Chicago Tribune article about GTO

[The Duck]

Hi Jesm - wish I had a VPN but no just plain vanilla Telmex.

Link is working as of 9:30am today but here is the story if you can't get to it.

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By Peter Ferry, Special to Tribune Newspapers

7:08 p.m. CDT, August 13, 2013

GUANAJUATO, Mexico ? There is something interesting about how cities that are contained grow. Think Manhattan on an island, San Francisco on a peninsula, and Guanajuato in a central Mexican valley so steep it's a virtual canyon.

Why build a city here? Water, for one thing. The gorge was carved by a rushing river. Silver, for another. Starting in the 17th century, Guanajuato, about 200 miles northwest of Mexico City, was a mining center that used its wealth to build ornate public buildings, a university, a grand theater, a fortress, hotels around green courtyards and stately homes. These are arranged charmingly and haphazardly on the town's winding, idiosyncratic streets that are forever revealing surprising little parks and plazas full of flowers, trees and cafes.

Though Guanajuato is a small city, with a population of 150,000, it fills the valley and hillsides above it where, from the statue of El Pipila, a revolutionary hero who was said to have strapped a flagstone to his back to withstand the hot oil poured on him by the Spaniards, one can see the town like a living map: the dammed river, now a lake; the subterranean street that follows its old bed; the municipal market in a great, vaulted 1903 building full of chatter and colors; the elegant Teatro Juarez; scattered green patches of park and plaza; the massive Alhondiga fortress, the four corners on which were displayed the impaled heads of revolutionary leaders; and the ancient convent where mummies are preserved naturally by the dry air.

See it all, but let none of it detract from the real attraction: Guanajuato itself. And, oh yes, Guanajuato gets the U.S. State Department's highest rating for tourist safety.

Copyright ? 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC