Dolores Hidalgo

This was a house we passed by on a side street, I just liked it.

Here are some guys that we found in the zócalo. They were filming a music video (I think for a channel that always has music videos of not very well known groups). We didn't realize that before we took the picture though, we just liked their spiffy blue boots with matching belts.

Here's Maetzin showing some balloons and toys. In every Zócalo I've been to, there was a man walking around selling balloons and toys which are attached to one big stick (to make carrying them easier).

This is a church across the street from the zócalo.

These are pictures from Dolores Hidalgo, a town near Guanajuato. It's pretty small and not as touristy. This is a picture of the zócalo, there were lots of ice cream stands on the other side.

Día de los Muertos

Some other really common decorations are little figures made out of sugar. These are fruits and vegetables, but they also have baskets filled with typical Day of the Dead bread and figures of animals.

These kinds of stands were set up in one of the plazas in town. These are typical decorations for Día de los Muertos, dressed up skeletons and tissue paper with pieces cut out to form designs or words. If you click on the picture it comes up bigger and you can see a lot more detail.

This is me with a skeleton, they had decorations set up all around town, this was probably the biggest one though. You can kind of see the altar in the background.

For the 1st of November, the first day of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), I went to my friend Maetzin's family's papelería (paper store, they sell other things too) and we handed out candy to the kids who came by asking for their calaverita (little skeleton). These were a few of the costumes we saw. Día de los Muertos, I believe, is a native tradition now mixed with Catholicism. It takes place the 1st and 2nd of November and supposedly it's a chance for the dead to come back and visit. Many people set up an altar with pictures of loved ones who have died along with candles and the deceased's favorite things like bread, sweets and beer.