Merida Day 17 - Museo del Mondo Maya and Mum's birthday

It has been so hot and was forecast to be up to 40 again today, so we got up early and were flagging a taxi down by 9:15. It cost us 100m$ and took about half an hour to get up to the big new museum dedicated to Mayan history and culture, Gran Museo del Mondo Maya.

It is in the north of Merida, out beyond Costco, near the Liverpool Mall and Sam`s Club. It is in a beautifully designed modern building and there are lots of staff to direct and help with all the interactive displays. We started with the temporary exhibit which was about the meteorite that landed in the upper section of the Yucatan and ended the age of dinosaurs.

We then moved on to the permanent displays which educate about everything Mayan. They start with halls dedicated to the present role of Mayans in the Yucatan, move onto a description of the impact of the Spanish conquest of the Yucatan and ends with extensive archaeological exhibits and descriptions of the Mayan language, religion, writing, mathematics, astrology and the Mayan calendar.

Signage was in Spanish, Mayan and English although all the videos were in Spanish. It was nice to be able to get up close to statues from the archaeological sites and read the description. Especially having been so recently to two of the sites some of them were taken from.

After exiting the Museo there is a long wall of photographs comparing the sites in 1930 and 2012. Some have been extensively restored and others needed minimal work.
We took a taxi home and George and I walked West down our street as Hannah had mentioned there was a butchers shop and produce shop that way. Within four blocks we found there was a bakery,

ice cream store, MaxxCarne (the kind of butchers we have been buying meat from behind the market at Sandiago Square) and a small produce stand. We bought a few things we needed and walked home glad to have found an area closer to home that we can pick up necessities if we need to.
Found another wall tile at an intersection:

The building on that corner is a bar, what a great name ``The cup of gold``, especially with the amount of beer we have been `hydrating`` with.
The afternoon was stifling hot so we were very glad of the pool and the ceiling fans in the house. Dad had read about Rescoldos on Trip Advisor (ranked second out of 222 restaurants in Merida) and wanted to take Mum there for her birthday. Our first challenge was to find a taxi as every one that passed on our street was already occupied. We walked down to Calle 72 as we thought it would be easier to flag one down on a busier street. We had just turned around and decided to give up on the idea and just head into Centro on the bus when an empty taxi finally picked us up.
Rescoldos was a lovely little restaurant a couple of blocks off  Paseo Montejo. It serves Greek and Italian food and has a brick oven at the entrance to the patio where we sat. It is run by two Canadians from B.C. Although the temperatures were still in the high 30s the fountain on the patio helped cool it and made it a very pleasant place to sit.

George had pizza, Dad a Calzone, Mum and I ate Greek and we all had a Greek salad and a cappuccino. We shared a bottle of red wine and George had a beer. Price for the 4 of us, 850M$ (about $85). Lovely meal, lovely place. Happy Birthday Mum.