Daily Life in Merida

Catedral de San Ildefonso

 During this trip we have shared more about our time outside of Merida in comparison to our time in the city.  That is really too bad as the city has provided us with so much to see and do.  It has been a wonderful host for our three weeks, so I will try to sum up some of the highlights.

We had the opportunity to stay in two different homes in the city center.  They were in two different neighborhoods, so we got to explore multiple local marketplaces, and city parks where the locals shop in the mornings and relax in the cool evenings.  The kids played on the playgrounds with the local children. 

In between explorations to local sites, we also made our Merida home our local “school away from school”, commandeering the dining room table with school workbooks, games, Legos, and so on.

Merida is the cultural hub for the peninsula.  There are churches, museums, and art galleries everywhere! We made it to quite a few of the sites (as all or part of our group), though certainly many remain for a future trip.  They included: 

- The Catedral de San Ildefonso, the cathedral and most prominent building on the main plaza.  This is also one of the oldest cathedrals in the Americas.
- Los Palacios Gobernales, the government offices of the state of Yucatan, which house a series of paintings and murals by the Merida born artist, Fernando Castro Pacheco, and pay homage to important people and events in Yucatan history
- The Zocalo, central plaza and main square, always filled with activity and countless pigeons to chase

- Museo Casa Montejo, the home of the Montejo family which was constructed between 1543 and 1549 by Maya slaves.  The home has now been restored and is a museum, but it was originally owned by Francisco Montejeo (the father) who founded Merida and the Hacienda Sotuta de Peon.  It was later owned by his son of the same name.  It was lived in by 13 generations of the Montejo family before eventually being sold to someone else in the 1800s.

- Museo de Antropologia “Palacio Cantón”, an excellent museum of Mayan anthropology with a strong focus on understanding history and anthropology through the study of ceramics from the times well before Christ to present.
- Museo MACAY, a fantastic museum of contemporary art.  When we visited, it had a wonderful exibit on the role of architecture and design from the 19^th century to present.  There were fantastic photographs, city plans, architectural plans, 3 dimensional models of buildings and neighborhoods (or university campuses), furniture pieces, and so on, showing also how the changes in technology impact architecture and city planning.
- Museo de la Ciudad de Merida, which outlined this history of the city from pre-Hispanic to contemporary times.  It includes the brutal founding and bloody Caste War, the glory days of the henequen (sisal) boom when Merida was one of the wealthiest cities of Mexico.
- Casa Catherwood, which honors the work of the 19^th century architect and artist Frederick Catherwood (of England) and American explorer John Lloyd Stephens, who crisscrossed Mexico and Central America in search of Mayan ruins.  Casa Catherwood houses the only complete collection of the 25 hand colored lithographs made of the Mayan sites as they were discovered, in great artistic and architectural detail.
- Museo de Historia Natural, the natural history museum which had an exhibit hummingbirds during our visit.  The exhibit was put together by local university students who made hummingbird replicas out of wood and painted them to look like the different species of hummingbirds.
- Merida Zoo, which had a really fun bird jungle that the kids enjoyed.
Numerous theaters throughout the city center, of which we entered the Teatro de Peon Contreras, a breathtaking theater built a little over 100 years ago, which was being prepared for its evening performance
- Cultural Nightlife: Merida is famous in that it offers cultural events free to the public every night.  Most evenings they begin around 9 PM and are located in various parks, theaters, and art galleries throughout the city center.  They range from theater productions, to traditional dance performances, all sorts of music, the spoken word, even demonstrations of the traditional Mayan ball games of the region. 

Oh and the food…!  Yucatan has its own cuisine, distinct from other areas of Mexico.  We thoroughly enjoyed exploring local eateries and tried a variety of local dishes.  We had so much fun, we headed to a local bookstore to get a recipe book for the region and will continue experimenting at home (as best we can, given that some ingredients are specific to the region).  It should be a fun way to extend our trip into our home territory.