January 19, 2023
Sharon D. Clarke is in Blues in the Night & That’s Probably All You Need to Knowby Randi / August 29, 2019Welcome back to Mexico Central (not to be confused with Central Mexico), at least for the next few weeks! After our wonderful but brief trip through Valladolid and our visits to Chichen Itza, Ek Balam, and our favorite cenotes, we’re ready to continue through the Yucatan – which is, as you saw above, Yucatanfastic – via Merida and Uxmal. And not only are there more cenotes to come, there’s also a museum…of chocolate. It’s all my favorite things, babies! And then a real museum, which as you know is usually not my favorite thing only because for some reason in museums I tend to turn into Dug from “Up” seeing a squirrel , but this museum held my attention. IT’S ALL GREAT. Let’s get to it.
Once we saw all the wonders of Chichen Itza, on that amazing first full day in Mexico, we drove about two hours towards the west coast to Merida (it could take you less but remember we left Cheechee at closing time (5pm), so we were living it up during rush hour! On a Monday! So fun in every country!). As we saw in Valladolid and as I warned you would happen in every town in the Yucatan, our evening arrival was commemorated with half of Merida dancing in the street outside the main square, and the other half watching. It’s so fun and lovely; I love that there are still legit communities out there in the world. Meanwhile we don’t even know our neighbors (but one of them has a Leave (Brexit) sign in their window so we don’t want to know them, obvs). Honestly I can’t even believe there are Americans who don’t want Mexican people to be their neighbors. THEY’RE JUST GOING TO DANCE IN THE STREET AND MAKE YOU AMAZING FOOD, what is your problem?
Now that we’re in Merida, it’s time for our favorite travel segment:
Merida, along with being the heroine of the most disappointing “Disney princess” movie (seriously all she does is turn her mother into a bear and we’re supposed to appreciate the “feminism”? she’s a “strong female role model” because she “decided” to turn her mother into a bear? how many “quotes” can I “use”??), is the capital and largest city of the Yucatan state. It’s also one of the most popular destinations in the Yucatan because of its prime location as a perfect jumping off point to start negotiations explore the surrounding sites, and also because it’s one of the most beautiful cities. It’s been named the American Capital of Culture a few times by smart people who know that ‘American’ doesn’t just refer to USA. Merida is indeed a cultural gem, with interesting architecture that mixes its Mayan roots with European influence, and with strong museums, amazing food, and the aforementioned dancing in the Plaza Mayor. Having the largest indigenous population of any Mexican city means its Maya heritage and history are at the forefront.
So in the 1500s, there were three men named Francisco de Montejo and they were all Spanish conquistadors AND they were all related so it got super confusing but there wasn’t much they could do because there just weren’t that many names back then. To make it easier, they used cute lil nicknames: the oldest was “The Lieutenant” (“hello lootellaaaann” – South Pacific), his son was “The Boy”, and his nephew was “The Nephew”. Cute for you! Obviously these were in Spanish because they spoke Spanish because they WERE Spanish! which means they arrived in Mexico and saw indigenous people just carrying on living their lives and the lootellant, the boy, and the nephew – or just The Boy, actually; I think it was just The Boy but then why did I have to hear about all three of these bozos? – were like “LA LA LA I DON’T SEE ANYONE ELSE I MAKE MY CITY HERE. HERE’S A GOOD SPOT.” Merida was built on the site of the ancient Maya city of T’ho, and stones from T’ho’s/those buildings were used to build the Spanish colonial buildings of downtown Merida, including the cathedral.
For a few centuries, Merida was a walled city, needing such protection because SOME Maya people had the BIG IDEA that the Spanish and their descendants shouldn’t have just up and taken the land so there were some revolts. Modern Merida has since expanded well beyond those old walls. I don’t know much about the treatment of the indigenous population today, but considering they are the majority, I hope they are running things.
I’m going to share Merida hotel and vegan food info in a separate post because there is just SO MUCH to talk about! You may recall we only spent 1 night in Valladolid (and did so much I’m honestly just so proud of my lazy butt) but we have 3 in Merida, so we have a lot of ground (food, really) to cover – as well as a beach day in Progreso! It was not as exciting as it sounded! But you’ll see! In the separate post!
After our first night, we slept in a little because, well because I hadn’t been able to sleep in for like at least a week and I can’t function like that for too long because I have a SYNDROME and the only cure is MORE COWBELL sleep. Also, we had to be ready for another gigantic day! This day was going to be packed with a trip to the site of the ancient Maya city Uxmal, more cenotes, and a surprise chocolate museum that literally took 3 hours and yet was great.
UXMAL
After about an hour’s drive, we got to Uxmal at 11:30am, which is a terrible, no good, very bad idea. See, this was summer, in Mexico. It’s hot. At almost noon, the sun is, like, ready, and boy oh boy it felt like we were in a sauna while we explored the extensive grounds of Uxmal. It was about 102 degrees (Fahrenheit, obvs; see last post for my rant about systems of measurement it’s totally worth it) and we were positively baking. (You’ll be like THEN WHY ARE YOU WEARING A SWEATER IN THESE PICTURES but it is not a sweater it’s like the thinnest material ever made and it just protects my arm skin from burning.) Entry into Uxmal is 413 pesos (about $20) and, like the other sites, a portion of that is a federal fee that has to be paid in cash so you just need to be prepared to pay in cash.
Like pretty much every site we’ve seen so far in the Yucatan, Uxmal is an ancient Maya city and one of the most important archaeological sites in Maya culture. It’s on the Ruta Puuc, a long grouping of roads that lead to endless Maya archaeological sites and ruins. If you are in the market for an entire day of endless ruins, just drive down the Ruta and see however many you have time for, ensuring you end with Uxmal since it’s the grandest and most important. If, like us, you’ve already seen lots of ruins and you don’t want to get burned out to the point where you don’t appreciate them any longer, start with Uxmal, spend a significant amount of time exploring this site, and then treat yo self to a hilarious afterparty/museum.
While everyone visiting the Yucatan will put Chichen Itza at the top of their to-do list, we were impressed with Uxmal and I think we both agreed it was our favorite site in the state. It’s an enormous site like Chichen Itza, but it’s much less crowded, and it’s also much more interesting topographically. There are so much areas to explore and it seems like they’re all on different levels, like various earthen platforms rising in unexpected ways so there’s all this surprising variation in elevation as you explore. This made our exploration of Uxmal much more exciting and fun. Also, there are ZERO touts, whereas Chichen Itza has tons of stalls all around the interior grounds, which I get and it happens at most important sites around the world, but it’s nice to find one that isn’t all commercialized inside.
actually we made about 1000 of these new frens. they are EVERYWHERE.
Despite its popularity and general fame, Uxmal has not actually been studied enough as an archaeological site. I’ve been calling it an archaeological site and I’m going to keep calling it an archaeological site because calling it old ruins sounds like I’m being a bitch to her, but there hasn’t actually been much archaeology going on. Very little excavation or research has been done because I guess archaeologists are too busy in Egypt still? I don’t know where are they? People think that it was founded about 500 AD and was the capital of the Maya state from 850-925 AD before invaders took over. During its height, it teamed up with Chichen Itza to dominate Mayan society; the two together were like Helene Bezukhova, the queen of society, beautiful, barely clothed, plump bare shoulder and much exposed neck, round which she wears a double string of pearls! okay I’m getting sidetracked by musical theatre again (PIERRE THE CUCKHOLD SITS AT HOME PIERRE THE CUCKHOLD SITS AT HOME the poor man).
Like all good ruins, Uxmal featured a enormous f-ing thing that you have to climb. Well you don’t have to, but we always feel compelled to climb whatever is climbable, even though my FOMO (fear of missing out) is regularly outweighed by my FOFO (fear of falling off). Uxmal’s expansive grounds include lots of highly climbable structures, but the highest building, the grand temple, is the Featured Climb. As always, it probably looks like an easy climb in the pictures but it was g-d terrifying to come down. I mean the climb up wasn’t a picnic in 102 degree heat when you are sweating buckets even without moving but I almost panicked to a halt coming down. No I definitely did panic-halt a few times. At the top, we met a really nice English family who were taking a year-long tour around the world. They had a son of about 7 years old and the two of us literally talked each other through the descent. We both went down on our bottoms (as the English say) for a part of it, but I felt better standing and going sideways. Guys it was legit terrifying. It’s so steep that you are basically looking at a sheer drop; the stairs are almost on top of each other and even for my small-ish feet they are TINY. I felt bad leaving my new child friend as he took longer but his parents were waiting for him at the bottom and like, didn’t seem concerned and I had to GET THE F OUTTA THERE before I froze again. Ahhh these descents are scary! I mean I get extra scared because I fell down a similar thing once (okay it was stone stairs at college not at an ancient archaeological site BUT STILL) but it’s definitely not a breeze to do for anyone. (Also not a breeze? The lack of breeze.)
At many of these ancient sites, amid the enormous temples and structures for sacrificial rites and residential buildings and smaller temples and everything, would always be an open field called the ‘ball court’. Some, like at Chichen Itza, are ‘Great Ball Courts’. I honestly saw all these signs for ball courts and thought ‘well it’s nice they also had leisure activities and sports.’
We’ll put a pin in that ball court discussion until we get to the Mayan Museum at the end. REMEMBER!
Surviving the descent of that temple was definitely my favorite part, but my second favorite part offers some stiff competition. Like I said (a lot) (yay complaining), it was hot as the balls they used in the great ball court’s non-basketbally game of basketball. When we exited the grounds back into the ticket/welcome building with the toilets and a few shops, we saw THE BEST THING EVER:
ICY DRINKS! PLEASE AND THANK YOU! We shared a mango one and a coconut one and because it was so sweltering out, they were amazing. Icy drinks have never been better. HUZZAH FOR ICE.
What a great place.
After our just-under-two hours at Uxmal, we were definitely ancient-ruinsed out for the day. I mean, all we’d really done so far in Mexico was tour these sites, so continuing further down the Ruta Puuc would have probably made us bitter. Instead, we went across the street from Uxmal to…the Museum of Chocolate.
CHOCO-STORY: ECOPARQUE MUSEO DEL CACAO
We thought the Chocolate Museum, or “Choco-Story” would be a nice little air-conditioned diversion to regroup after our exhausting (but awesome) time at Uxmal, before getting back on the road to find more cenotes. But it turned out to be a HUGE cacao plantation, where they grow and harvest cacao beans and also have an entire museum about the history, growth, use, everything to do with cacao. It was INSANE. We thought it would be like 30 minutes tops and we were there for over 2 hours. But it was SO fun, and so interesting. The museum is spread through the endless grounds in numerous thatched huts, with each hut covering one topic. I fancy myself a chocolate connoisseur and I never imagined there could even be so much information about it.
We learned what healthy beans look like, as well as a lot of (too much) information about all the different kinds of diseases your cocoa beans could catch (omg it was actually very sad). We learned how the very special beans were used as currency in ancient times, and how much they’d be worth. We learned how the Maya would use cocoa beans in their sacrifices to the gods. And we learned about the cocoa gods the Maya people would pray too, like this fine one below who is appropriately but oof sadly covered in cocoa bean…lesions?
90% of what we learned in the Yucatan was about human sacrifices. I mean I’m all about respecting other cultures BUT DAYUM
We ALSO learned – too late – that it wasn’t just a cocoa plantation, but also a sort of animal sanctuary. When I first came upon the cages, I was like OH SHIT OH SHIT IS THIS SOME SORT OF F-ING ZOO? But there are signs all over the animal areas saying WE ARE NOT A ZOO! and explaining that the animals living here have been rescued from abuse, and wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild. Now I’m no wildlife expert, and I’m sure there’s a strong argument that we still shouldn’t interfere with wild animals even if they face certain death remaining on their own. But there’s not much I personally am mad about if this place is giving these animals a nice life that otherwise would have been over long ago.
Another thing I thought this place did well was reinforce the respect that cacao farming deserves, and how we should treat chocolate as something special and not something we are entitled to. And of course, we have to be careful where we buy from and what kinds of practices we support.
My favorite part was that one hut was for learning how to make traditional Maya hot cacao drinks, complete with making and enjoying your own cup! The cocoa on its own is extremely bitter, so there is a bowl of sugar for making it palatable, plus the traditional spice additions of cinnamon, annatto, allspice, and hot pepper. I added everything!
I also really enjoyed the sign on Chocolate & Health. We had a pretty good laugh at how ridic this was.
It was pretty cool but kind of awkward when we were ushered deeper into the forest (it’s like in a forest, it’s nuts) for a traditional Maya cocoa ceremony. Awkward just because we were uncomfortable with these guys performing for us white tourists and we were just like eeeek thank you I really appreciate this but eeeek, but it was interesting.
Obviously, my favorite part of the Chocolate Museum was truly the gift shop. IT WAS ALL CHOCOLATE! and like, things for making chocolate? and soaps and shampoos made from chocolate? The flavors of their bars sounded incredible, but it was so hot and they would all immediately melt before we made it back to London (in like, another week? no chance!). We limited ourselves to two awesome flavors, both with some sort of pepper.
OH NO! HOLD THAT THOUGHT. My actual favorite part was the additional information inside the main building, near the gift shop. There was a “Chocolate Timeline”, and it included such shade, such absolute, gorgeous, sensational shade, thrown at the king of fuckery, Mr Christopher Columbus. Behold the glory:
I CANNOT handle how excruciatingly perfect this is. In so few words it’s basically announcing what a f-ing asshole Columbus was but without saying anything objectionable. SO GOOD. WHAT AN ASSHOLE.
Choco-story was a really fun surprise! It took over two hours to tour, and the toilets are only outside the ticket area (had to do a few reentries), but I’m glad we went.
After the chocolate, you know what it’s time for.
CENOTES
Another day in the Yucatan, another swim in a cenote! We followed our GPS as best we could towards the middle of nowhere for X’Batun Cenote, which eventually led us down a dirt road. We were like, is this right? Where TF are we? We drove through this amazing, quaint little villages with a single small church and like a cow on the side of the road, wondering if we were going in the right direction. Eventually, we saw a small sign up on a big porch, with a few guys sitting in chairs. They were selling tickets and giving directions! They also had toilets!
The men sold us a joint ticket for two cenotes located across the road from each other, X’Batun and Dzonbacal. It’s 80 pesos for both. Unfortunately, X’Batun was closed because of heavy rains earlier that week – the rains made the water too dirty to swim in. We had a peek at it though, and it was very similar to Dzonbacal, where we still could swim, so it’s fine.
We still have to get there though! This ticket porch is still miles away from the actual cenote! They directed us to drive to the end of this road, turn right past a certain tree, and then drive 3 kilometers down a random suuuuper dirt/off-roady road till there’s a split in the road, indicating the two cenotes. We peeked at the one and then drove to the other, where the parking area had toilets (!) and a shower stall. The toilet was the foulest one I’ve seen yet in the country, and still no hooks were to be found (Mexico like doesn’t do hooks in toilet stalls), so changing in it without letting any of my stuff touch the gross floor was A CHALLENGE. We rinsed off with the shower stall/bucket as you should do (really as you should do not just with natural swimming wonders of the world but in public pools omg the gross men at my London pool don’t shower beforehand even though it’s IN THE RULES and they all reek of cologne HOW MANY EMAILS DO I HAVE TO SEND BEFORE THEY ENFORCE THE RULES) and then we enjoyed this cenote! It was beautiful, like half in a cave half outside.
Such a great cenote. There are decent signs advertising X’Batun, so you shouldn’t have a hard time finding it (or at least finding the right village) if you include it with your trip to Uxmal, which you should do. Hopefully for you X’Batun won’t be too dirty to swim in!
Since we were already in wet bathing suits when we got back to our hotel, we enjoyed our hotel pool after our cenote time. Double swimming days are the best. But more on that in the next post!
Aside from our beach day in Progreso, we have one more sight to share from our time in Merida, and one of the most important: The Mayan World Museum of Merida, or the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya.
GRAN MUSEO DEL MUNDO MAYA
The Mayan Museum is the big thing to do actually in the city of Merida. It’s off one of the main expressways of the city leading north out of it (so it makes sense to visit the museum first and then continue north to Progreso for a beachy day trip, if you are planning things for yourself). It’s a huge, modern, shiny building with a gigantic, new, shiny, modern parking garage underground. It costs 80 pesos to park in it, which is $4, and worth it to keep your car out of that sun.
When you get to the huge shiny lobby of the museum, you’ll be (I was) happy to see water dispensers for refilling your enormous water bottles! Honestly my favorite part.
It’s 150 pesos per ticket, about $7.50 which is not bad considering how much this museum has. The exhibits are great, but there isn’t very good signage, at least in English, which was a little disappointing. Still, you can learn a lot from what what signs there are and from just looking at the displays with a modicum of critical thinking.
There’s tons of information about indigenous cultures, their ways of life, and what they were like in ancient times, in every aspect. There’s tons of archaeological finds, including ancient statues and all kinds of pottery.
But you’re here to finally learn what the big ball courts in all the ruins sites are about. All over Mesoamerica, these ancient cities have these huge ball courts, and like I said before, it’s not just for old-fashioned forms of basketball. Archaeologists believe that the game was played by hitting the ball with one’s forearm, or a bat-like device, to try to pass it through those rings we saw above, in Uxmal, on the side walls of the playing field. Hitting it with your forearm sounds like it would hurt, because the balls were HEAVY. Yikes! That’s probably as bad as it gets, right? Pain-wise? Noooope. Scenes carved on walls of the spectator benches show players wearing protective gear as well as carrying tools that could be used for striking the ball, so who knows what the right way to play is. It shouldn’t concern us too much, though, because REGARDLESS can we just ALL AGREE as a society NOT to play this game? Okay so after you play and try to get the ball through the hoop, there would be a winner and a loser, as there are. Seven players on each side would parade toward the center of the field, and the captain of the defeated team would kneel. Then the captain of the winning team would DECAPITATE THE LOSER. The winning captain/murderer would hold his knife and the severed head of his friend up before the probably cheering crowd. This, like almost everything else in these ancient cities, existed as a way to offer human sacrifices to the gods but in a more communal and fun way, I GUESS. And I thought football sucked.
I won’t leave you with ‘horrible sports gone wrong’, though. Elsewhere in the museum, there was an interactive screen display that, if you entered some personal information about yourself, would tell you sort of your Mayan fortune – what your personality is like and what jobs you’re equipped for. I’m sure it’s a way for the government to collect private details about its guests but we really wanted to know what it would say so we did it anyway.
As you can see, my color is black and my direction is west, so I’m kind of like a Kardashian in Mexico. I’m like IN AWE of how accurate this is. I DO live between day and night (like most people…because they just mean like…daytime, right?). I am GENEROUS with my ADVICE (/extremely judgmental and bossy). I TAKE TO THE ROAD IN BOTH HAPPINESS AND SORROW! this is amazing. Although apparently I should be a road guide or a…a marriage spokesman?? what job is that and how do I get it? LOVES IT! WORTH THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT HAVING MY EMAIL ADDRESS!
So that’s it for Part 2 of our trip through the Yucatan, but there’s much more to come. Like, the hotel (and its pool) and all the vegan food, plus a beach that I did…not…love. So fun! Stay tuned.
Related Posts
Eating Vegan in Moscow: Highs, Lows, and Our New Second Home
My eating in Moscow started off dire but ended up in strong contention for my favorite food of the trip, thanks (and no thanks) to a wildly uneven list. Due to some HappyCow reviewers whom I no longer trust, I decided my first stop would be at Prime Cafe because they had juices, salads, and wraps. Sure they did, but it ended up being 100% a copy of Pret a Manger. And the old-style Pret, not the newfangled wave of super vegan-friendliness that Pret’s doing in London now. First of all, it was so hard to find because it wasn’t actually called Prime Cafe on HappyCow; it was just listed as its address, which Google maps didn’t want to find. When we finally found the address and saw it was a Prime Cafe, we realized we had seen this chain all over the city and for no good reason had been heading to this not-super-close location. We learned that night that there was one 10 yards from our hostel.
I ordered a vegetable juice right off the drinks board but for some reason the staff laughed at me. Maybe no one orders it. Maybe I just said the words slightly off because I’ve never met people so obsessed with precisely how things are pronounced like Russians are. I think they are just messing with us. Like in English if someone came up to you and said maybe “tree teeckets plees” you’d know they were saying three tickets please. Yet in Russian we’ll say things pretty accurately but because it’s not in a perfect accent people are like what what what??? I don’t understand? And I’m like YOU REALLY DO, YOU’RE JUST BEING A DICK. Anyway, the juice. It was fine but took forever to make and I was just chilling by the counter waiting for it and everyone kept saying things to me that I didn’t understand. I also got the only vegan salad and the only vegan wrap I could find in the fridge case. So, just like Pret but with fewer options. Whoever gave this place great reviews for vegans needs their membership reexplored.
The salad was mostly corn and red pepper, but it did have some kidney beans and maybe pinto beans in there, and it’ll probably be the only beans I find this whole summer so that was great. I mean it didn’t taste particularly great, it was fine, but it was great to have beans. I love beans. The wrap I got was sub-Pret, with one half inedible because it had gotten that gross wrap-sliminess that happens within five minutes of making a wrap and refrigerating it. Grilled wraps 4eva. So even though these Russian Prets were literally on every block (as with regular Pret), I didn’t go back there.
Perfect salad at Fresh
Luckily, Husband’s former London colleague who now lives in Moscow introduced us to my new favorite restaurant called Fresh. It is sooo awesomeeeee. The food is so good and the menu so damn perfect that I forgive them for their tagline being “Healthy is the new Sexy”. Barffff. But yummy food! They had my dream food – big salads full of greens and veggies and chickpeas and grilled tofu and then fun things like tempura-ed oyster mushrooms and grilled sweet potatoes and just ugh I love salads like that! Dream! They also had really good burgers and an extensive smoothie and juice menu, like more than I could hope for even in NYC or London. It was perfect!
yummy magic mushroom salad at Fresh
Over the course of several lunches (okay I admit just two but we ordered enough food for like 4), we tried a lot of dishes. My favorite was my first salad (first pictured above), called the All Stars Salad, with lots of raw spinach and sunflower sprouts with grilled sweet potatoes, slabs of grilled tofu, avocado, a quinoa and adzuki tabouleh, and a yummy sauce. I later got the Magic Mushroom salad (second salad above) which was also really good and had the aforementioned crispy oyster mushrooms mixed it. I wish there were a few more of those. It also had caramelized apple slices, more sunflower sprouts, and pecans. Really, that mushroom salad would have been the winner if it had a better dressing. As it was, it only came with vegan sour cream, which is gross to me but Russians live on their sour cream so I guess it’s popular like that. I just poured in salsa and sauces from our other plates that day and it was great. Both salads came doused in a goji berry & mixed superfood seed mix, which was an awesome addition. I hope those salads provide continued nutrients for me weeks afterwards like when I had cookies and bread for dinner on the train.
Yay chocolate and kale! |
Yay green smoothies! |
The real winners at Fresh were its amazing smoothies. Over our visits, we tried three smoothies. First, the Green Goddess, with broccoli, spinach, pineapple, mango, banana, orange, and green superfood mix. Then I tried the fun Super Kale, with pear, ginger, cucumber (coo coom ba), kale, mint, cilantro, pineapple, and ‘cannabis seeds’ as was written in the menu. And lastly a chocolate peanut butter banana cup of deliciousness. My fave was the Green Goddess but I was most intrigued by the Super Kale one and those cannabis seeds, which sounds crazy but I imagine that just means hempseeds, which is totally normal. The choco pb one was as expected delicious, but not too sweet which was nice…but veered on being not sweet enough.
Ordering falafel: good. Ordering vegan onion rings: GOOOOOOD
Is it just a dilla?
We also tried the quesadillas without cheese, which brings up a hilarious Facebook ‘fight’ my Husband has watched unfold on his wall for like years now. Some rando friend has a running joke/argument with someone about how a quesadilla without cheese just can’t exist. So that’s funny. Our nonexistent dilla was really good, chock full of black beans and corn and vegetables and served with avocado cream and salsa. Hard to eat but yummy and yay I got beans again! We also had the falafel plate as an appetizer once; wasn’t our idea (we were a table of 4) because falafel isn’t exactly hard to come by like other things on the menu but hey I’ll never turn down falafel. And as you might have seen in the falafel plate picture above, we also got VEGAN ONION RINGS! They were so good ahhhh!!!
Husband got the BBQ burger one time, which I was incredibly jealous of. It was really good even though I don’t like barbecue sauce. It had onion rings on it! And hot banana chilies. They know how to make burgers. Another time he got the Mexican taco special which I also really enjoyed. I think it was full of TVP, or maybe ground seitan, and lots of lettuce and it was yum.
Of course I also got their vegan cookies to go once or twice. They were very reminiscent of the banana-filled oatmeal I make sometimes – just oats and bananas. I think that’s literally all there was in these cookies. But hey I love oats and bananas so we’re good.
I wish I could go back but I don’t know if I want to go back to Moscow for a trip. I’d be so pumped if they opened a Fresh in London. Oh we do have half a day in Moscow later in our adventure and I’m definitely going there again. Yummm.
|
|
Another very nice vegetarian place we tried was Avocado Cafe, which was similar to Fresh but not quite as good. Maybe it’s because they didn’t bring my soup until everyone else had long finished all their food, which is just terrible service. Luckily that soup was good. It was a chickpea (CHICKPEAS HELLO!) tomato soup with a few various veggies and it was perfect comfort food. I also had a basic but decent green salad with avocado (of course, it’s called that after all) and we all shared fried tofu sticks which were random but damn good.
green salad woohoo 
vegan pelmeni! I hope I find you again! oh woohoo 
another soup veg? lentil? hooray for soup woohoo |
fried tofu woohoo 
delicious but 40 minute late soup woohoo 
first and only vegan ice cream of the trip was full of freezer burn. but the cheesecake was so good |
Husband had the pelmeni, which I was super jealous of because pelmeni is usually made with egg and filled with meat, but these were vegan! I had one but I’m still jealous of them. I want to find vegan pelmeni again! And I was jealous again of Cousin’s dessert. I got ice cream – first and only vegan ice cream we’ve found so far! – and he got blueberry cheesecake but from the raw section, so I was like eww raw cheesecake is always the worst, just thick slabs of pureed cashews so nauseating. But this was actually the best raw cheesecake I’ve ever had. And my precious beloved ice cream had been apparently in the back of their freezer since the end of the Soviet Union because it was a slightly melting but mostly hard as a rock piece of freezer burn. DISAPPOINT.
Luckily, nothing can keep us down long when we are in the presence of our new favorite place, our second home as it became when in St. Petersburg – Teremok! The McDonald’s of fast Russian food but soooo good! In crazy events, the Moscow Teremoks had even bigger lenten/vegan menus!! Hooray the day!
This time, I had the roasted potatoes and pickles and fried onions, plus another vinagret (diced veggie salad in a light vinaigrette). Both were so good but what else would you expect from our beloved Teremok! There’s one in NYC now, guys! Go!!
Near our hostel, there was a pretty fancy grocery store that we went to for emergency water, and lucky that we did because in their fridge section were a few ready-made meals marked as vegan! Such a shock! The one I grabbed was an unfortunate mix of hummus and seaweed in a wrap, so ack, but still, it was vegan!
it says vegansky product!
And I would be remiss if I didn’t share status updates on the constant search for my new favorite bars (although I found a potential new favorite in Yekaterinburg, but we will get there!). The “Take A Bite” bar was pretty easy to find in Moscow – especially at this random grocery near Avocado Cafe:
THEY HAD EVERY FLAVOR GUYS!!!
So, overall Moscow is very vegan-friendly, with a few standout all-veg restaurants that I would happily go back to next time I’m there (in 3 months lol!). Ordering at the regular traditional restaurants requires a little bit of knowledge about Russian food, but still you’re in a city where most people understand a little English and most restaurants have an English menu, so it’s easy. And I know it won’t be this easy again, not until we circle back through Moscow!
Travel Adventure Announcement! I Go To Old Country…a lot of them
Yay it’s time for our big news! This summer (and some of the fall!), we are taking the incredible sabbatical trip that we’ve been talking about for so long. For years now, we’ve been planning this adventure (well, Husband has), and this summer – THIS FRIDAY! – we finally get to start it. You might have guessed by now that that epic google maps screenshot at the top of the page is a map of our route. Here it is again:
I knowww. For 3 ½ months, we are taking the Trans Mongolian Railway throughout Russia to Mongolia and China, and then traveling all around China and through the Silk Route and overland back to Western Europe. It’s almost as crazy as how much stuff I’m trying to cram into my backpack! Yes, we are backpacking, and staying at hostels (and lots of yurts in mountains!), which we haven’t done in a long time (or ever in the case of mountain yurts alongside Mongol families) so it’s an adventure in every way.
This Friday, we fly to Helsinki, our last flight until the very end of September, and on Saturday we catch our first of many, many, so many trains, this one to Saint Petersburg, which means that that entire train ride I will be singing the following lyric from “Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812”, which is simultaneously impressive for the very high falsetto from Lucas Steele but also f-ing hilarious for the very high falsetto from Lucas Steele:
Sorry Husband I know that’s going to get RILL annoying rill fast but who could help it! Actually I’m going to be singing a LOT of “The Great Comet” throughout Section 1 of our trip. For instance, after PETERSBUURRRRRG I’ll be imitating Grace McLean’s scary shouty belt of “WELLLL WELLLL WELCOME TO MOSCOW!!!” God I’m so excited I LOVE when musical theatre provides the soundtrack to my whereabouts. (It’s gonna be so fun when we finally go to Buenos Aires.) I’ll also have a lot of “Anastasia” to work with, because I’ma need courage to not desert me but especially because my grandfather just told me literally 3 weeks ago that one of his parents was from Russia so it’s like a journey to the past. Didn’t know! Ya Rooskii!! So our first month, the Russia month, is like go to old country for me. P.S. that’s as good as my Russian is after we’ve been taking it for 2 years in preparation for this trip. I can pretty much just say “Where is the toilet?” and then speak English in a very comical Russian accent I hope they don’t srow zee acid in zeh face.
For the first week of our trip, our cousin Adam is meeting us! So fun! He was one of the OG’s at Weebly, which hosts this very blog [ed. note: not anymore! hello WordPress my new friend], so hopefully he can help me bypass any blocks and post updates! After Petersburg and Moscow, we train on through to Vladimir, Suzdal, Yekaterinburg, and Irkutsk in Russia. Then, we minibus for like a whole day (ahhh where do I peeeeee) to Olkhon Island, which is a pain in the ass to get to but everyone says once you get there it’s so worth it. I’m so excited. I hope it’s not too cold to swim in the lake. After we hypotherm it up, we train to our last stop in Russia, Ulan-Ude, before entering Ulan Bator, Mongolia, WHERE THERE IS A LOVING HUT. By that point in our travels, I will be so excited to find an all-vegan restaurant that I don’t even care that Loving Huts make you swear allegiance to the cult of the Supreme Master before they give you delicious food that all tastes the same no matter what you order.
Once in Mongolia, we will be celebrating the annual national festival of Naadam. Naadam celebrates the “three games of men” – wrestling, horse racing, and archery, which (aside from the horse racing which I am crossing my fingers is non-violent but when is horse racing ever non-violent?) is a hilarious concept to base a festival around. I hope Robin of Loxley shows up for archery and I can yell about how someone split Robin’s arrow in twaaaaain. In Mongolia (I can’t believe I’m going to Mongolia), we are meeting up with our crazier-than-us friend Sivani from Ever the Wayfarer because when you say to the California-based Sivani ‘hey we should hang out again soon’ she says ‘sure I will meet you in Mongolia that would be easiest for me.’
After Mongolia, we finish Section 1 by training to Beijing, where we begin Section 2 – literally all of China. Well I guess not literally all but we have more than 40 days there so we are seeing a shittonne of it. Right now, the only song I can think of to provide the soundtrack is Tori Amos’s “China” which is kind of a downer so if anyone can make some suggestions I definitely need them. (Am I having a total brain fart or are there no China-based musicals? Booo.) We’re visiting Beijing, Shanghai (bunsssss! I want steamed bunssss), Nanxun, Hangzhou, Huangshan, Guilin, Yangshuo, Chengdu (origin (not) of my dad’s Chinese restaurant staple, Chengdu triple delight!), Xi’an, and then through the western border via Urumqi and Kashgar. I’m gonna see giant pandas!! And so much other stuff. A lot of stuff. It’s hard to wrap my head around anything past Moscow right now but hopefully I will figure out a way to blog while in China or at least very soon after we leave so I can share everything we do.
We exit China into Kyrgyzstan, which honestly I didn’t know was a real place until we decided to go there. We have a lot of hikes and a lotttt of horseback riding in Kyrgyzstan because that is how they get from place to place, and no matter how much I don’t want to do that, you have to in order to visit this country [ed. note: you don’t! we got around that! we walked!]. The beautiful, remote places we will get to should make it worth it. After almost 2 weeks in Kyrgs, we bus (peeee???) into Kazakhstan, which we are really excited about because we are going to make sooooo maaaaany Boooooraaaat jooooookes. They will hate us but man alive is that going to be hilarious just to the two of us. Chinqui!
After Kazakhstan, we will be going to Uzbekistan, so by this point our trip is a huge challenge for Herman Cain to talk about. We see all the things (it’s not until SEPTEMBER I can’t fit the details in my brain just yet) before returning to Moscow via Volgograd to catch the train to Kiev, Ukraine. We are going to visit Chernobyl when there, which seems a little scary because of radioactivity but we decided to do it because who knows how much longer the planet has left anyway. From Kiev, we take the train to Warsaw, Poland, which I am really excited about because I’ve never been to Poland and that’s where the other half of my paternal ancestors are from (the maternals are all eye-tals it’s a spicy meataball! I’m so good at accents of my people). More of I go to old country! Finally, after Poland, we take our 500th and final train (at least of this trip) to Berlin, Germany, one of our favorite cities in the world, where Husband and I got engaged and the vegan food is beyond belief. Even though we won’t be there for three and a half months, I already know what I’m ordering from that all-vegan French bakery. Oh and vegan doner kebab! I’m going to be hungry. I have so many nuts and protein bars in my backpack.
From Berlin, we fly back to London, where we will probably have to be reacclimated to normal life like astronauts when they come back from space except hopefully we will have gotten better, not worse, at walking.
Jeez I’m tired just talking about everything we’re going to do! It’s going to be quite a challenge for me considering I’ll be doing without my four favorite things in the world (sleep, television, gyms, green smoothies with Vega) but I think I will be better for it. (Ha you thought I was going to say theatre but we already have amazing tickets for the opera and the ballet in the next two weeks dance dance dance emojis!)
I know it’s kind of scary to be going to some of these places at this turbulent time. And I realize how, um, awkward it is to be going to Russia when their involvement in the election is the top issue right now (and should be until it’s resolved). But as we learned in the last month, it’s just as safe, or not safe, in London as it is anywhere we could go. We’re all at risk of some sort as soon as we get out of bed each day, but we can’t let that fear dictate how we live our lives, because a sheltered unexamined life is easily wasted (although there is a good Broadway musical song extolling its virtues hello “Wicked” shoutout). I know that’s high talk coming from me, since I am the biggest scaredycat and worrywart (#scaredywortworrycat) out there, but I want to travel and I want to have fun and see the whole world and I can’t do that from my couch, as much as I love couch. You have to do stuff, is what I’m saying, and live your life without fear of the worst possible outcome, because all the other outcomes are pretty great, and regardless I think we’re all in some version of The Matrix anyway.
But on that note, I’m not going to be writing about any political issues or anything controversial in places like Russia and China, at least not while I’m in their jurisdiction. As outspoken and political as I am, it would be beyond stupid to risk anything in countries whose freedom of speech laws are more restrictive than I’m used to.
I’m not sure about the internet connection I’ll have over the next 3 ½ months, and when I do have internet, I’m not sure which sites will be blocked (except for in China, where I know everything is blocked). I’ll do my best to blog as much as I can, so make sure to keep checking back on the home page for updates (that’s the best way, because I know facebook and twitter updates will be hard if not impossible, and Weebly doesn’t have a program for sending emails to subscribers when new posts are up (dammit Adam!)).
So that’s the big exciting news! What an adventure it will be! Be sure to follow along. And if you have been to any of the places we are going to, please comment or email (link at top) with any tips, advice, and recommendations you have! Da svidanyaaaaa!
