Monterrey, Mexico (June 2004)
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Jason and I went to Mexico in June for a trip with his family. Jason's brother, mom, aunt, two uncles, and cousin flew into Monterrey to spend a week reuniting with family that still lives in Monterrey. We had a wonderful time wandering around, meeting people, spending time with family and practicing a lot of Spanish. Monterrey is the third largest city in Mexico and is not on the ocean. It's about a three hour drive from Texas, and twelve hours from Mexico City. It's surrounded by mountains, and the land in parts reminds me of southern California. While we were there, it was humid and the temperature was in the mid 90s or so. It is not really a touristy area, so it was a lot different from our trip to Cancun last year. Almost nobody spoke English, so we really did have to speak a lot of Spanish. We stayed downtown, kind of where the red star is on the map below. |
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The first day we were there, Jason and I explored by ourselves. Our plane arrived in the afternoon, and we spent the day walking around near the hotel and in the Plaza Zaragoza (to the right of our hotel on the map). In the evenings, you can find many families and couples wandering around the plaza, or sitting on benches. At the north end of the plaza, there's a governor's palace where vendors sell drinks and candy, and Mexican folk music plays over loudspeakers. At some point, we noticed a lot of people gathering on one side of the park, so we wandered over to see what was going on. It turned out that there was a gay pride parade going on that night. It seemed funny to come from San Francisco that day to see a pride parade in another country. I didn't take any pictures, but it was an interesting sight The next day we took Jason's cousin Mike to see the plaza before Jason's mom and his brother Nico arrived. This time I took a few pictures. The fountain is next to the Teatro de la Ciudad (theater of the city) on the map (that's the Teatro in the background of the photo as well). Click here for a detail of the fountain.
In the above picture, Jason and his cousin Mike are chatting in front of the governor's palace. On the right side is where the pride parade was. I really liked that building a lot, and was able to take a few pictures inside. |
