First Exploration of "El Centro" and La Plaza de Armas

Sunday night I went to meet Lindsey and Halie in the downtown area of Cuernavaca also known as "El Centro" which contains La Plaza de Armas. They have been there before with their families so I was excited to finally see the heart of Cuernavaca!


It is a VERY busy place with lots of people, vendors, street musicians, restaurants, shops etc... I got dropped off by taxi at Palacio de Cortés. El Palacio de Cortés is the oldest conserved colonial era civil structure in the continental Americas and is almost 500 years old. Hernán Cortés built it for him and his second wife. I hope to return to the museum that is inside the palace. 

Afterwards, we strolled around the square. I visited La Catedral de Cuernavaca for the first time. It was beautiful! It's actually in a compound off the main square (which is unusual for Mexican cathedrals). The compound contains the Cuernavaca Cathedral as well as several smaller chapels.

Cuernavaca Cathedral

One of the churches in the compound, Chapel de Santa Maria.

Panoramic view of part of the compound. The pink chapel is the Tercera Orden Chapel.

I obviously loved the pink chapel!

The San José Open Chapel

We went through a mall and zapaterias (shoe stores) are huge here. There were about five in one stretch of the mall. Needless to say, I know that Mama Linda would be in heaven because I already know where I need to go back next week...

We found a place to eat off of the main square called Los Arcos. There I had my first authentic Mexican Margarita. It was extremely delicious but was too small for me! We split nachos con queso, frijoles and salsa verde.

After dinner, we were walking and I had to stop at one of the vendors because I saw the most adorable painted apples made of clay. I have an odd obsession with apples, probably because I'm a future teacher. Basically, if it has an apple on it, I want it. So I saw these out of the corner of my eye and had to have them! At first, I thought you just bought one, no you get three. And I was expecting it to be at least sort of expensive because there is three of them and they're handmade. Nope. The lady said 100 pesos por tres. 

100 PESOS?! ($7.64!!) I couldn't say SI fast enough! I can't wait to hang these in my future classroom :)

I came home and was exhausted and was very excited because Monday meant the start of classes at Universidad Internacional!