The wild card: Guadalajara

Whatever your destination in Mexico, if you fly out of SMF you are often on the red eye direct to Guadalajara. I had never had G. recommended to me as a vacation destination, but its easy access via flight and the fact that it's the second biggest city in Mexico piqued my attention.

That made it somewhat of a wild card for the last three nights of the trip. Would it be fun, or just a huge traffic-y metropolis?

Answer: FUN. More after the jump


Our basic, kind of depressing AirBnB was chosen because it was in the cute Americana neighborhood, which is near Avenida Chapultepec. Chapultepec is a party and business strip, lined by bars, stores and restaurants.

 For our first meal in town (by the way the flight from Peurto Escondido to Guad. was on Volaris not tiny AeroTucan. It was a regular size plane) was a torta ahogada. We have quite a few restaurants in Sac probably started by Tapatios (people from Guad), so you can get torta ahogadas in Sac, but I never had. I had envisioned a torta in thick enchilada-type sauce.

Now was the time to try it, and La Gorda, a chain that's been around since 1956, was the place.

This is an elegant, simple dish. It's all about the bread and the sauce, which is kind of like a thin tomato soup. There's a small amount of chopped pork, the sauce, and some chopped onions. That's it. Nothing else needed! You use the bread to soak up every bit of sauce and enjoy.

Pink and white tile is iconic in Guadalajara. 

Guadalajara has a few spots with Jose Clemente Orozco murals, and one of them was right near our AirBnB. It's at the University of Art. This picture is taken looking up, at murals lining a dome.

Here's a sick pink house.

It was kind of hard to figure out where to get dinner this first night. Should we go super fancy or more casual? Many of the casual spots seemed more for lunch, and more like grab and go. So we ended up going with very fancy. This place is called "Huesos" (bones). As seen in Vice Mag, LOL. You know how I mentioned the people eating late in Mexico issue? This place takes it to the extreme. It doesn't even open until 730, and it's open until 1:30 am every night.

 This place is decorated with 10,000 bones.

 We had an 8 pm res., and we were literally the only customers there, with a giant staff, all of whom were very  nice and under 24 years old. The chef was not around, maybe he shows up at 11.

 This was a little amuse bouche, a hummus of some kind, with maybe a fava puree? You can see the avant garde ceramics

 This salad was sooo fruity. I think that's some kind of chicory, and there was quince, and goat cheese. Still good but I don't like fruit in salad, let alone two kinds of fruit and sweet potato

 Blurry photo of some of the best beef I've ever had. This was a giant brisket on the bone, and vinegar had been used in glaze or marinade, so there were all these chewy, crispy bits with just a bit of acid to brighten it up and cut the fatty taste. Those are either green tomatoes on the top, or baby tomatillos, I can't remember. But they had a lightly pickled thing going on. This was massive and delicious. This, and a bottle of vinho verde, was more than enough for two.

 More views from the upstairs area, where the bathroom and private party rooms are.

You can see the open kitchen (pretty small) behind smiller where the crew of children was plating everything, and also another view of the special plates.