Things to do in Western Central Highlands
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Instituto Mexicano-Americano de Cultura
The Instituto Mexicano-Americano de Cultura offers one- to 52-week courses. Study between one and four hours per day. Check its website for course fees and homestay options. Music and dance classes are also available.
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Tonalá
This dusty, bustling suburb is about 13km southeast of downtown Guadalajara and home to even more artisans. You can feel this town beginning to take Tlaquepaque's lead, with a few airy, inviting showrooms and cafés opening around town, but it remains happily rough around the edges. It's fun to roam through the dark, dusty stores and workshops. Anything you can buy in Tlaquepaque, you can find here for much less, which is what attracts wholesale buyers from all over the world.
On Thursday and Sunday, Tonalá bursts into a huge street market that sprouts on Av Tonaltecas and crawls through dozens of streets and alleys and takes hours to explore. This is where wholesale meet…
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Catedral
Morelia's beautiful cathedral (unforgettable when it's lit up at night) dominates the plaza and took more than a century to build (1640−1744), which explains its combination of Herreresque, baroque and neoclassical styles.
The twin 70m-high towers, for instance, have classical Herreresque bases, baroque midsections and multicolumned neoclassical tops. Inside, much of the baroque relief work was replaced in the 19th century with neoclassical pieces. Fortunately, one of the cathedral's interior highlights was preserved: a sculpture of the Señor de la Sacristía made from dried corn paste and topped with a gold crown from 16th-century Spanish king Felipe II. It also has a w…
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Birriería las Nueve Esquinas
Half a dozen blocks south of the city center, the un-touristy Nueve Esquinas (nine corners) neighborhood specializes in birria, meat steamed in its own juices until it’s so tender it melts in your mouth. Birriería las Nueve Esquinas does it best. The open, tiled kitchen, with its in-house tortillería is as beautiful as the tasty and absurdly tender barbacoa de borrego (baked lamb) and birria de chivo (steamed goat) served in traditional ceramic casseroles. Enjoy them with a stack of fresh tortillas and smaller bowls of guacamole, pickled onions and salsa verde (green sauce) swimming with cilantro and perfectly ripe chunks of avocado.
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Restaurante Lu
Inside the Hotel Casino, talented young chef Lucero Soto Arriaga turns humble pre-Hispanic ingredients into exquisite gems of alta cocina (Mexican haute cuisine). Her multicourse tasting menu might begin with tamales with smoked butter, then move on to delicate salads of dried nopal (cactus paddle) with caramelized pumpkin seeds, squash blossom-peanut tacos and whimsical confections of local fruits. Try to snag an outdoor table for perfect plaza views.
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Paraninfo
West of the city center, where Avenidas Juárez and Federalismo meet, is shady Parque Revolución, which has become a haven for pierced skaters. Three blocks further west is the Paraninfo, one of the main buildings of the Universidad de Guadalajara (UDG).
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Mistonga
When you dine Argentine, steak is your best option. This gorgeous enclosed courtyard restaurant serves it in a variety of ways, such as milanesa (pounded thin and breaded) and chimichurri (marinated in a garlic, parsley and olive oil sauce). It also has a fantastic Argentine wine list.
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La Surtidora
Waiters are dressed in chef whites, but don’t expect fine dining at this old-school café, which has been in operation on Plaza Grande since 1916. The beamed interior is perfumed with roasting coffee, it serves all manner of salads and the chicken enchiladas come topped with butternut squash.
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La Antigua
The location and ambience outshine the food at this charming terrace restaurant overlooking the plaza. But it’s worth considering for the made-to-order salsa and tortillas and the sizzling molcajete de arrachera, a traditional beef and cheese stew simmering in a spicy chili sauce.
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local market
The local market on the west side of the Plaza Gertrudis Bocanegra is where you can find everything from fruit, vegetables and fresh trout to herbal medicines, crafts and clothing - including the region's distinctive striped shawls and sarapes. There's outstanding cheap food, too.
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Chai
Guadalajara’s young and pretty pack into plush booths to sip chai lattes and nibble on panini at this casual hippie-chic café, home of the city’s best brunches. A second location, in a restored mansion in the upscale Zona Rosa has a sunny terrace and free wi-fi.
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Karne Garibaldi
This place has two specialties: carne en su jugo (meat cooked in its own broth flavored with beans, bacon and green tomatoes) and fast service (so speedy it landed in the Guinness Book of Records in 1996). Neither will disappoint.
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Gaspachos La Cerrada
Gaspacho – a salad of diced mango, pineapple and jicama, drowned in orange and lime juice and dashed with salt, chili sauce and cheese (optional) – is a local delicacy served all over town. But according to locals, this place is the best.
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Baden-Powell Institute
This small, well-run and affordable Institute offers courses in Spanish language, as well as Mexican politics, cooking, culture, guitar and salsa dancing. It books homestays (per day M$365) for students.
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Ego
On the hillside 3km south of town, Morelia’s hottest club thumps, bumps and grinds to house and electronica tunes. Dress code is casual. The crowd is young and pretty and they don’t stop dancing till they have to.
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Danés
Dessert lovers flock to this neighborhood bakery that turns out a luscious array of Mexican and European pastries, from dark chocolate-oozing pan de chocolate to fruit-stuffed empanadas.
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Casa Fuerte
This place leans toward fine dining, with an elegant bar, refreshing garden patio and a menu priced like an upscale Mexican restaurant in California. It’s one of the more popular spots in town.
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Mex Mich Guías
Provides personalized tours and transportation to many destinations in the area, including the Santuario Mariposa Monarca.
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Plaza San Agustín
A few cheap food stalls with lots of tables can be found under the covered arches here.
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Plaza Chica market stalls
The Plaza Chica market stalls serve everything from fruit juices to tacos to tortas.
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Cathedral
Guadalajara’s twin–towered cathedral is the city’s most beloved and conspicuous landmark. Begun in 1558 and consecrated in 1618, it’s almost as old as the city itself. And it’s magnificent. Time it right and you’ll see light filter through stained glass renderings of the Last Supper and hear a working pipe organ rumble sweetly from the rafters. The interior includes Gothic vaults, massive Tuscany-style gold-leaf pillars and 11 richly decorated altars that were given to Guadalajara by King Fernando VII of Spain (1814–33). Its crucifix is one of the most subtle and tasteful in Mexico (Jesus isn’t white!). The glass case nearest the north entrance is an extremely popular…
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Reserva Mariposa Monarca
In the eastern-most corner of Michoacán, straddling the border of México state, lies the incredible 563-sq-km Monarch Butterfly Reserve, the site of the butterfly Burning Man. Every autumn, from late October to early November, millions of monarch butterflies flock to these forested Mexican highlands for their winter hibernation, having flown all the way from the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada, some 4500km away. As they close in on their destination they gather in gentle swarms, crossing highways and fluttering up steep mountainsides where they cling together in clusters that weigh down thick branches of the oyenal (fir) trees. When the sun rises and warms the f…
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Museo Regional de Guadalajara
This must-see museum has an eclectic collection covering the history and prehistory of western Mexico. Displays in the ground-floor natural history section include the skeleton of a woolly mammoth. The archaeological section has some well-preserved figurines, along with many fine artifacts of ceramic, silver, gold and other materials.
Upstairs are galleries of colonial paintings, a history gallery covering the area since the Spanish conquest, and an ethnography section with displays about indigenous life in Jalisco. The museum building, the former seminary of San José, is a late-17th-century baroque structure with two stories of arcades and several courtyards holding hidd…
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Parque Nacional Barranca del Cupatitzio
This incomparable urban park is just 1km west of the main plaza, but it’s another world. Nature is big here. Tropical and subtropical foliage (including burly banana palms) is thick and alive with colorful birds and butterflies. The river boils over boulders, cascades down waterfalls and spreads into wide, crystalline pools. Cobbled paths follow the riverbanks from its source at the Rodilla del Diablo pool, near the park’s north end. There are a few fruit stands and taquerias to choose from and water from hidden springs peels off the surrounding hillsides, before flowing into the great river. There’s even a trout farm where you can net your own catch.
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Museo de Artes Populares
This folk art museum is housed on the former site of the Colegio de San Nicolás, arguably the Americas’ first university, founded by Quiroga in 1540. The building was constructed on pre-Hispanic stone foundations, some of which can be seen behind the museum courtyards. Highlights of the impressive permanent collection include a room set up as a typical Michoacán kitchen, cases of gorgeous jewelry, and an entire room filled with retablos – crudely rendered devotional paintings offering thanks to God for saving the owner from illness or accident. Some are quite gory. Also don’t miss the wooden troje (traditional Purépecha house) in the garden.
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