todos santos on march 19

We shared a rental car with Alex and Edith and drove to Todos Santos and El Triunfo for the day. Todos Santos has turned into quite an art town since I was there in the mid-80s. Hotel California is richly decorated with colors and artwork and I had an amazing nachos plate. The main street has plenty of curio shops, a few art galleries, clothing stores and an English book store—all this amid 200 year-old brick buildings from the sugar-mill era. Then we headed over to El Triunfo, a former silver and gold mining town that brought European settlers from France, Italy and Germany. The town is easy to spot by La Ramona, a tall chimney by architect Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. The main attraction in El Triunfo is the music museum, housing a collection of musical instruments but mostly pianos brought by the wealthy Europeans. The story goes that during the revolution to establish fairness between classes, many pianos were destroyed because they represented the upper/middle classes. One family actually sewed their Steinway in leather and buried it for three years in order to protect it, and now it’s in the museum. On the way home we stopped at our favorite gelato place. I ended the day doing four loads of laundry and packing away all the cold-weather clothes we no longer need. High was 90 degrees.

so the pictures, from what i think will show up as the top to bottom: recreated hut, palm trunk, quilt and fabric over old sewing machine, paper whales in the museum made by the kids, more palm husks, the music museum, a wall in one of the restaurants in todos santos, and an agave plant.