so i've finally gotten around to making a blog about my recent trip to mexico! honestly, i've been slacking off a bit in regards to actually blogging about it, but i've finally sat down to actually do it. and fortunately i have a lot to say about it - though while writing i figured that maybe i've got too much to say for one blog, so i'll split it in two. in this one i'll talk about what's basically downtown zacatecas, and hopefully in the next couple days i'll get to posting a part two with all the other places i went to!

the center

i remember really liking how it looked the first time i went two years ago, and it looks just as pretty now when i returned. the center is almost entirely comprised of historic buildings made hundreds of ago (sidenote: i went to a museum and many of the buildings in the photos there looked really similar to what i saw walking around). there's a lot of buildings with shops or restaurants on the first floor, and on the second floor they have these balconies with a view of the streets, which i'd love to one day step out onto. a lot of the buildings are a really pretty shade of pale pink because of the abundance of pink quarry stone in the area, which i'd honestly kill to see in my own city. back home, the architecture isn't nearly as eye-catching, even in the more wealthy areas. it's mostly just tall glass towers or tall grey towers. if i had to live in mexico, i'd love to live here in a second story apartment somewhere. and speaking of the architecture, there's also a really big, gorgeous cathedral in the center - which unfortunately i only got to drive past. the last time i went i also only got to drive past it, so if i go again it's an absolute must that i get to actually see it from the inside. 

there's also a lot of smaller shops and stands where people sell a huge range of things, from clothes to food to jewelry and accessories. it's nothing like where i'm from, where if you're looking to buy something you're probably going to the mall, or a big retail store. so there's a lot more variety in what to buy - unfortunately i couldn't really buy as much as i wanted because i had very limited baggage space for my flight back, but if i didn't have to worry about that i would've bought so much more cute clothing. there's actually an alleyway i visited; el callejon de plata, or the silver alleyway, where there was a lot of trinkets, clothes, and food - it was the perfect place to souvenir shop, which was great because at that point i was nearing the end of my trip and i hadn't bought anything for my parents. the closest thing to that back home are the swap meets, which are neat and all but don't hit the same. my parents really want us to know more of mexico, so in a couple years maybe i'll go back and see more!

la mina de edén (the eden mine)

zacatecas also happens to be the world's numer one producer of silver, so there's a lot of mines. i went to visit the eden mine, which actually closed down and later became a tourist attraction all the way back in the 70s. we had a tour guide showing us around the place, and he did a great job telling us about the mine. the indigenous people of the land had been mining it for hundreds of years before the spanish ever came, but then they did come and started exploiting the people and the mine (i mean, who's surprised at that, really). another really interesting thing: the only level of the mine we could tour was the fourth. the third level is the entrance, the first and second levels are too high up, and every level below the fourth is flooded. there were even some areas where you walk over a grate and can see the flooded areas. at one point, the tour guide also gave my brother and i two rocks with fool's gold, which were great souvenirs. there was also an altar to el santo niño de atocha, the patron saint of miners. when we got to it, the tour guide was telling us about the church of plateros, where people go to complete mandates for the saint, which was kind of funny because we had just been there a couple days before. but anyways, i think the most interesting part of the tour was the legend the tour guide told us:

once upon a time, there was a miner named roque. he was, in the words of our guide, very ambitious and greedy. one day, he found a very large piece of silver, around the size of a miner's helmet. the problem was, roque couldn't just take the silver while on the job - everyone would notice and they wouldn't let him keep it. so he instead planned to hide it and come back for it later once the work day was over and everyone had left. when the time came, he went back to take the silver, but couldn't find it. so in a fit of rage, he started cursing out his coworkers, then his boss, then the cave itself, and finally the sky. apparently god got mad at that, and so part of the cave collapsed on top of roque and killed him. his coworkers went to look for him when they realized he was missing, and they found his body - and his screaming face imprinted on the wall of the cave. now the legend goes that if anyone finds that silver he hid, you have to give it to the person who told you the legend. so if anyone happens to visit and finds it after reading this, message me and i'll send my address - and if you don't i hope roque haunts you forever <3

museo toma de zacatecas (museum of the taking of zacatecas)

i mentioned going to a museum earlier, but i didn't say which: it was the museo toma de zacatecas, or the museum of the taking of zacatecas. it's located on the cerro de la bufa, or bufa hill - a very historically important location for being the site of the battle of zacatecas during the mexican revolution. you get a really great view of the city from the hill, since it's pretty high up. there were also a couple food stands nearby, which was great because it was hot and we spent a good chunk of the day there. 

but anyways, the actual museum is really interesting. there's a lot of real artifacts from the revolution, like money, books, cameras, medals, cannons, and guns. a lot of guns. near the beginning there was actually an entire wall with guns and pieces of guns used in the revolution, all welded onto the wall. there were also a lot of newspapers (though i'm not sure if they were replicas or authentic) talking about the battles and the progress of revolutionary forces. and photographs! there were a lot of those, which was really neat to see. funnily enough, i particularly liked the photos because they showed what the fashion was like at the time. it's actually a really good way of distinguishing revolutionary fighters from federal forces. 

but, if i'm being honest, i was a little disappointed - my goat, emiliano zapata, was practically nowhere to be found. for context, francisco "pancho" villa and zapata were both very famous leaders of the mexican revolution. villa fought in the north of mexico, while zapata fought in the south. i've read a moderate amount of things about the revolution, and personally i like zapata best for his belief that the people who work the land should own it - which could be considered a form of agrarian socialism. but zacatecas is considered center-north, so the museum's main focus was the revolution in the north, and unfortunately there was next to nothing about zapata. the revolutionaries he led, the zapatistas, were mentioned like twice. apparently, if i want to see him in a museum, i'd have to go all the way down to morelos. and you know what? maybe i will, maybe one day i will, because he's way too underrated. the mexican revolution in general is too underdiscussed when talking about worker's revolutions, and zapata was arguably one of the most interesting revolutionaries of his time. consider it on my bucket list already, in fact. 

la galería (the mall)

of course, my city girl self had to see what the malls in zacatecas were like. unfortunately i couldn't explore as much of the mall as i would've liked - i mean, we didn't even really see much more than the entrance of a liverpool - mostly because we were in a bit of a rush. but i did get the chance to buy two headbands: a simple black one and another one all covered in faux jewels and pearls, which i've been wanting to get my hands on for a short while now. my aunt, who took us, told us that they'd actually never been because the stuff there was pretty expensive. luckily i didn't have to worry about that because my dad was bankrolling the trip! while i was there though, it felt pretty different from the malls i usually go to; it felt bigger almost, maybe because it looked pretty big from the outside. and i only went to one store, i can only imagine what the rest was like. hopefully if i go to mexico again i get the chance to explore more, because i think i missed out on a lot of cool stuff there. 

and that's everything i did in zacatecas! the center anyway, there's a lot of other places i went to outside the capital, but if i talked about that here i'd be in the beginning stages of writing a book. it'll probably take me at least a week to write a part two because i'm just a tad lazy, but it will come. eventually. 

xoxo, ♥