Puebla, Mexico 🇲🇽 - Part 2
The second part of our Puebla trip was centered more around family activities. It was a pleasant surprise to us that Puebla was a very child-friendly city.
map
itinerary
highlights
gallery
Day 1 Itinerary
Places visited: Zocalo - Africam Safari - Bistro Nelhua
Zocalo
Snatched a few more shots of Zocola (the old town square) when waiting for the tour bus to Africam Safari.
Africam Safari
One of the best zoos we have been to in the world. It is built with an open concept so most animals roam free in the open fields like how it is in Africa.
The zoo is about an hour drive from Puebla center. You can either drive there yourself or take a tour bus ($20 pp and free below 3). The hotel concierge recommended us this tour company: Tourister. We went to their office in Zocola the day before to buy the tickets. It’s assigned seating on the bus so you can ask for specific seats when purchasing the tickets. The tour is about 6 hours (11:30am - 5:30pm). Minus the 2 hours going there and coming back, you get 4 hours in the zoo - 2 hours of watching animals sitting in the bus like doing a safari and 2 hours walking around a designated area to see enclosed animals more up close.
The little one had a lot of fun in an enclosed birds area where we could purchase a 10 peso (US$0.5) food stick to feed the birds ourselves. Actually I think I had more fun in there 😆.
The only thing we didn’t like about the tour: they sent a guide on the bus for the safari part but it was in Spanish only. So we sat there hearing everyone else laughing and talking with the guide without understanding what was going on.
Bistro Nelhua
Nice restaurant in a cute house. It closes early on Sunday at 6pm (almost all restaurants there do on Sunday). When we got there around 540pm after the Africam Safari tour, they were kind enough to accommodate us.
We had the whole 3-floor restaurant to ourselves and picked the best table next to a balcony. The staff was super nice and the food & drinks were really good too, except the main fish dish. The fish was prepared well with interesting sauce but the fish itself was a bit chewy. The lesson was we should generally avoid seafood and opt for meat or vegetarian dishes in Puebla (inland city with no direct access to sea often means that seafood is not that fresh). Several times we tried seafood dishes in Puebla, they all turned out subpar.
Day 2 Itinerary
Places visited: Azul Talavera Hotel - Restaurante La Noria - Museo Internacional del Barroco - Parque De La Niñez - Estrella de Puebla - Solesta - Kampai
Azul Talavera Hotel
Hubby got me a massage while he took the little one swimming. Thanks 😘!
Restaurante La Noria
A very business setting restaurant in the middle of a not so nice neighborhood. The restaurant is huge with an outdoor area in the middle. Food was one of the best we have had in Puebla!
Museo Internacional del Barroco
The main museum of Puebla. Really modern looking! I forgot to check that it’s closed on Monday so we couldn’t go inside.
The museum itself is quite a piece of art so I was happy to walk around its beautiful grounds and took a few pictures from the outside. Then the guards came towards us and told me to stop taking photos. They thought I was a professional photographer (lol, what professionals take photos with just an iPhone and brings a toddler in a stroller?). In their broken English, they told me I needed to request permission from the museum authority to take more photos (wtf!!! I am taking photos of the exterior of the museum). They reminded me of those power-tripping club bouncers in New York. We started yelling back at them in different languages and pretended we didn’t understand what they wanted (I threw in a few curse words too 😉). They eventually gave up and walked away. We continued on and found a nice public park behind the museum to relax.
Parque De La Niñez
A children’s park for the little one. So many different castles and slides that she didn’t want to leave. Remember I said Puebla was really child-friendly 😉?
Estrella de Puebla
The "London Eye" of Puebla. Puebla is a big city ... when we were on top of the wheel, it took us a while for us to figure out which side was the old town area.
Solesta Shopping Mall
When we were on Estrella, we saw this nice modern shopping mall not far from the Estrella so decided to check it out afterwards. It was as nice, if not nicer, as any of the new malls we have been to in the States except that the mall was really empty. We found another children’s playground in the mall and had a hard time to get the little one to leave.
Kampai
Tired of Mexican food so decided to try something different!
Day 3 Itinerary
Places visited: Azul Talavera Hotel - Monumento a Ignacio Zaragoza - Mirador La Mantarraya - Centro Expositor Puebla - Plaza Civica De La Victoria - Bistrot Pasquinel
Azul Talavera Hotel
Monumento a Ignacio Zaragoza
Mirador La Mantarraya
A nice view point of the city up a hill. There are nice hikes to walk around there.
Centro Expositor Puebla
Plaza Civica De La Victoria
Bistrot Pasquinel
Our last meal in Puebla ... we decided to give the hotel restaurant a try. We dined on the patio covered under the Jacaranda blossoms. It couldn’t get more romantic than that 🥰!
The food was excellent (the complimentary bread was so delicious that we asked them to pack the half we couldn’t finish). The only unpleasant thing was there was a big demonstration right behind the hotel and they were setting off some deafening firearms every 5-6 minutes. We found out from our waiter that a local student got killed the day before and people were angry how the police handled the murder. We felt a bit of irony sitting inside this fancy walled hotel garden while the crowd gathered on the other side demanding and fighting for social justice. We couldn’t help thinking how we have taken our relatively good and easy life for granted!