Saturday night, Theresa and I met at the Plaza Grande to watch the parade. I had this great idea to park my jeep out at the Fiesta Americana on the far edge of the centro. I was afraid that if could get into a parking lot closer in, they would close the streets and I wouldn't be able to get out again. I pulled into the lot just before 5pm and by the time I'd taken the escalator up to the street, it was closed off! I got a cab and we seemed to zoom across intersections just as they were putting the cones up to close the street.

We sat in the plaza and talked and then cruised the food stalls. I love the marquesitos (a crepe filled with gouda cheese) and the corn on a stick covered with cream, cheese, chili and lime.

There was a great discussion on another ex-pat blog recently about hot dogs and the ways they are served in Latin America, not to mention their seeming obsession with them.

I'm not all that big a hot dog fan on a good day, I do like to have one after shopping at CostCo, but it would never occur to me to buy them for a party treat or to deep fat fry them and serve them like little flowers on top of french fries. Here they are though, in all their hotdoggity glory.

Yes, the pictures are larger if you click them so you can really see their almost pornographic detail.

Sadly, I got better pictures of the hot dogs than the floats. We were mashed behind huge crowds of people and even a couple of chain link fences in some areas. We walked around and found an area where at least there weren't fences.

The fence is there to control access to the paid seating. I may have to spring for that one year and actually see the entire parade.

This is the second time I've been there for Carnaval and mostly seen the tops of floats and the bouncy feather headdresses of the dancers. Theresa and I were joking that we could tell what kind of dancers they were by the way their feathers wiggled.

While almost none of my pictures are in focus, I'm rather fond of a couple of them. I really like the way this girl looks in the middle of all the lights.

Or these coliseum beauties.

There were several representations of the Coliseum, it is one of the other newly designated 7 Wonders of the World. It seemed a lot more popular than some of the lesser known Wonders, or perhaps those were harder to make out of cardboard and colored paper on a flat bed truck?

We did see some Chinese looking feather headdresses (see, we're experts on dancer's feather hats) so they may have been part of the Great Wall of China.

Mainly, we were looking over people's heads a lot until we finally decided to just go and sit down in the plaza. We were comfortable, and we could see just as much. It does help that the average height down here is pretty short so even Theresa could see over most men's heads.

The cuteness quota was more than filled by lots of little charmers in costume. This little ratito was especially cute.

After the last float, we sat and talked for a few minutes and then a veritable army of street cleaners appeared and began to sweep. Apparently they were going to sweep every street before they were reopened for traffic. What a city!

Theresa was going to walk home and I was still a little dubious, I asked her if she was sure it was safe. She laughed at me and said "yes, this is Mérida."

I fully intended to get a cab but I couldn't find one and I ended up walking back to the hotel for the jeep. It was farther than I've walked in a long time, I think quitting smoking (and yes, I still haven't smoked) has helped.

Because I walked around a bit looking for a cab, I ended up walking about 16 long blocks - at midnight through the center of a huge city of over 1 million people. I was a little on guard, it's just my nature, but I never felt the least bit in danger.

There were parts where there were people on the street walking as well, they were all friendly and mostly family groups. There were parts that were pretty empty with only the occasional drunk on a corner, even then there was no menace.

I'm sure there are parts of the city where you could get yourself in trouble quickly but I am really enthralled with the safe feel of this city and the people who live here.

By the way, I'm not a Mexican apologist, this is not true in other cities in Mexico just as it isn't true in most cities in the US. That it is true of Mérida is one of the reasons I love this city so much.