Love is in the Air in Mexico

Love is in the air in Puebla, Mexico, not just on Valentine’s day but every day. Public displays of affection rule in Mexico’s fourth-largest city, just two hours by car from Mexico City.

Couples of all ages walk the town square and crowded side streets holding hands, cuddling, and kissing. There’s the teen couple showing their affection while sitting on the wall outside the towering Puebla Cathedral, which took 300 years to complete. Strangers mix with invited guests to celebrate love, as a horse-drawn carriage slowly trots off with a newlywed couple embracing in the back. Two couples share their affection near balloon vendors in the tree-lined zocalo, the town square, while a couple who seem to have been together for ages hug and kiss after dinner.

While there are more mariachis per square inch then any other town I’ve visited, you can hear the sweet guitar music played by two brothers echoing off the stone walls of a café while you’re sipping an afternoon coffee.

Puebla is an easy town to hang out in, with reasonably priced hotels and amazing restaurants. Puebla has exported many chefs to New York City kitchens and is known as the birthplace of mole poblano, a national dish of Mexico, lovingly made with more than two dozen ingredients. It’s mouthwatering, inexpensive, and worth carrying home with you.

Customs officials back in the U.S. tell me they’re used to seeing travelers arrive in Houston with Ziploc bags of mole, carefully carried onto flights by foodies travelling from Puebla.

You can’t ignore Puebla’s street food — the smell of cooking wafts down back streets from small restaurants and corner vendors. Be sure not to miss the chiles en nogada (stuffed chile with walnut sauce) or pipian verde (chicken with a toe-curling green sauce made from pumpkin seeds).

After dinner, you can work some of the meal off in a second-floor bar, where some couples slow dance to the same music that others sing karaoke to. Love takes on many different forms in Puebla.