“Make new friends, but keep the old; those are silver, these are gold.” Joseph Parry

On: January 14, 2019
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Our last day in the city began with a visit to the Church of Santo Domingo de Guzman, built between 1570 and 1608, it’s the most splendid of all of Oaxaca’s many churches. The finely carved baroque facade and nearly every square centimeter inside is decorated in 3D relief with intricate gilt designs swirling around a profusion of painted figures. Most elaborate of all is the 18th-century Capilla de la Virgen del Rosario (Rosary Chapel) on the south side. Here, while sitting and contemplating I “had a moment.”

Every inch of the church interior is lavishly decorated with 24k gold leaf. The style brought to mind La Compañía De Jesus in Quito, Ecuador, one of the most magnificent churches I‘ve ever seen. Santo Domingo comes in second.

We still had two museums left on our list to explore:

The Museo Rufino Tamayo contains collections of pre-Columbian art once owned by Oaxaqueño artist, Rufino Tamayo (Oaxaca, 1899 – Mexico City, 1991). It’s housed in a building constructed in 1979 to represent an old casona. The displays are arranged according to aesthetic themes and periods in rooms where the background walls are painted with very bright, strong colors (pinks, blues, purples, violet, green, and orange).

The museum’s collection ranges from 1,250 BC to 1,500 AD. It encompasses pieces from the Toltecas, Olmecas, Zapotecas, and Mixteca civilizations gone long before the Mayans arrived on the scene. Though the descriptive cards were all in Spanish, David was able to understand enough to realize the basic themes of the objects: fertility, maternity, death, birth, etc.

We visited the 20 of Noviembre and Benito Juarez markets nearby, but after Tlacolula Market yesterday, it was a flat experience. If these are the only markets that you’ll visit in Oaxaca, then you’ll enjoy the many comedores. There one can find a good, inexpensive meal and aisles and aisles of all types of vegetables, dry chile’s, beans, mezcal, textiles, pottery, and household goods.

Our last museum of this vacation ~ Museo Textil de Oaxaca, a small museum with two exhibits: one in Indigo Blue and the other very simple cotton textiles representing different villages in the highlands. Indigo blue color is derived from an organic botanical plant that grows on the Oaxaca coast (yet another Mexican contribution.)

One thing that we‘ve discovered during this trip is that as permanent residents we get into the museums at half price, but once we apply for “nuestra tercera edad” (senior citizen ID) we will get in for free.

For lunch, we returned to a nearby restaurant where we had a very simple dinner. This time I enjoyed a Pozole vegetarian style and David had the chicken version – both bowls were quickly devoured.

This trip David has kept his eye out for the highly anticipated arrival of our baby girl (grand-niece) and all the adorable items that baby girls demand to have. I have written before how manually and paper-intensive any transaction is here in Mexico. This is what transpired today that I must share:

Item Selected > Item is taken over to a salesperson to write down the order in triplicate > duplicate receipt given and then had to take it over to the caja (cashier) to pay > once paid, receipt given and salesperson takes receipt with purchase over to security by the front door in order for security to then separate receipt copies and now allow you to collect your item…….hope you were not in a hurry.

Tonight’s dinner ~ Casa Oaxaca, but not before a stroll through el Zócalo for a boot shine. Arriving at the restaurant we climbed up two outdoor floors for rooftop dining with a view of the next-door cathedral’s sidewalls.

The menu:
Duck taquitos on a bed of black beans & black mole
Piedra de Sopa ~ Translated to Rock Soup, it was seafood-based – the ingredients are brought in 3 separate dishes: fresh raw seafood, fish stock, and extremely hot rocks. The stock is poured over the raw seafood then the volcano hot rocks are added, of course, the stocks boil overcooking the seafood……results ~ another bowl, please!
Rack of lamb cooked to perfection and served with a black mole on the side
Grilled Octopus ~ butter tender on a bed of pepitas (pumpkin seeds mole)

Desserts:
Symphony of Mamey (David’s favorite new fruit) …mousse-like Napoleon layered with mamey in multi-variations
Oaxacan chocolate mousse served inside an edible chocolate orbit with caramelized guajillo peppers