Folklore

After good French pastries and café au lait from a bakers attached to the Hotel, we walked the couple of miles from town to Museum Hill and spent a very pleasant couple of hours in the Museum of International Folk Art. There's a frankly mental permanent collection of dolls, paintings, fabrics, toys and artefacts - often religious, ceremonial stuff like Mexican Day of the Dead sculptures - all arranged in crowded thematic dioramas, as well as a very interesting temporary exhibition showing objects dyed with cochineal and tracing the history of the precious pigment through the ages. We even joined in later on and did some red paintings of our own. On the way back down the Hill we paid our dollar to have a look inside the adobe Mission Church, apparently the oldest church in the US to remain in constant use, but still had time when we got back for a little pool time, a bit of shopping, more fine dining and even a drink in the rooftop bar (Beck saved tonight's margarita especially...)