This weekend we went to the Cervantino Festival in Guanajuato. It's an annual arts and culture festival in one of central Mexico's prettiest cities.
We hadn't really planned this trip that far in advance and unfortunatley every hotel within our price range was booked. So we had to decide whether to wait and hope we could find something on the day or book a hotel in a nearby town. Being a bit of a worrier i went for the latter option. We booked a hotel in Leon (about 45mins away from Guanajuato) and the first part of our trip started early on a Saturday morning to Leon, where we dropped off our bags at the hotel and headed straight back to the bus station so we could get to Guanajuato as quickly as possible.
We spent the whole day in Guanajuato, mainly wandering about seeing the sights. We went up the funicular to look at the pretty view of the town, browsed various market stalls and just generally enjoyed the atmosphere of the very busy festival. We saw some street performers, but mainly later in the day and a couple of art exhibitions.
In the evening we had an excellent dinner and then joined in a little bit of a tours of the streets, but then thought we better get back to the bus station and very luckily found a bus heading out there and managed to get back in plenty of time to get the last bus to Leon.
On Sunday we thought we'd have breakfast in Leon, not realising we were nowhere near the centre. It took ages to walk in to the centre and have breakfast. After that we weren't sure whether to go back to Guanajuato or not, but we did because Ed wanted to go to the mummies museum. So we went to the bus station and discovered we'd gained an hour due to time change - how lucky! So we headed directly to the mummies musuem. I decided not to go in as i'd been before and had no real desire to go again. So i sat in the shade drinking a strange drink called a rusa (or maybe ruso - i can't remember now) which i kind of think of as a starter michelada. It's grapefruit lemonade (fresca or squirt) with chili, lemon, salt etc and it's surprisingly refreshing, but does have the same kind of feeling as a michelada.
By the time Ed came out, we had time to go into town, grab a torta and some sweets from the fabulous La Catrina sweet shop and then head to the bus station - this time in a taxi as we couldn't work out where to find a bus.
It was a aslightly rushed experience of the Cervantino, but fun and I'm glad we made the trip!
