Notes on Oaxaca

So the good news is, as a larger city, Oaxaca has more to recommend it than sleepy Chapala - at least in terms of my preferences. The bad news is, it's no quieter - altho in a different way. While we have a pretty cool set up/place, we're also right off a major thoroughfare through town and street noise is amplified by an outdoor hallway / breezeway leading to our front door.  Multiple busses run down this street and THEY are very loud. Worse yet, there are a LOT of motorcyles here where the guys - obviously NOT well endowed - have tweaked them to make them REALLY, REALLY loud and they LOVE revving them up in a HUGE way. Little miss delicate flower is already sensitive to loud noises, so he's NOT digging it.  Like in Chapala, they also REALLY like their super loud firework rockets - holiday or not - altho THAT aspect was worse in Chapala.

Speaking of holidays, there was one the day after our arrival - Taxi Day. Yes, for real, celebrating taxi drivers.  So it was very loud our first full day and we were worried. Lol  

And speaking of loud, the thunder here is INSANELY loud.  I remember thinking it was particularly loud in Chapala, but put that down to being surrounded by mountains.  Here, not sure what causes it as I've never been strong in science, but I've heard the loudest thunder in my life here more than once.  Also like Chapala, it rains more than I thought it would - but again mostly always at night or late afternoon/early evening.

On the plus side, there is an AWESOME sandwich shop literally right next door that sells amazing, huge sandwiches that I can get two meals out of for around $3 - $4 total.  Every sandwich has avocado, and a good chunk of them have pineapple, which I avoided at first, but then I eventually tried pretty much every sandwich they have and the pineapple works!  Yay.

Speaking of food/drinks, we also discovered a great restaurant not too far down the street where we go semi-regularly for their Tlayudas - an Oaxacan dish that is best described as a "Mexican pizza," where the crust is a dinner-plate sized light corn toritlla fried to a crisp and then topped with any comboination of things (our favorite: chorizo with Oaxacan cheese).  At this restaurant, I also discovered my new favorite thing: Sangria-flavored soda.  I was a little worried when I ordered it, but trying to do the culture thing, and it was yummy!  It tastes pretty much like you would think Sangria flavored soda would taste. Score!

Kind of hard to believe we're already almost halfway through our stay here!