Mexico City, Taxco, Cuernavaca, Pátzcuaro, and Morelia

Mexico was good times. It's a good thing I decided to spend a full week in Mexico city (at it turned out 6 full days and two halves), as I really needed all that time to see all of the things I wanted to (even after having covered the pyramids on an earlier trip). The city really is enormous, and there are plenty of things worth visiting. There's plenty of stuff to see related to the pre-Columbian history, at least a dozen different art museums of note, and much other art en-situ (because murals are so big in Mexican art), and tons of great architecture and charming colonial buildings with noticeable tilts created over centuries as they sink into the swampy soil. I think the best architecture of all was in some of the high-walled, pimped-out houses I saw in San Angel, which I'm sure I'd never be able to afford.

However, as is usually the case, the markets were probably the most interesting thing for me. My very first day I went to the sprawling Merced Market, the biggest in the city. Got myself a bowl of caldo de gallina (laying hen? soup) and a quesadilla with cheese and squash blossoms. I think it was the squash blossoms that left my shitting my guts out for the next three mornings. It's just as well, I guess, as it was going to happen sooner or later, so might as well get it out of the way immediately. I should have known I was in trouble when I realized that she wasn't putting a layer of plastic on top of the reusable plates as is common, and saw here just wiping them off with a damp rag between customers.

While the Merced was the monster, the Mercado San Juan was definitely my favorite. This is a higher-end market where many of the city's top restaurants procure goods. And while is had lots of high-end product like fancy olive oils and very expensive exotic mushrooms like morels and chanterelles, it was still awfully grungy. You'd see four foot high pallets of dead rabbits being carted around, heads, fur, and all, and then see them one-by-one thrown up on a hook to hang while the butcher cleans them and breaks them down. There was a whole deer handing upside down, neck and head sprawled out on the dirty floor because it was too tall. There were also plenty of chaupulines (crickets), huge ants that I actually at first thought were dried bees or wasps because they were so big, and eggs, and maguey worms, with some pre-prepared tapenades for tostadas, if that's your thing:

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One interesting thing that I hadn't seen before is that the huge piles of dead and cleaned animals had had their edible organs left in place. Many of the pigs, rabbits, and goats would have their liver, kidneys, and another yummy bit or two just dangling out of them while laying in a pile.

The runner-up in interesting markets in the city was the Xochimilco market. Seemed pretty standard, but it had a few things I hadn't seen before: cows' pancreas and lungs, as well as fresh shark, often dangling from the hook in a fishmongers stall, and huge, 2x4 foot pieces of deep fried chicharron. I also got some good lamb barbacoa tacos and an amazing elote tamale while there. 2nd runner up was Mercado Jamaica, which is the city's main distribution point for flowers. With the day of the dead that week, is was interesting to see huge truckloads full of carnations emptying out in the parking lot.

Taxco was very charming and beautiful. And old silver mining town, it’s incredibly hilly and has lots of atmospheric back alleys to explore. It's definitely a busy place, though, with swarms of people in the old town and tons of the small combi buses and old white Volkswagen beetle taxis with front passenger side seat ripped out constantly zipping all over town.

There's a huge cave nearby that I visited on the afternoon while there. I think it tops the one from Slovenia as the most impressive I've seen, and makes a nice two-hour stroll. You have to go on a guided tour, during which the guide is constantly pointing out things that the different rock formations look like. He kind of damaged his credibility up front when he pointed out a 15 foot tall stalagmite and described it as an "asparagus". I wonder if there weren't kids on the tour if he would have called it like it is and stated the obvious, that it was a giant, erect penis.

Cuernavaca was also interesting, although the city itself doesn't have the charm of Taxco, I really enjoyed myself there. While walking home from dinner, I passed by a bar that looked pretty lively, so I decided to stop in. Within 20 minutes I was chatting it up with the locals. After another hour the karaoke machine came out. And thus it went.

I similarly had some good fortune making friends in Pátzcuaro. I met a couple guys in a bar that invited me to join them and their crew of about 15 or so people (14 dudes and one woman, an arrangement of architects, physicians, international businessmen, and other fancy-pants types from Guadalajara in town for the festivities that weekend) to watch the concert in the main square. Afterwards there were many mezcals.

The other highlight of Pátzcuaro was the noche de los muertos activities. Photos here: XXXXXX

The honor role of food items eaten on this trip include:

-Absolutely anything I put in my mouth in the ostionería I found in Mercado Medellín

-mojarra al mojo de ajo (deep fried fish with garlic sauce)

-aguachiles (a kind of very spice, soupy ceviche)

-cocteles de mariscos (seafood cocktails)

-pulpo diabla (deviled octopus)

-the mind-numingly good black mole with chicken I picked up to go from a dumpy little fonda and ate in

the bus station on the way to Taxco

-tripe tacos

-the bright orange, grilled marinated chicken in Tsintsuntsan

-the birria de borrego (mutton stew) and tortas (sandwiches) in the market in Pátzcuaro

-corundas (a Miometchoacana regional variation on a tamale cooked in a banana leaf) from the main square in Pátzcuaro

-atole (another Michoacan thing, a soupy, sweet, corn-based drink)

-chiles en nogada (something I actually got in a real restaurant)

-tamal de elote (sweetened corn tamale) from the Mercado Xochimilco

-tostadas in Mercado Coyoacan

-steamed borrego (mutton) barbacoa at the market in Taxco, as well as the roasted version I got in Mercado Xochimilco

Hands-down winner, though, was the deep fried fish from the Ostionería la Morenita in Mercado Medellín in Mexico city. So much so that I went there two days in a row at the end of my trip, and stuffed myself silly both times. I don't know why we can't get Mexican seafood like this in Chicago. Well, Rick Bayless does almost equally good seafood at Xoco, but I don't know why are mom-and-pops lag so far behind what is available in Mexico. I think on a future trip I'm going to need to find the owner of one of these places and join them as a business partner to open up a Chicago location. I think we'd be printing money. 

Champagne, Laon, Lille, Arras, Amiens, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Delft, the Hague, and Alkmaar

OK, so I had no time to work on blog entries this trip, so we’re going to have to settle for one massive round-up at the end which I wrote on the flight home. I guess being so busy is the sign of a good trip.

Champagne was great. Reims is definitely a smaller town and the whole area is a lot more rural than I expected. Did a couple interesting tours, saw the cathedral, and had some good food. On one night I hit a Michelin-starred outfit were I got to select a cheese course from the most pimped-out cheese cart I’ve ever seen in my life. Other than that, I was trying to hit the French classics pretty heavy before I got into Flanders were I expected the food to be very different, so I was loading up on escargots, steak tartare, rilletes, and crepes. The most surprising thing was how damn hot it was—it was in the mid-nineties all three days I was there, and up to 99 degrees one day. Made for some pretty steamy sightseeing.

While I Champagne I also took a day trip to Laon, this very charming medieval town about 40 minutes away by train. Apparently I was getting somewhat off the beaten path in this case, as I got involved in a conversation with a local on the train on the way there, and whose primary topic was “Why are you coming to Laon?”.

After that it was on to Lille, a charming Flemish city in northeastern France. It was here that I started getting introduced to Flemish cuisine and the absolutely amazing beer (mostly Belgian) which comes from the area (more on that later). I really enjoyed Lille, despite a calamity with my laundry that the hotel created that pissed me off so much I decided to unleash my inner ugly American and let fly a torrent of yelling at the hotel staff in front of other guests because their failure to follow the very basic, yet extremely important, instructions on had given them on when I absolutely had to have all my clothing back which was likely going to result in missing my train connection the next day.

While there I also took a day trip to Arras and Amiens, the two really good-looking little towns in the area. Arras, like Lille, is in the historic part of Flanders, and it really shows. All the architecture really looks more Belgian or Dutch than French, although Arras wasn’t laced with canals like Dutch and northern Belgian cities are.

After Lille it was on to Bruges. It’s surprising how off the radar Bruges is for most Americans given the crushing amount of tourists there. The old town has Venice-like levels of tourists just completely inundating the city. They’re there for a good reason, though, as the city is really fantastic. People are friendly, too. I was fortunate enough to meet up with a young local couple that I ended up going out with for drinks on my last night there.

Overall, all the cities in Belgium were really impressive. In retrospect it is surprising how underappreciated they are by most North American tourists. While I only stayed in Bruges and Brussels, I day-tripped into Ghent and Antwerp, and both of those were great, too. The Belgian cities have it all—lots of history and beautiful historic buildings, great café culture with tons of charming places lining all the canals, good-looking people, fantastic beer, good food in large portions, and a clean and orderly society. Antwerp was maybe not so heavy on the canals and ancient building like Ghent was, but it more than made up for it with all the attractive pedestrian streets, the fantastic shopping, and the incredibly stylish people walking around. Antwerp also had what was maybe the most impressive building I saw on the whole trip, the central train station. In lots of ways Belgium (but also the Netherlands) reminded me of Austria in how they have a great blend of the southern European joie de vivre while also at the same time having a Germanic orderliness and productivity that makes for what appears to be a really appealing place to live.

Brussels was also a good time. It probably won the award for best food of any place I went on the trip. Lots of great seafood places. Mussels, mussels, mussels, everywhere, although there seemed to also be a lot of skate wing and the Belgian tomato-based soupe de poisson was also very common. I had to look far and wide for another typical dish, the eel in the green sauce—tons of places have it but it was often sold out as eel is getting hard to come by nowadays and they never get very much—but this one actually didn’t impress me that much when I had it. Of course, there’s all the beer and the chocolates. I think there’s a chocolate shop on just about every block in Brussels. Godiva is probably the most conspicuous representative, although there a plenty of other less internationally well-known outfits. I was buying my breakfast of champions from Neuhaus, myself. And frys, frys, frys, frys, frys, frys, frys, frys. I can’t understand why there are hardly any fat people in Belgium. They must eat a pound of frys every single day. Eaten with mayonnaise, no less. Deep-fried potatoes dressed with emulsified fat ain’t exactly health food. Frys with mussels, frys with steak tartare (which they call, in French, “American steak”, for some reason), frys with regular steak, frys with burgers, frys with Belgian  cheese, frys with salad, Frys with just a beer, whatever. I must say, though, the frys are pretty damn good. And health issues aside, the mayonnaise they have here is indeed a vastly superior condiment to ketchup.

A couple additional notable food items are the carbonnade flamade, the Flemish beef stew, and also the Flemish-style braised rabbit stew with prunes. Both turned my crank in a pretty major way, and I’m actually going to try to make them at home later. The shrimp croquettes didn’t dial me up in the same way. Most interestingly, I had gotten a tip from a friend-of-a-friend, a Belgian living in the US, that I absolutely had to try a Bicky Burger. This is a burger available in from little fry stands and food carts around the country. I did a little research, and it apparently consists of a deep-fried (yes, deep-fried) patty made of a combination of beef, pork, and horse meat (yes, horse) heavily slathered with a couple secret sauces, topped with fried onions, and eaten in a sesame bun. One of the two sauces was somewhat mayonnaise-like, and the other somewhat resembled a barbeque sauce. I personally found this recommendation to be a bit dubious, but against my better judgement one day I gave it a shot, and I must say, it wasn’t too bad. I may even go so far as to say I kind of liked it, aside from all the self-loathing eating such a culinary monstrosity induced after I was done.

Most surprising to me was the beer. I’ve never liked beer. Just never had the taste for it. I can drink Belgian Trappist all damn day, though. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. While many of the Belgian beers have been the first that I’ve ever truly enjoyed, I can peter out on them after a couple. There so rich and filling, after a couple I just can’t get anything else in my stomach. Drinking one of the double or triple-fermented ales they make sometimes made me feel like I was drinking a donut. A very tasty, alcoholic donut.

After Belgium it was on to Amsterdam. The Netherlands was all it was cracked up to be. Incredible art in some off the greatest museums in the world, picturesque canals, fit, good-looking, friendly, and exceptionally tall people that speak perfect English riding bicycles everywhere, beautiful countryside full of flowers and cows, interesting architecture, and yes, marijuana shops and red-light districts full of prostitutes in windows. While there I was able to make day trips to Haarlem, Delft, The Hague, and Alkmaar. Every one was quite attractive and charming. The Dutch clearly have their shit together.

If there was any one critique of the Netherlands, it would have to be the local food. This was the first place I’d ever visited where I flat-out gave up on the local cuisine and started eating international food. There is definitely some great stuff: the cheese and dark bread is great, the pickled herring is, well, at least satisfying, and the Dutch pancakes are great. My favorite was the bacon and apple one I had on the first day. In addition, there’s plenty of Belgian-style fries, mussels, and cured salmon. Also, there’s lots of Indonesian food.  We can essentially say it’s Dutch-ish, since it’s everywhere due to the cultural and historical association with the former colony, and because you really can’t get it in most other countries. I ended up going to two different places for what they call the rice table, essentially a gust-busting delivery of about 10-20 different items you can sample.

After that the Indonesian food, though, things fall off the map pretty quickly. So it didn’t take too long for me to throw in the towel on the local stuff and start seeking out international cuisine. One day I went to Chinatown for lunch, one night I tried a Portuguese restaurant, and another day I actually went to an Afghani place. While the Chinese didn’t impress, the Portuguese and Afghani place were great. And of course, there are Italian and middle-eastern restaurants absolutely everywhere. So you can definitely get really good food, you just have to not bother trying to find stuff that is uniquely Dutch. I guess no place is perfect.

While the local food didn’t impress, the one thing that definitely did was the shopping (and not just for the magic mushroom or the ladies in the windows). The Dutch definitely have style, and I found myself being repeatedly sucked into shops that had interesting window displays. It seemed like leather goods were particularly popular there. I actually ended up upgrading my simple canvas messenger back I often carry on vacation for a more pimped-out brown leather version.

Overall, this ended up being a great trip. Next time I just have to make sure to do my own laundry.