Parque Puebla

 Today we went to the grand opening of a mall here in town called Parque Puebla. We have been so excited about this mall because the company that built this place also built several super fancy plazas in Mexico City. These plazas include places like Olive Garden, Cheesecake Factory, PF Changs, Applebee's, Krispy Kreme, Carl's Jr, California Pizza Kitchen, Panda Express, Chili's, Dairy Queen....

You get the picture. 

My grandparents church and house are on the side of Puebla that has a mall, restaurants, hospitals, fun places to go, Costco, several Walmarts (a very sophisticated place here in Mexico - haha!) shopping centers, etc. Our side of town has a market, some run-of-the-mill grocery stores, a cool park. We drive about 45 minutes to go across town to do the things we need to do. 

Needless to say, we are very very excited to have this huge mall built in walking distance of our house! (You know how everything is in walking distance...if you have enough time. :) 

In reality, it is about a 10-minute drive from our house.

 I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks, but Dad likes to study there and normally has to drive at least half an hour to the nearest one. 

We walked through the entrance of this new mall and Starbucks was the first thing we saw. 

 

The 5th customer!

 This plaza is huge, modern and fancy! 

 

We'd heard there was going to be a ribbon-cutting and inauguration at some point so we went down to this area where a bunch of important-looking people were gathered. There were tables of super fancy hor d'oeuvres that were being guarded by pitbulls in black suits.

Finally the time came and these guys started buzzing around passing out these fancy (and tiny) finger foods and glasses of wine and soda. Yes, wine. I was shocked.

We took pictures of each round of hor d'oeuvres that came around.

Cream cheese on dark bread and blackberry kiwi tart

Tortilla espanola on bread and a blackberry kiwi tart

Chocolate covered strawberries

As these guys brought each platter out, I got giddier and giddier. This was really fun.

Chips with chipotle toppings

Bread with rasberry and goat cheese spread - this was the only nasty one.

Cucumber and brown bread with cheese, cherry tomatoes, cheese, and artichoke hearts

Chips with chipotle toppings - Mom kept choosing this off the platters coming around and I told her to please stop because we needed variety for the blog - LOL.

More artichoke hearts, cheese and tomato kabob, and mom...again with her chipotle hummus chip.

Shwimp cream cheese on a chip, and Mom's chipotle hummus chip. C'mon, Mom. Choose something else!

When the guy came around again, she finally got something different - mini corn on the cob on bread...and as I joke I grabbed the chipotle hummus chip. HA!

 The bread was all that kind of fancy, sophisticated kind of stale, but I told Mom it was actually like that because they'd been working on this all for FOUR DAYS.

Tortilla espanola and tiny corn on the cob on bread

After getting stuffed off of these tiny finger foods, we walked around checking out this new mall.
 

We found another Starbucks on the 3rd floor.


The food court

View from the food court

I'm excited to see what stores go into this mall and the restaurants we'll have nearby. The area this mall is in is kind of...not that pretty... So it will be interesting to see how it all starts perking up and looking shnazzy. 

(That moment when you realize your side of town is going to be sophisticated.)

Bethany