We went to the fair! I've been talking about it for weeks and this afternoon Stephen, Paula, Mimi and I went off to find the Yucatan state fair. It's in a small town on the outskirts of Mérida, my iPhone gps and mapping program got us there flawlessly. God I love this phone.

Anyway, it's huge. Really a city of shops and restaurants and carnival rides and artesania and god knows what else. I don't think we saw much more than half of it. We walked around and ate and people watched and shopped. I had a blast. I want to go back again before it closes at the end of the month.

There were Boy Scouts marching around.



Bicycles



Incredible mannequins





Real people pretending to be mannequins





The usual rides





You could even get your hair cut on the midway



I wish I had gotten a picture of the wedding dress shop that was there as well. Who would think to go to a fair to buy a wedding dress? You could buy mattresses as well, just a few steps away.

Also any number of gadgets and gizmos and dozens of things with your name stamped on them. You could play all the carnival games and win a stuffed animal for your sweetie or shoot air guns and make dioramas of Vicente Fernandez light up and start singing. I really wanted to get a picture of 4 state police with their M16s in hand watching some guys shooting the air guns. Didn't seem like a good idea though. I did ask them if they could do better with their weapon and they laughed.

We came home with a weird assortment of stuff, little floaters with chlorine tablets for our tinaco, some Arnica gel, a wooden smasher for the mint in a mojito, a beautiful hand painted Quetzale bird t-shirt for Mimi and a jar of tamarind syrup to make agua tamarindo. It was a great evening.