Day 2, in which we visit 3 churchs and 1 bar.

Today we took a lit­tle walk­ing tour with our host Jane and a cou­ple of oth­er guests.

A block away from the Casa there is a lit­tle alley on the back side of the local mar­ket. It’s a good place to stop for a soda in the shade.

The Vir­gin of Soledad is the patron of the City of Oax­a­ca. Her church is near enough to hear the bells in the morn­ing. The top of the front facade is coat­ed in paint­ed plaster.

Inside the Vir­gin her­self is above the altar. You almost can’t see her for the roco­co decorations.

City hall is right next door. The cen­tral court yard is a pleas­ant place to wait.

Tucked in a cor­ner of the first floor is the time clock.

After spend­ing time in restored build­ings we went to see the bar called Los Dan­zantes. In a typ­i­cal colo­nial build­ing but with very mod­ern decor.

The bar itself was made out of blocks of crushed cars.

This is one of my favorite court­yard foun­tains in the city.

Then on to anoth­er church. Sto. Domin­go de Guz­man. This is the ceil­ing in the rosay chapel. Usu­al­ly there is a love­ly white vir­gin in here but she’s been moved for the week­end to the main sanctuary.

Tomor­row (Sun­day) the city will be cel­e­brat­ing the ded­i­ca­tion of this new retablo. It’s huge and very shiny. A lot of time (3 years) and mon­ey has been spent on it.

You see the strangest things on the bul­letin boards in lit­tle court­yards. This was out­side the door of Black­Box, one of my favorite ‘mod­ern’ art stores.

The last church of the day was the Cather­dral in the cen­ter of the city. it was filled with hun­dreds of these bun­dles of lilies because Fri­day was the fes­ti­val of El Senor del Rayo. Our Lord of the Light­en­ing Bolt is what they call the cru­ci­fix housed in the side chapel that was the only thing that sur­vived a fire start­ed when light­en­ing struck the orig­i­nal thatched roof.

The city is start­ing to dec­o­rate for the day of the dead.