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Mexico: Mérida

Cathedral de San Ildefonso
The huge towers of the Cathedral de San Ildefonso dominate the Plaza Grande

Mérida is a pleasant place in which to look after someone who's not very well... or it is once you've left your terrible hotel behind and booked into a charming little spot like the Álvarez Family Guesthouse on Calle 62. Peta stayed in bed all day on our first full day in town; we did try to pop out to Parque Santa Lucía, one block from the hotel, where we thought a nice gentle orange juice in the shady colonnades would help bring some colour back into her cheeks, but a couple of sips down she suddenly went pale and announced she would have to lie down, right now, so while she gently collapsed on the plaza's sun-warmed steps, I paid the bill and mentally ripped up any plans we had for exploring the rest of the Yucatán. When Montezuma's revenge strikes, you have absolutely no choice but to stay where you are and sit it out (or something similar-sounding, anyway).

The Casa de Montejo
The Casa de Montejo
Plaza Grande
Plaza Grande

Museums and Plazas

The pretty park in the middle of Plaza Grande
The pretty park in the middle of Plaza Grande

The main attractions in Mérida are its plazas and its museums. Mérida is the capital of Yucatán, both administratively and culturally, and even a quick wander around the centre is a treat, especially if you like colonial architecture as much as I do. The main centre of town is the Plaza Grande, which contains a pleasant public park from where you can survey the surrounding buildings, of which the biggest and most impressive is the Cathedral de San Ildefonso, whose twin 42m-high towers dominate the eastern side of the plaza. The cathedral dates from 1598 and is the oldest cathedral in Mesoamerica – that's the area of Central America stretching from central Mexico down to the northwest border of Costa Rica, where a number of culturally related agrarian civilisations flourished before the Spanish came and did all their high-handed rearranging. Symbolically, the cathedral was built on the site of an old Mayan temple, and stones from the temple were incorporated into the new building, as was the case for a number of other colonial buildings in central Mérida; a block north of the Plaza Grande, for example, is the Iglesia de Jesús, and in the church's western wall there are two blocks that still bear Mayan carvings.

Parque Santa Lucía
Parque Santa Lucía
A public art display along the Paseo de Motejo
A public art display along the Paseo de Motejo
The Museo Regional de Antropoligía
The Museo Regional de Antropoligía