Downtown Querataro

Last week, I visited downtown Santiago de Querétaro with Priscilla.

Querétaro is a very old city that is about 135 miles north of Mexico City. It is the capital of the State of Querétaro. The area was originally settled by native tribes, until Spanish colonists took over in the 1500s. Querétaro still has great examples of the Spanish colonial period in the form of churches, an amazing aqueduct, and some beautiful mansions. One interesting thing I read is that the Querétaro aqueduct was built back in 1726 to supply drinking water to the city from the springs of the ancient settlement of La Cañada, which is about 5 miles away. Now how weird is that: I come all the way to Mexico to find a city called La Cañada? It's a small world after all! Anyway, the aqueduct looks like the classic Roman ones. It has 74 arches, and some are 98 feet tall! It doesn't carry water any longer but it amazing to see in the middle of the city. Here's a picture from online:



We didn't get to see the aqueduct this evening although I hope we can visit it before I leave. We did see lots of interesting buildings, though.

Here is the spire of the Templo de San Francisco and the Regional Museum next door. During the Mexican War of independence in 1810, the church was actually used by the Spanish as a prison for revolutionaries!



The Church of Saint Francis (as we'd call it in English) has served as Querétaro's cathedral for two hundred years.



Since 1936, the Regional Museum is housed in what used to be the church's convent and has lots of exhibits covering prehistoric, colonial, independence, imperial, revolution and post-revolution periods of Mexican history. Wow! That's a lot of history!

Here is a hundred year old bronze statue of Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, known as "La Corregidora".



La Corregidora was a very inspiring character! She was married to a magistrate or Corregidor in the city of Querétaro when it was still under the Spanish rule, and they had 14 children. Yes, fourteen! But Josefa had a rebellious spirit and her home became the official center of the revolutionary conspiracy for independent Mexican rule. She was eventually discovered and imprisoned for many years. Even after her release, she stayed involved with radical political groups. She was such a brave and principled woman. I found an online biography with more details HERE.



The digitial countdown clock beside her statue marks how many days are left until the big celebration of Mexico's independence. During the year 2010, Mexico celebrates both the 200th anniversary of its Independence and 100th anniversary of its Revolution. The entire year has been proclaimed by President Felipe Calderón as "Año de la Patria," or "Year of the Nation. Querétaro is considered to be the cradle of Mexican Independence because the rebellion was planned here by La Corregidora, so the celebrations this September will be HUGE! Too bad I can't stay until then!

Fortunately there was a cultural festival going on in the Jardin Guerrero when we visited. That is a city park with a big central fountain surrounded by trees and benches. One tourist website I read described it as follows: "The trees are close together with their foliage touching, and they trim the top and bottom branches in a straight line. The effect is like looking at a big solid hedge that is 8 or 9 feet off the ground." It was very pretty! We saw part of a play and a presentation of the Canadian Walkirias. It was fun!

Here I am outside the convent of Santa Clara:



The church that you can see in the background is Templo de Santa Clara, which was built in 1606 by the son of the founder of Querétaro, Don Diego de Tapia. It was the first church and convent in Mexico to be dedicated exclusively for the use of the order of Clarisian nuns, and at one point the complex stretched for four city blocks! That's three times bigger than American Girl Place!

Afterwards we went to have a very late dinner at a restaurant decorated with papel picado, a Mexican folk art of papercutting. Look who is on this one!



Can you guess what I had? Churros sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and a bowl of cajeta (dulce de leche) to dip them in.



¡Delicioso!



It was around 10 PM by the time we got to the restaurant and much past that when we finally got back to Priscilla's house, so I was up waaay past my bedtime. (Sorry Mom!) I was tired, but had a great time.

Here are some more photos in the album. Enjoy! ALBUM LINK

La Pirámide de El Cerrito, and me!!!!!

Just five miles from downtown Queretaro you can find the main ancient ceremonial center of the region known as "La Pirámide de El Cerrito" (The Pyramid of El Cerrito), which is attributed to the Tolteca culture. We visited there today!

The Toltecs were an ancient civilization of Mexico. The name means "master builders" and wow, did they build something amazing here! The early history of the Toltecs isn't known but some things I read said they smelted metals and their stonework was highly developed. They worshipped many gods (that means they were polytheistic), including Quetzalcoatl, a plumed serpent god. Their ceremonies did seem to include human sacrifice (which is kind of scary to me) but also sun worship and a sacred ball game called tlatchli. They are said to have discovered pulque (that's a milk-colored alcohol made from the fermented sap of the maguey plant) and were very, very knowledgable about astronomy. This city we are visting was built around 800 A.D. The city peaked between 900 and 1200 A.D. Their culture fell sometime in the 13th century A.D. and that opened the way for the rise of the Aztec peoples.

Here we go to get a closer look!



The platform of the pyramid measures around 360 ft per side, and is around 90 ft tall. Even though the Toltecs later worshipped Quetzalcoatl, the name of the deity that was honored here is unknown because around 1880 the place was sold/taken by Spanish people who wanted to build an estate house on top (you can see it on the top in this next picture).



Can you believe it, they built a house on top of this wonderful pyramid!?!?!

Lots of ceramic objects have been found, but the house structure would need to be destroyed to dig under it and find more clues. I kind of wish they would destroy it so we could learn more about the Toltecs. There is a lot left to discover here, but more money is needed to keep digging and studying everything. This archaelogical site was opened very recently in 1997. You can't climb the pyramid because it's still being restored. That's okay; I liked wandering around with Priscilla!



The tourist guide said that under the surrounding modern city there should be more structures that are now impossible to recover. How sad! It's funny how all over the world, we just build on top of our past. If I wasn't going to be an environmentalist, I think I'd like to be an archaeologist so I could uncover our past.



I really enjoyed my visit to Pirámide de El Cerrito. I kind of think I might have been the first American Girl doll to ever visit there, what do you think?

There are some more photos of my visit IN THIS ALBUM!

I am visiting Mexico!!!

I arrived in the beautiful city of Queretaro, Mexico this last Tuesday April 12, and I'm so excited to be here!!
Priscilla is hosting me and I have seven new friends! When I arrived there were actually five girls living here (Chrissa, Claudette, Sammie, Mabel & Kelly) but then on Thursday two more girls arrived, their names are Hannah and Hattie.

Everybody gave me a very warm welcome and I'm getting along well with all the girls. We have a Schnauzer dog named Peggy (mom, don't worry it's a dog like Coconut, not a fleshie!) and we play with her a lot. Knut is not lonely having another pet around. I will take a pic of Peggy later.


On Thursday Priscilla took me to the park where she goes exercising... or so she says LOL... it's so pretty. It's not big but the trees are very tall and it's nice to see other people enjoying nature too.


I walked around the park for a bit. Some people stared at me with curiosity and others in disbelief... of course I'm so pretty they must've thought they were dreaming! Priscilla took this pretty pic of me.

After we exercised Priscilla showed me around and we went where the nearest Walmart and McDonald's are.


Then across the street from McDonalds you can see the bullring. It's called "Plaza Santa Maria", it opened in 1963 and has room for 13000 people. Priscilla told me she's never been there because she doesn't like bullfighting. You can see some cars in the pic because there's a nice bridge there that was built around 3 years ago. The bad thing is the name of the plaza is hidden by the bridge!.
I am very happy that today is Saturday and we're going downtown this weekend! I'll post more pics soon.
Mom I send you BIG BIG hugs! I miss you!

Visiting Toronto

The last stop on my Canadian adventures was Toronto, in the province of Ontario, to visit with MapleLeaf and her family. We had a lovely visit, and I made a very special new friend!



That's Jasper the hamster. I want a Jasper! He was plenty adorable and fuzzy.

Here's my Toronto album. I really enjoyed hanging out with Jess and Molly and going to one of my fave places, the library!

I learned some things about Toronto while I was there. It is not only the capital of Ontario, it is Canada's largest city. Situated on the north shore of Lake Ontario, indigenous people have been living in the area for 11000 years, since the last Ice Age! Europeans arrived in the 1600s and established the city of York, which was renamed Toronto in 1834. The name apparently comes from the Mohawk phrase 'tkaronto,' which means "where there are trees standing in the water." The city experienced an immigration boom after WWII, and today Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, with 152 spoken languages and dialects!

There are no polar bears here but Toronto is home to the world's tallest building, the CN Tower. We didn't visit but then again, I'm not sure I'd want to go up that high, even if dolls do bounce!

Toronto is a really pretty city. I hope I have the chance to go back one day!

For now, I am home and glad to be with my friends again. Not sure where I'll go next year, but I sure do love traveling! Thanks to all my great Canadian friends!

More Adventures in Winnipeg

I know, I know, you're wondering where I've been, right?

Well, I'm still in Canada, actually. I have been having so much fun that I didn't have time or energy to update my blog! So finally, here is an album of my adventures visiting Kym and her family. Like my last host JeanieD, they are residents of Winnipeg in the province of Manitoba.

Further Winnipegian Adventures

As you can see, I had a great time! I'm actually in Toronto Ontario now, but am heading home soon. I'll post more later about my adventures in Toronto.

Birthday Celebrations!

This past week included two birthdays - Felicity's, and Molly's. Here are the three of us ready to celebrate.

Went to look at the Red River rising...

...and my goodness, it is a very big and very high river! There are still some pieces of ice floating north (the Red flows north to empty into Lake Winnipeg, and eventually into Hudson's Bay), and some areas of the city (not where I am staying, thank goodness) are having to put up big sandbag dikes to hold back the water.





We also took some pictures at the Tourist Information building - there are sled dogs, a bison, a huge polar bear, and an inukshuk (a stone figure created by the Inuit in the Arctic):