A weekend of history and tradition

Days in Mexico: 99
I've almost reached 100 days in Mexico! 

Last week I got another day off school, this time it was to celebrate teacher's day on the 15th of May. We had a whole school mass on Wednesday for the 2500+ students from pre-primary to year 12, the teachers and the parents. It was massive and luckily it wasn't a hot day because the service was outside. After mass, new statue was unveiled at the school and the students finished the school day early so the teachers could have a party to celebrate. 

On Saturday I didn't have any plans so mamá and I went to San Juan de Ulúa. It was built over a long period of time starting from 1565 and was used for a lot of things but is most famous for being a jail. It was added to and changed to fit different purposes. It is surrounded by water and has moats between the different buildings.

The building layout as it currently stands

In some of the original structures, there are stalactites and stalagmites. They have been forming where calcium carbonate has come out of the coral that was used to make the walls and ceilings so when it rained it made acid water.

There was also a museum explaining what different parts of the structure were and also had sculptures and pottery from hundreds of years ago.

The main courtyard in San Juan de Ulúa

The building that is now the museum

On Sunday for breakfast, we went to the Gran Café de la Parróquia which is a cafe which has been making traditional Veracruz food since it opened in 1808. I had a 'Concha con frijoles y queso' which is a sweet bread roll with a shell pattern on it filled with bean paste and cheese. It is a strange combination of sweet and savory but it tasted really good! 

I also had a traditional drink called 'Lechero' which is served as some espresso coffee in a glass. There are waiters that walk around with hot milk and to get milk added to your coffee, you tap on your glass with the teaspoon. The milk is poured from as high as possible to make the milk on top foamy.

How the drink was served

Milk being poured

A delicious drink

In the cafe there was a big picture on the wall of the San Juan de Ulúa which I visited the day before. The picture is from when the building was used as a defense barrier before it was a jail. 

For dinner, we went out for and had salads. I had a really nice tuna pasta salad with a pineapple alfalfa juice. It tasted great but about 3 hours later I got an allergic reaction to something in the food. I started to get red itchy spots everywhere and they kept on getting worse so at about 1am on Monday morning I went to hospital. The doctor didn't speak English but I was with my mamá and papá so I was able to be treated with an injection almost straight away. I was in bed and asleep by 2am and woke up the next morning feeling a lot better!