What We Did With Less Than 48 Hours In Puebla

We had less than 48 hours in Puebla, which is what we call “fast travel“, and probably the quickest we’ve moved through visiting a place in our abroad travels thus far! Puebla wasn’t originally in our travel plans, but we had heard from a local in Guanajuato that it is nice, and we wanted to break up our overland transit time from there to Oaxaca City, so there you have it!

Real life happening in the Zocalo, or main square

After being on a bus all day and an inconvenient and stressful late night arrival situation due to our AirBnB host providing us with the wrong address, exacerbated by the fact that we didn’t have a phone, and thus did not have immediate access to WIFI (which you can read more about it in #20 here), we settled into a hotel on the street we were dropped off on by our taxi and ordered a late dinner from the hotel restaurant room service (LOA Inn Hoteles). After eating my quesadillas and drinking my chocolate milk around midnight to dull my stomach’s hours of discomfort from hunger, I slept off my exhaustion, irritation, and paranoia for a fresh, brand new day in Puebla.

After our buffet breakfast at our hotel — where we had a plethora to choose from to fill up on to fuel our bodies, including a traditional dish, chilaquiles, which is basically chips covered in salsa, cheese, and over-easy eggs — we searched for our next night’s accommodation (unfortunately, our present hotel didn’t have availability for the following night). We navigated to and checked into Hotel Real Santander, which we found through Booking.com. After tracking down a local FedEx office to send home some purchases for myself and family members that I’d been carrying around with me since San Miguel de Allende (thankfully the FedEx office was within walking distance from our hotel and the staff was super patient and helpful with us transacting in our limited Spanish at the time — but note that it is expensive to send items home, as a small box with a few scarves and light-weight trinkets cost about $45 USD!), it felt freeing to finally be able to explore without travel logistics looming over us.

A highlight for us was dining at El Mural de los Poblanos! I had scoped it out on Yelp and was excited about the ambiance, quality of food, and especially the opportunity to try a variety of mole, which was actually born in this city of Mexico (we learned that most people think it’s originally from Oaxaca, so actually, I suppose this fact is up for debate based on who you ask)!

The BEST margarita I’ve had in our travels (well, I’ve only had a couple, but this one was so mango-y, tasty, and just what I needed to enjoy, or disfrutar, to relax)!
Illustrating the cactus (those little green square chunks) that is included in the cuisine in this part of Mexico. We don’t think they have much flavor, but they seem like a healthy, green vegetable! And it was neat to be able to try it for the first time during our Mexico travels.
We sampled 6 different types of mole
Aaron enjoying our relaxing dining environment – The live music, or música en vivo, was setting up behind him!

The Zocalo was located just blocks away from our second hotel. There are many restaurants and cafes that outline it and lots of activity to be seen. It’s a great place to people watch! We strolled through it during the daytime and evening. We enjoyed patio seating for coffee and dessert at night at The Italian Coffee Company, which we later learned is a chain throughout Mexico, and also a late night meal at one of the restaurants (their pizza was okay, but we enjoyed it… we weren’t expecting much from it, especially Aaron, who is pretty particular about the way he likes his pizza, being from New York and all)!

These enormous groupings of balloons are common to see swaying in the breezes in the Zocalo in Puebla and in other cities in Mexico
The Zocalo in Puebla is clean, beautiful, and full of activity!
Playing around

In our second accommodation, Hotel Real Santander, our room and bathroom were mostly modern. However, our room featured a traditional cooking stove that had been preserved, which was really cool to inspect! It also contained colonial-style, wooden furniture and artwork.
Real life on the road brushing my teeth 🙂

Our breakfast was included the following morning (because Booking.com advertised that it was, and then once we reserved through it, that was no longer listed as a feature on our confirmation, so we let the employee know when we checked in and although she didn’t see it was, she gave us the vouchers anyhow). While our bed was comfortable and the room and bathroom were very nice-looking, the shower was the coldest we’ve experienced in our travels thus far, no question about it! Our bodies were both making involuntary noises as we endured it to clean ourselves. We thought our shower in Mexico City was torturous, but we’d gladly take that one any day over this one!

After our breakfast, we took a taxi the hotel staff had arranged for us upon our request and were off to the bus station to travel overland to Oaxaca City, one of our favorite places we’ve visited in Mexico!

Side note: If anyone reading this makes it to Puebla, check out La Zanahoria if you’re in the mood for vegetarian, or just fresh, healthy food, and let me know how it is! This is a place I had bookmarked on my Yelp account and had intended for us to go to for juice or a smoothie snack, but it just didn’t work out with our bellies (we were stuffed from our dining experience at El Mural de los Poblanos) and their business hours.

Until next time,
Elena 🙂