st BD watching the Final, so we sat and ordered beers.  I had my first Bohemia Obscura (dark) beer.  Suzette had her favorite, Negra Modelo.  We became hungry around 3:00 and ordered a takeout pizza and Mixed salad from a pizzeria across the street.  When the pizza arrived it was ham,mushrooms, sliced onions and chile on what I would call a hard R at her thick crust approximating Lavosh or an overcooked hardened Pizza crust.

We were so hungry we gobbled two pieces each with second beers and I had a third piece.  We endured the pizza, but enjoyed the fresh Salad with its light Italian vinaigrette.

After Portugal won the Final with a blistering kick that sailed past the French goalie in the 105th minute we paid our bill and walked back to the Posada, only getting slightly lost once.

We rested from 5:00 to 6:00 and then got dressed and took a taxi up the hill to a bar and fish restaurant on Barranca St. named El Manatial, which in Spanish means the spring, source or Origen.

The whole group was there less Mike.  Everyone was ordering artichokes, so we ordered one also.  Suzette drank a margarita and I drank carbonated mineral water, which helped settle my stomach.  Many of the ladies ordered shrimp tostadas, Rags ordered BBQ’d Pork ribs.  It turned out that El Manadial was a pretty good fish restaurant.

After dinner we all walked up the hill to The house on Garza St. Where we watched the sunset and the city light come on in the cool evening breeze from the house’s fifth floor roof top terrace that had a panoramic view of the town, surrounding valley and reservoir and even the Guanajato hills.

  The sunset in the haze of the SMA Valley from the upper deck at the Callejon Garrza house

At 9:00 we walked home as dusk turned to night and were in bed by 9:30.

I read and ate a few caramel coated peanuts.

Bon Appetit