Merida, Mexico - Day 2

YH had to attend his conference today so he had to wake up early while I get to continue sleeping. =p View from our hotel room taken in the morning by YH before he left...

I had nothing to do and went to explore the mini shopping mall below our hotel... Here's the view of hotel lobby...

Nice stained glass ceiling and christmas decorations at the lobby...

Nothing much to see as the shops were mostly selling souvenirs or clothing... Went back up to hotel room to watch TV and read... TV programs were mostly in Spanish... =( Continued reading till YH came back from conference... First time I could laze in bed for so long while on holiday... =p

Some photos of us at the hotel...

View of the hotel from outside...

There's a Walmart near the hotel and we went there to buy some drinks and snacks! =) There were lots of fruit flavoured drinks and they looked so colourful...

YH forgo his dinner reception and we took the local bus to downtown for dinner at La casa de Frida... The restaurant serves Mexican cuisine and is highly recommended...

Us in the restaurant...

Our drinks - Lemonade and Sangria (lemonade with red wine). The combination of lemonade with red wine was something special and tasted nice! =)

Complimentary bread...

We ordered an appetizer - Taquitos dorados de pato (Crispy duck tacos). Very tasty!! =)

From my research, there were 2 entrees that were highly recommended and we ordered them... This is Chile en nogada (Poblano pepper stuffed with ground meat, cooked with apple, pear and plantain covered with pecan) and tasted really nice!! Not a drop of the sauce was spared...

Pato con mole poblano (Duck in mole sauce). The mole sauce is made with a combination of 18 ingredients, among them 3 varieties of chilies, almonds, peanuts, tomatoes and chocolate. This tasted really good too!! And we really finished every drop of the sauce!

Tortillas that came with the entrees...

For dessert we had Sorbete de coco con Kahlua (Coconut ice-cream with Kahlau). This was really nice too! We had a really enjoyable dinner and the food at Casa de Frida was really good!! =)

The check came in this cute little box... =p

After dinner we walked to the main plaza area as there was a free performance to be held there at 9pm. Every monday night, you can watch traditional Yucatecan dancing in front of the Palacio Municipal at the main plaza. In fact every night there is some performance/event that you can watch or attend... =)

There were seats for us to sit and watch the performance and many people were here to watch...

Us waiting for the performance to start...

The dance performance where the dancers are dressed in Mayan attire. The host spoke in Spanish and we could not understand what he was saying or whatever jokes he was making. =( But we still enjoyed the performance as it was something we never saw before. The dancers' footwork were really great!

Another dance with scarves...

A very interesting dance as there is one guy carrying a pole with many ribbons and the other dancers formed a circle around that main guy. Each dancer then held on to a ribbon and moved in a way such that the ribbons twist and untwist.

A dance whereby a bottle was balanced on the dancer's head...

This was a guys only dance and they stood on a box...

Upgrade version of a previous dance as they now balanced a tray containing a bottle and 4 glasses on their head. Its amazing that they can still dance and turn with that on their head!

This dance has it all, the balancing of the tray on the head plus dancing on a box...

The dance performance was a rather long one, it lasted for an hour. They performed many dances with different props. Very entertaining and it is free! Plus they have this every Monday night! It would be even better if we could understand what the host was saying. After the performance we walked around a little at the main plaza area before heading back to the hotel...