We arrived in Merida a week ago and it’s really hard to know where the week went! Well maybe not that hard. We’ve done a lot of enjoying – enjoying walks around the city and seeing familiar and new things, enjoying frequent dips in the airbnb plunge pool, enjoying trying out some Spanish, enjoying the Yucatecan food, way of life, and warmth (both people and temperature!)
We arrived at our beautiful airbnb around 5pm last Saturday, about a half an hour before sunset. After settling in, we went for a walk and dinner and ended up on Calle 47. There’s a small municipal park there where we’ve seen performances in past years and that night there was a very funny performance for Three Kings Day, with the three kings and a bunch of kids dancing on stage. It’s nice this year that we are here earlier and the Christmas lights are still up! The last two photos below show the transformation of Calle 47 from last year when it was under construction – now with power lines buried and new cobblestones and paths, it’s quite a fancy feeling street to walk on. There are also banners that describe it as the corridor of gastronomy in Spanish – which we’ve been calling Restaurant Row.
On Sunday we did a bit of exploring and met a friend of John’s and her husband for dinner – we had bumped into them on the plane so was great to have a chance to meet and discuss all things travel local and afar! Also below just some general scenes and a night we spent at La Negrita, a dive bar / restaurant that is so full of cheer it’s overflowing into the streets. We enjoyed the vibe and band a lot! And food. The last picture is a mamey fruit, which tastes kinda like a papaya.
This next section is about nice things in our airbnb. First the exterior – pretty and with an address that is created by a shadow when the sun is shining. The house has a theme of the motmot bird, check out the interesting tail feathers! The pool – so refreshing. And the little blue thing cleans the pool but also looks like a face (to me anyway!). And our hosts left us some amazing popsicles in the freezer. Here’s one in strawberry with Nutella center. SO good. We would go buy more to keep in the freezer but the place is a decent walk away and they would melt on the way here. Probably a good thing!
On Calle 47, we love the restaurant Catrin. We’ve posted on this before but another shoutout to the great food and animation / mural / light show. I had the tortilla soup, John had a cauliflower dish. As is typical in Merida, there are chips and various sauces / salsas brought to the table with drinks. Catrin has exceptionally nice salsas.
OK, so this next part is the something new section. After Catrin, we walked to the end of Calle 47, and whoa, there’s a big park there that wasn’t there last year. See the aerial photos from the internet below to get a sense of the scale and shape! We walked along the long part, which has upper and lower walkways, and then to the big circle center. This park is called La Plancha and used to be a big rail yard (Millennium Park, anyone???) and they now use train cars as a feature. There are pools, fountains, an amphitheater, it’s really quite amazing! Reading later, we found that it’s part of a big development that will include a train service across the Yucatán peninsula, a tram to connect the train station to the center city, La Plancha park, and Calle 47. It’s all making sense now! The press calls this park Merida’s Central Park but we think it is much better described as a combination of Millennium Park, Maggie Daley Park, and the 606.
In the last couple of days we did more of the same, including this funny selfie I took in front of a big mask in a shop, John enjoying “special beans” at a Yucatecan restaurant. Very special indeed – black beans with Longaniza, a smoked sausage that’s a specialty of nearby city Valladolid. Then a view of our open air above the pool, and lastly an electric jazz band we were fortunate to catch at Dzalbay Cantina last night. Muchas gracias, Merida! We’re enjoying our stay very much.
Note to readers – I wish these galleries could stay open with an arrow to page through the photos. It’s on my list of thing
Calle 47 with restaurants and interesting things to see leads me to remember 47th Street in Kansas City, a main street through The Plaza. Both named 47th, both nice places to go.
There is a tree photo–I think you saw it on a Sunday. It looks like it has a mass of roots that grow on top of the ground. Am I seeing that right?
Your Airbnb looks really nice. Likewise, the new park in Merida!
It’s so nice to see the vibrant colors that are so common in Mexico