A Quick Tour Of Queretaro

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We took a day trip to Queretaro to shop at Home Depot and Walmart.  We're looking for glass shower doors and a new front door for the house.  We got a couple of estimates from local carpenters and decided to buy a new door and install it ourselves.  We'll have the spaces cut for the hinges and the locksmith has to come anyway so that eliminates expense and time fiddling with carpenters.  We purchased a television for the spare bedroom so it is all set up now and ready for visitors.  My oldest niece will be coming in October.

Driving around Queretaro is easy with Google Maps or Waze.  The streets and highways are in excellent condition and it makes driving a pleasure.  Sure there is a learning curve especially when you don't live there but after a couple of trips, you get a good idea of what and where things are and how to get there.

The chart below shows the increase in population for the city of Queretaro.   The first census was taken in 1895 but you can see the sharp increase from 1970 through today.  I was shocked to see the city has grown so much to 2.3 million people.  The hills along the side of the city are now covered with middle and upper-middle-class homes.

We took advantage of the drive to do a little sightseeing.  We went to the centro area first before shopping and took some pictures of the sights.  Such a clean city and everyone is friendly and helpful.  Our first stop was the main plaza where we ate our breakfast that Juan had prepared.  Some good egg and chorizo burritos.  Things were just starting to open up which was a bit surprising.  It was already 10 o'clock.  

It was nice sitting under the shade of the trees in the plaza.  By 10 a.m. the sun was beating down pretty hard even though the temperature was 20C.

We walked over to the city offices where we found a smaller plaza with many shoe shiners.  We were in need of one kicking up all the dust in SMA on our walks to town.  The guy shining our shoes was very friendly and gave us some tips on things to see and do.  We had been to Queretaro as tourists many years ago but he was eager to fill us in and we thanked him.

With the city offices starting to open, traffic picked up and people began filling the square and forming queues at copy shops and papelerias.  Everyone had a folder or folders filled with the papers they were going to deliver or have changes made.  I know there are other offices in the city but this is the main office and old habits die hard.  

The house of Lorenzo de la Parra, was an essential patriot of the Mexican Independence evolution of 1810.  On September 13, 1810 (later known as the Conspiracion de Queretaro) his house was used as a secret meeting place for the conspirators of the revolution; Ignacio Allende, Miguel Hidalgo, and Josefa Ortiz.  It was just three days later that Miguel Hildago y Costilla stood on the steps of the church in Dolores Hidalgo and gave his speech later known as the Grito de Independencia.  

The aqueduct was completed in 1738.  Nuns at the local convent complained to the then-in-charge Marquis about the quality of water and the contamination caused by old pipes but mostly butcher shops dumped their waste into the sewers.  At that time it was a major infrastructure project built to bring water into the main parts of the city.  They first asked for donations.  Later, the marquis donated a larger sum which came from his wife's inheritance. The aqueduct is 1,280 meters long and is listed as part of Queretaro's UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It is truly something to see as you're coming down the avenue.  

In this picture, you can see the extreme scale of the aqueduct.  Truly an engineering fete. 

After all that walking plus the trip to and from Queretaro we decided we deserved a treat.  This is something we hardly ever do.  It used to be our routine on return trips from San Antonio stopping at the Batesville, Tx Dairy Queen, also known as the Texas stop sign!