LowestTravelDeals.com provides
any kind of Puebla lodging from luxury 5-star hotels to affordable
B&B's and discount motels. Our search system provides a wide
variety of options to provide you with the best Puebla hotel deals
and rates in a secure and instant transaction. We guarantee you
will find the right Puebla accommodation that fits your travel
vacation.
East of Mexico City, a fast road climbs steeply,
with glorious views of the snowy heights of Popocat?petl and Ixtacc?huatl,
to PUEBLA . Little more than an hour on the bus
from Mexico City, this is the Republic's fifth-largest city after
Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey and Tijuana, and one of its
hardest to pin down. On the whole it's a disappointment, with
the initial impression of industrial modernity imparted by the
huge Volkswagen factory on the outskirts compounded by the permanently
clogged, raucous and rushed streets of the centre. Yet this is
as historic a city as any in Mexico, and certainly in the centre
there's a remarkable concentration of interest - a fabulous cathedral
, a "hidden" convent , museums and
colonial mansions - while the mountainous country
round about is in places startlingly beautiful. Nevertheless,
Puebla is unlikely to tempt you into staying particularly long
and in a couple of leisurely days (or one packed day) you can
see the best of the city and nearby Cholula .
The city itself was founded by the Spanish in 1531
and, rare for this area, was an entirely new foundation, preferred
to the ancient sites of Cholula and Tlaxcala possibly because
there the memories of indigenous power remained too strong. It
rapidly assumed great importance as a staging point on the journey
from the capital to the port at Veracruz and for the trans-shipment
of goods from Spain's Far Eastern colonies, which were delivered
to Acapulco and transported across Mexico from there. Wealth was
brought, too, by the reputation of its ceramic and tile manufacture
(still very much in evidence), which was due in part to the abundance
of good clays and in part to its settlement by Spaniards from
Talavera who brought traditional ceramic skills with them. The
city did well out of colonial rule, and perhaps not surprisingly
it took the wrong side in the War of Independence. As a result,
it preserves a reputation for conservatism and traditional values,
not dispelled even by the fact that the start of the Revolution
is generally dated from the assassination of Aquiles Serd?n in
his Puebla home.
Military defeat, too, seems to play an even larger
part in Puebla's history than it does in most of Mexico - the
city fell to the Americans in 1847 and to the French in 1863 -
but what's remembered is the greatest victory in the country's
history, when a force of some two thousand Mexicans defeated a
French army three times its size in 1872. To this day, May 5 (
Cinco de Mayo ) is commemorated with a massive
fiesta here, and with a public holiday throughout the country.
