Monday, November 1st

I minded the thin mattress a bit more in the morning. :P We had an okay breakfast and then went to a mummy museum which was a bit creepy but very interesting too. After that we were all pretty hungry but there weren't any restaurants nearby, the only food in sight was a rotisserie chicken place. A few problems with that.
1. They didn't give us plates
2. Nor did they give us utensils of any kind
3. They didn't even have tortillas to use to pull the meat off of the bones
4. There weren't any tables anywhere nearby
5. The chicken was in a plastic bag, the same for the rice
So, we were forced to give a new meaning to the phrase "street-side food" by buying AND eating the food on the side of the street. We sat on the concrete right next to the street to eat. And it gets better. We also got to burn ourselves repeatedly as we tried to eat the fresh-off-of-the-spit chicken with our fingers out of a plastic grocery bag. I can only imagine how we must have looked! Along with the chicken came two bags of rice. We ripped a hole in one of the bags and I tried to discover the best method to eat rice out of a bag. I found that the best way is to push it up to the hole and then eat it as it came out. :) Needless to say, we were pretty messy after our meal. Now for the best part: there were no bathrooms nearby. We had to make-do as well as we could with a stack of napkins. That was an interesting experience, but not one I would be very excited to repeat. After that we went to see a famous mine called Boca de la Mina that happened to be nearby. After the other caves that we've been to, this one wasn't very exciting. We wore helmets that were more annoying than helpful, walked down a bunch of stairs until we hit the end, and then walked back up the stairs. Not exactly what I'd call exhilarating.

We took a taxi back to the hotel to rest for a while and then went to see a performance at Auditorio de las Minas. The show was called Sounds can Dance and it was an hour long, I expected it to be a ballet or something similar. I was really off. It was a French guy who built a bunch of mechanical instruments make music. He would turn on the machines one at a time and each one would make a rhythmical, repetitive sound, when mixed together they made a song. Then there were little cameras that would focus on each instrument in turn and project it onto a screen so that we could see. It may sound kind of boring, but I literally spent almost the whole time with my eyes glued to the screen. The little machines were almost hypnotizing! I really enjoyed it. For anyone who wants to hear some of his music, search Pierre Banstain on iTunes, he has quite a few albums. After the performance we headed to the city square for dinner. I tried French Onion soup for the first time, I now have a new favorite soup! Then we went back to the hotel, passing quite a few trick-or-treaters on the way. Those kids are seriously milking Halloween for all it's worth.