BajaNomad

Tijuana: More Than Just Chiclets

BajaNews - 8-27-2006 at 02:57 PM

http://gridskipper.com/travel/tijuana/tijuana-more-than-just...

When I used to live in San Diego as a kid, we'd go down to Tijuana to buy my psycho stepmom generic Prozac. Not that I minded sice I had carte blanche to buy all the Chiclets the poor Mexican kids my own age were selling me at the rundown market. Now, though, Tijuana is more than just a place to drive through, get whatever chintzy crap you need and hightail outta there. The New York Times' ventured South of the Border recently and found alot more than drunken Americans with One Tequila Two Tequila Three Tequila Floor shirts on. Here's a quick guide to some of Tijuana's treasures.


Stay

Hotel Emporio is "a boutique hotel with enough Corbusier settees, blond plywood and pedestal candles in the lobby to satisfy any denizen of South Beach." Part of the 7-hotel Emporio family, with 206 rooms plus a couple of suites, I'm not sure what makes this a boutique hotel but it does have a ton of settees, wifi, and vaguely designery aspirations. Rooms from US$86.


Eat

La Querencia, "a stylish loftlike space with concrete floors, lacquered steel dining tables and two open kitchens" serving "Baja Med" items such as Octopus "Querencia" served with potato, olives, capers, chile puya and Spanish smoked paprika (US$21)

Tacos Salceados more commonly called "La Ermita" serves innovative tacos such as "a shrimp-and-strawberry taco " cooked up by the Adrian Ferra of Tacodom, Javier Campos Gutti?rez. The place is permapacked, cheap (tacos around US$2.50) and housed in a lean-to-esque buidling.


Party

Multi Kulti is "a baroque movie palace. The cinema was gutted by fire and is now surrealistically open to the sky -- an accidental amphitheater where festivals of Mexican horror films, hip-hop battles and other evenings are staged."

El Dandy del Sur, is "an artists' jukebox bar where the 20-something patrons aren't gringos slumming from San Diego, where the walls are decorated with mirrors and pictures of movie stars and crepe-paper hearts hang from the ceiling."


http://www.hotelesemporio.com/eng/idt/52/emporio-tijuana/
http://www.sdro.com/laquerencia

Dandy Del Sur
Flores Mag?n No. 2030-A, Zona Centro
ph: 52 664 80052