Markets and Telenovelas

Since we hadn't encountered the grocery store on our first afternoon of exploration we went out for breakfast to Cumpania.  It turned out to be a very hip looking restaurant with excellent pastries and bread.  The omelet I got was just so-so, but the bread and unexpected pastry made up for that!  Love a chocolate croissant in the morning.  The staff was very friendly and took the photo below for us.

The lone diners at Cumpania on a Monday morning

After breakfast we found the downtown "supermarket" which had the basic items we were looking for, then we went down to the market below our house for vegetables.  This market is an indoor/outdoor market of many stalls selling everything from shoes to vegetables to tortillas.   We got bananas from one vendor, the makings for guacamole from another vendor and a 1/2 kilo of strawberries from Michoacan from a third vendor.  That cost us a total of $3.  Salud, the maid that comes to our house in the mornings made the guacamole while we were up reading on the roof terrace.  We had been looking forward to making it ourselves, but I have to say she did a great job with it.  She soaked the berries, peppers, cilantro and limes in a bowl of water with some antibacterial drops (probably iodine) added.  Even the locals do not drink the tap water here.

In the afternoon we visited an organic shop on the other side of town, Via Organica, for a cup of cappucino, a lemonade and a brownie.  It's a nice spot although whether we'll go back I'm not sure.  They did have beautiful looking lettuce and I hadn't noticed any lettuce at the other market.  We walked around the perimeter of the town center and when we got back to the plaza a telenovela was being filmed.  We sat on a bench to watch, but after 10 minutes or so everyone was shooed away from that corner so that the actors could be filmed exiting the plaza.  There weren't enough staff to keep everyone away long enough for them to get their takes and little kids would dart along the path with mothers in tow and oblivious tourists would wander through.  The telenovela may be "Que te Perdona Dios" or maybe that one is finished filming and this will be its replacement in a few months.

A street in San Miguel decked out for a holiday

Telenovela heartthrobs

Bougainvillea along a wall - how do they grow in such tiny spaces?!

Although we had every intention of cooking our own dinner, the sun set and we hadn't gotten around to shopping for dinner, so we went out to El Grotto, a cozy Italian place we had passed during the day.  They have very good pasta, decent pizza, and a generous pour of a house wine.

Turns out this is not a cathedral, merely a parroquial church

Sunset from the roof