Today is Friday so This Must Be Querétaro

On Friday, March 3, we were finally able to take the trolley bus tour. When we first arrived, we tried to take the tour to help us get oriented, but they had trouble finding two other couples to make it worth their while. Today, all the buses were full. Don’t know why.

We took two tours. The first on the east side of town included a trip to the end of the aqueduct, which we had not seen (the other end, not the aqueduct), and to the view from the convent of La Cruz, which we had. The other members of our group were from Mexico and Japan. The guide, like the one in Cuernavaca, asked everyone where they were from, and we thus became the token norteamericanos again. The guide made no bones about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago where Mexico was forced to turn over half its territory to the US. (I keep repeating it because they keep repeating it and posting it on signs.) I felt like saying, “hey, it wasn’t my fault. I was just a kid.” The house of the signers (traitors?) were pointed out, etc. Lucky for the Japanese couple that Japan never invaded Mexico. In fact, I kind of felt like a Japanese tourist visiting Pearl Harbor.

The second tour was of the west side of the city with the same guide. The other riders were from Los Angeles (as in California) and Chicago, although nearly all were latinos and spoke Spanish. We were again the token norteamericanos. Since this was the part of town where Emperor Maximillian was executed, I made it real clear to the guide that I was not to blame for Maximillian, and that the lady sitting next to me was French. It was the first time I ever heard C say she was not French (technically she is an American citizen now)! We still heard about Guadalupe Hidalgo though. But the guide also expressed interest in my knowledge of Mesoamerican archaeology, which partly made up for it all. There were even some jokes about Carlotta (Max’s wife) being the only woman to stay at the Vatican when she toured Europe to raise money for the cause.

If you ever come down to visit, I think I can do a convincing job as tour guide. Not so much from the bus tours as from the walking we have been doing for the past few weeks. The buses can only go on a fraction of the city’s streets, and you really have to walk the rest of it to understand Querétaro.