Of Puebla, part the first

Our next stop along the road was in Puebla, Mexico. Puebla is a big, industrial city, so we didn't focus on spending a lot of our precious tourist time there. That said, like any city of a certain age, it did have some cool old architecture downtown. And the center still seemed to have plenty of life to it, a city planner's dream of street-level retail and sidewalk cafes on the main square. The big attraction in Puebla is their "Talavera" pottery and tile. There are plenty of shops ready to sell tourists a gaudy serving platter. More impressive are the many churches and office buildings covered top to bottom in colorful tiles.

The other memorable feature of Puebla was the food. Of course, there is the famous mole poblano, but we discovered that we were in town for the harvest season when the Poblanos prepare chiles en nogada, which is a stuffed pepper covered in a creamy white sauce, green cilantro, and red pomegranate seeds. (Ta-da! The colors of the Mexican flag!) Your correspondent, ever seeking culinary adventure, ordered one, and found that they grow some sort of mutant pepper in Puebla that was bigger than your correspondent's head. He ate half; it was pretty good.