What You Can And Can't Do In San Fernando Plaza

San Fernando Plaza is the new place to go and have fun in Guanajuato because there are bulldozers in Baratillo Plaza and traffic has been re-routed to pass through Jardin Union.

In San Fernando Plaza you can sit quietly and watch your babies run in circles until they are too dizzy to play with the balloons you bought them from the balloon man. You can browse the book peddler’s stalls and find plastic wrapped editions of Nietzsche, Pikachu post cards and Che Guevara stick pins. In San Fernando you can hear jazz and drink tea in front of the Bossa Nova. You can eat fancy cream soups in front of Van Gogh’s Ear or you can drink Dos Equis in front of the bar which has a name I can never remember because it is more than six words long.

You can walk through San Fernando Plaza on your way to the Jardin Reforma to tryst with your lover or you can walk the other direction and watch the members of the estudiantina sing in medieval costumes. In San Fernando Plaza you can sit on a park bench and watch other people do everything I just mentioned.

But in San Fernando Plaza you can no longer buy menudo from blind Doña Lupita who missed cleaning too many black hairs from the beef tripe. You can no longer buy Guatemalan textiles from the store that burned, but you can now buy quesadillas. Last night, more people preferred the hamburgers next door. The quesadillas may eventually catch on. If they don’t, I wonder if they’ll bring back the hippies and the incense.