We're Liz and Dennis full-timer RVers
exploring mainland Mexico in our class C RV. After spending the past several
months RVing the Yucatan peninsula, we make one last stop to
the capital city of Merida, exploring the city both by day
and night, making new friends, getting to know Mexico's
healthcare system. And of course eating lots
of tasty mexican food. Welcome to Merida! This has been on
our bucket list to explore the city. It's been voted, the number one
city to live in in the world. It's home for many ex-pats here
in Mexico, including our friends, Greg and Karen who were visiting again.
We're staying just outside of the city, thankfully, they allowed us
to park in their driveway, but if you're coming to Merida, there
is a trailer park you can stay in. This morning we're doing
one of my favorite things
to do no matter where we are in the world. If you've followed
along for a while, you know, I love a good market. And in
Merida every Saturday morning, they have something
called a slow food market. They have hundreds of vendors in
two locations throughout the city. They sell everything from
meat eggs, fish, vegetables, fruits goods, honey. So we're going
to do a little shopping this morning. I'm really excited. I already
want to buy all the things. We always make the mistake where we
don't eat before we come to the markets. So of course the first stall we stopped
in was a lady selling empanadas and tamales. We also had something special from Kibis
I guess it's a very popular dish here in Merida. And it's like, um, a deep fried flour that's stuffed
with typically meat or cheese, but in our case, we got
vegetarian versions of it. I don't know if you are
able to see the detail, but there's a lot going on
in here. And it is amazing. It's not just because I'm
hungry, this is legit. Let's woof this down and keep shopping. Success! We are all sucked up
with so much healthy goodies. I just love markets like this. And this is probably the closest to a
farmer's market we've seen for what we're familiar with from like the
USA or Canada here in Mexico. It's definitely like a thriving community. I get why ex-pats love marriages so much. If you're coming to
Meredith for the first time, there's plenty to do
outside of the city center, including visiting a cenote and
an archeological zone in one spot, Dzibilchaltun. Dzibilchaltun nailed it. Apparently it was a pretty
unique and influential site, even though it's rather small hit
about 20,000 inhabitants at its peak. And it was one of the cities
that influenced the change from a religious center of the
city to a market and urban style city center. We were real little burnt
out on archeological zones. So we've been going to a ton and we
absolutely love learning about the history for the ancient
civilizations here in Mexico. But we decided to pass on this one because
the cenote is closed due to COVID and parts of the archeological zone are
closed as well because of damage from the hurricane and flooding in certain areas.
So we just felt for the $260 pesos, the entrance fee per person, that we could spend that money elsewhere
in Merida and kind of get a little bit more diversity for what
we've been doing lately. Get a better taste of the city
itself. So if you're coming here, hopefully the cenote will be open so
that you can enjoy get to learn a little bit about the Mayan history and culture
here at this archeological zone. But I think for us, we're going
to take a dip in the pool, do some work and hit the town of Merida. Buenos Dias! It's another
wonderful day in Merida, and is a scorcher today! Oh my gosh. It is very warm! And this is in middle of February wherever
everywhere is covered in snow we are sweating our butts off. I can't even
imagine Merida the worst months, April and may, but we decided to come
explore a little bit of the Centro, but our first stop today is coming
to the extremely large market here. San Benito Mercado. It is massive. Its massive and is indoors. So hopefully we're going to be able to
beat the heat a little bit while we're in here. Yeah. Aw, yeah! So the first
thing we did of course, when we got to the Mercado we
walked straight to the food vendors, so we're going to get some nachos. Excellent. We haven't had nachos very
much throughout Mexico. It doesn't seem to be a super popular
thing from the other States that we visited, but here in the
Yucatan, and in Quintana Roo, it seems to be quite popular. I don't know if that's just because
of the sheer amount of ex-pats. I definitely think nachos is
more of a TexMex kind of vibe. So I don't know if that's the inspiration
here or if this is just the region it originated from. So if you know the answer love to hear
more put into the comments so that we can find out if nachos is totally a
gringo thing or, or A Yucatecan thing. One thing we've noticed when we come to
markets in Mexico is a really organized, there's always the similar
items being sold in one section. So all of the goods for sale will be in
one area, same for the meat vegetables. And of course it's true here for the food. So there's just a huge long
strip of all of these vendors, pretty much selling the
exact same types of meats. So we always just look for the
place that has the most people, typically a good indicator. Yah, my rule of thumb is if
they're not screaming and
like basically begging you to come to the shop and there's already
a bunch of people sitting down, that's the one you should go with because
usually that's a local favorite and it's not going to dissapoint. We get asked all the time. If you need
to speak Spanish to come to Mexico, the more Spanish, you know,
the more it will help. And I definitely encourage you to try
and learn as much Spanish as possible. I think it just enhances your
experience. Tremendously. We just ended up passing a spice shop
in market and we saw an odd looking herb or flower. And we asked him what
it was supposedly, it's called ??, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. But if children are having a
hard time with pronunciation, they might have a speech impediment,
or maybe they're not speaking at all. They believe here in the Yucatan that
you can take this flower and you can spin it inside of the child's mouth nine times
and it's supposed to help them be able to speak. So we would have never
learned little things like this, and if we didn't speak the language, so we definitely recommend
trying as much as you can. There's lots of free resources
to help you with your Spanish. And then just speaking when you're around
people, it's okay. If you sound silly, everyone's really friendly
about speaking to you. You just kinda gotta let
it go and give it a try. The next stop for the
day is parque principal. It's the main square in the town
center in the center of Merida. And we ended up meeting someone who just
came up to us to offer a card for the restaurant, but we told
him we weren't hungry. And he started talking to us and so
nice gave us so many recommendations. We'd are totally doing Merida all
wrong. So if you're coming here, here are a few suggestions. If you looking for a good food
market where you would come to eat, you want to go to Parque Santiago. And
then when every Saturday and Sunday, there's also something
called Mercado Maya, which is going to have all different
types of like artisanal goods that are available for sale. And that
is every weekend until 4:00 PM. So unfortunately we're probably
going to miss it today, but hopefully you'll be able
to enjoy it when you come. Gelato stop. We came to Santa Lucia park. This is another little Plaza that
has tons of restaurants on it. And down the street is a gelato shop
that has some really unique flavors like Parmesan, cheese, ice cream was shown is
really weird, but I'm sure it is tasty. We ended up going for
flan de Cubano, I believe, and a cardamom ice cream. We're hoping this is going to pick
us up cause I'm not gonna lie, both of us are a little grumpy and
tired. I think it's from all the heat. It's just a lot for us. It's our
first time in this heat for a while. This is going to pick you up! We finished the evening off having an incredible
meal at Micaela Mar y Leña, a popular seafood restaurant,
serving craft cocktails, and a great mezcal
selection. Everything we got, including two types of carajillos, a regional drink from the Yucatan
peninsula made with liquor 43 and espresso were super rico! If you're a Mexican national, you can skip this part of the video
because you've done this before. If you're an American, you're intrigued
by the Mexican healthcare system. Follow us along as we get out teeth done. A lot of people come to Mexico to get
their teeth done because the cost for medical care in general is significantly
cheaper than you might find in the United States and can be a lot
quicker than you might find in Canada. So it's a popular activity,
especially for people in border towns. Sometimes they'll cross,
come get their teeth cleaned, get root canals or crowns put on
whatever's needed for your teeth. Greg and Karen have good dentists and
medical professionals here in Merida. We felt we could trust their
opinion on who to go to. So today our big goal
for the day is to get our dientes limpiando cleaned. I don't
know how to say it in the past tense. We're getting our teeth cleaned. Yeah, it's a really fancy office,
definitely speak perfect English. And they gave us a mouth
rinse to swish around. And then we've just spit
in the sink before we can, even through the dentist call, the
guidelines are fierce here, fierce! Yes. I think it's hilarious that the
office is now watching our channel. So right now would be a little reminder
if you haven't subscribed subscribe so we can officially check
teeth, cleaning dentist, visit off of our Mexico bucket
list. It was very professional, clean, quick, and affordable for the
two of us to get our teeth cleaned. It costs around 80 US
dollars, $1,600 pesos. And I think this was like the higher end
nicer dentist because that that was a very luxurious office. Now we're going to show you a
little bit more around Merida. What do you do after you get your
teeth cleaned? Put coffee on top of it, of course taint our beautiful
teeth. That's alright, we wanted some breakfast. So we
ended up coming to Paseo de Montejo, which is a really famous street that
runs through the center of Merida heading toward the historic center. It's where you'll find all
of those beautiful mansions
from the heyday of Merida time, back in the 1800s, early 1900s. So we ended up coming to Marago Cafe and
not going to lie their coffee art game is strong. They serve traditional-ish
breakfast. Dennis got chilaquilles, I'm pretty sure I got eggs Benedict, if you are looking for more
traditional you, Yucatecan food, there are tons of restaurants
all throughout Merida
that will have all of the different regional dishes from
the general Yucatan peninsula, but specifically to the Yucatan state. So if you've never tried things
like cochinita pibil or kibis, any of the typical dishes from this area, I definitely suggest taking that route. We've had a lot of those recipes
as we've been traveling throughout. So we just decided to go
for something a little bit, slightly more Americanized
today, but we're okay with that. It's definitely like a
Mexican eggs benedict, except they use a cheese sauce
and put chaya in it, which is, um, a Mayan plant that's kind of
like spinach. It's delicious! Yeah. If you'll be in Merida on the weekend, we definitely suggest walking or
bicycling down the Paseo de Montejo. They close it down so it's
pedestrian or bikes only. No cars are allowed every Sunday
from nine to believe 12:00 PM. It's a great way to get up close to
some of the beautiful historic mansions there's museums, restaurants, hotels. So you can also kind of walk in a few of
them and see how grand and amazing some of these mansions would have
been in their heyday. I mean, they're still grand and beautiful
today, but imagine living in that, like imagine this being your home. Most of the mansions are being restored
or being used as businesses today, including this one, which
is Quinta Montes Molina, which is a house that has
been well-preserved and
now turned into a museum. So you can actually go inside and get a
tour to see what it would have been like to live here during the 1800s, when
henequen, was in prime production, making it one of the richest
cities in the entire world. These buildings would have
taken decades to build. They brought materials over from Europe.
They have real carrara marble floors, and you can totally see the European
influence in all of the mansions. The properties are spectacular, $85 pesos.
If you're interested in doing a tour, unfortunately we don't have
time for it. This this go round, but it's definitely something we'll be
visiting when we returned to Meredith in the future. Merida is one of the safest
cities, not just in all of Mexico, but actually in the entire world. And it's one of the reasons that
expats love living here so much. Something I personally noticed that I'd
say is different between other cities we visited in Mexico. It's
just how clean, organized, and beautiful the city is. It parts and times it feels like
you're walking through a European city, not so much a city here in Mexico. And I think it's scale architecture, history and design reminds
us a lot of Mexico city, just a much smaller version,
but there's cops everywhere. Last night on our drive, home from dinner, they actually had a breathalyzer or
DUI stop and they were testing every single person. So there's always cops
everywhere. We've been on the street. It's definitely a safe city. In Merida, there is a
huge Cantina culture. And that's exactly what
we're going to do tonight. We're going to go to two different
cantinas. We are being COVID safe. We're going to open air
Cantinas. There is a ton. Apparently it's kind of like Spain, where if you go in and you
order a drink or enough drinks, they will give you free
botanas, which are like tapas. But I'm excited because I'm hungry
and I can always go for a drink. Cantinas have been a part of
life in Mexico for centuries. Originally a men's only bar cantinas
we're a place where working men could gather, drink and socialize in the centro. Having access to cheap beer and snacks. Containers have come a long way with
most now allowing women these days, there are a wide variety of cantinas
you can visit throughout Mexico, but particularly in Merida. Cheers! Dzalbay Cantina is not
your everyday rowdy place. The owner and ex-pat musician who plays
in the Yucatan orchestra wanted to create a laid back hub for art
culture and music, particularly jazz, blues, and R&B. We are musicians and artists. And so all the art we have in the
bar is for sale. And its from Cuba, and Russia, and the United States, all local artists from elsewhere
who live here now selling their art. And we have live music,
from all sides of the world, playing here every single
night at seven o'clock. Last night was a blast! We ended
up closing down the Cantina, which right now is just until 10
o'clock and that's COVID hours normally cantina life could go well into
the night and early mornings. I get the appeal for why so many ex-pats
decided to call this home and why the city continuously is voted one of
the top cities in the world to live. We want to give you guys a
little something extra this week. We are going to be having another bonus
video coming out this Friday at 6:00 PM EST. So in addition to
our normal weekly vlogs, we'll have another one dropping
soon. We hope you enjoyed this video. If you did show some love by giving
it a like thumbs up and of course subscribing, we can't wait to see you
on our next one. PS, Greg and Karen, we can never say thank you
enough. Thank you for having us. Thank you for letting us moochdoc. Thank
you for being so awesome! Todd and Tom, we had a blast with you last
night. It was great meeting you. We hope we have many more
cantina crawls in the future. I don't know how to drive
one of these things. And as real estate investors, we've always
kind of had our eye out at each city. We visited for potential
investment properties. Sure. What we're going to do? We
love this city. We love its location, I do think it's a really good opportunity. I want my coffee every
morning to date like this. It'd be that's so unproductive. But it's so good. And we're 10 minutes early for
the first time in our entire life. Pretty sure. I don't know how to say
appointment. There's a lot of words. I don't know here. I'm sure
they speak Spanish or English. Tenemos una sita para nueve de la mañana. You didn't know I'm fluent guys, did you?
