Guadalajara: I wait in line for lonches

So there I was in Guadalajara. I'd eaten two breakfasts, which added up to the best breakfast, and we were heading to the main government plaza in Guadalajara. I knew I wanted to go to the museums and galleries located in the Hospicio Cabanas. It's a gorgeous building built in the late 1700s/early 1800s that was a hospital and is now a cultural instiute. There was a rad exhibit on the yarn art of the Wixaritari, sometimes known as Huichol.

This art was intricate, colorful and psychedelic. Some of it was made under the influence of peyote or other natural, psychoactive substances.

The show had information about the individual artists, with pictures and recordings of them talking. Many of the works were from the 70s. There are a lot of recurring motifs, such as deer.

Then there were more Orozco murals, a whole giant hall of them. These murals are wild, and it's pretty cool that these were painted on the walls and dome of this massive stone building in the late 30s, when it was still a working hospital

The building itself is lovely, with all these restful little courtyards, and spaces for temporary contemporary exhibitions. I failed to capture this so you will just have to visit

There was a one-room exhibit with all the indigenous corn varietals and it had these jazzy corn curtains (free decorating idea for you).

Cabanas is in the same area as the famous Guadalajara Cathedral

It's also home to the best old bar, La Fuente, from 1921. There were a lot of businessmen day drinking in a dignified way. There was a live piano player playing standards like "as time goes by". And there was ice cold brew and tequila. That's about it. We loved hanging there.

 If you know me, you know I hate waiting for food. But I love food. And sandwiches. I knew that Guad. had a style of sandwiches called "lonches" and I had to know what they were. This is a famous place in that same area that's called Lonches Amparito. It proudly advertises "no tenemos sucursales". Basically "we are not a chain". We walked by earlier in the day, and it was super slammed. But around 4-ish I reasoned that lunch should be ending soon, right, so I wanted to try again. It looked slightly less busy and a guy came out of the tiny doorway and took my order on a little slip of notebook paper, so I thought I was in. Little did I know that they had seemingly hundreds of these slips of paper stacked up inside and that people were also phoning orders in for pick up. I think the woman on the left sums up the general mood. Some people waited like 40 minutes before they even got to order!

I waited maybe an hour? Not sure. Smiller was bummed. I didn't know what all the kinds were since the guy took my order before I could look them up, so I had about an hour to trip that I had ordered the wrong ones. Anyway, I ended up with lomo (pork loin) and panela (fresh cow's milk cheese). They were both very good and super messy. Amarito is just a take out window so we had to sit on a bench and eat and the mess level was somewhat upsetting. Regulars know to get a bag of this green salsa they had tens of bottles of inside. I'm sure I missed out by not getting the salsa but I can't imagine how you could add salsa to this mix and not end up covered.

The trip about this lonche was what with the sourdough taste of the roll and the avocado: it tasted a lot more like a sandwich you would get in California than it did what I think of as a Mexican torta. This was not a bad thing, just not what I expected, and the waiting made us both grumpy.

I have read that the crusty bread is what makes it a lonche, but it is also what made the cheese an avo shoot out when you eat it. Even though I am complaining I am also hungry and wish I was eating one now.

I got another lonche later on the trip that was maybe better, and I never did get to try a chilaquiles lonche. I will save that for my next trip.