Location: Inside the Casa de la Cultura, the former Convento de Monjas
Calle 63 #519 between Calles 64 and 66
Hours: Monday-Saturday 8:30-21:00 and Sunday 10:00-17:00
Tienda Matriz Monjas – Casa de las Artesanías del Estado de Yucatan is a state sponsored store that sells traditional Mayan wares by local artists and is shop inside the Casa de la Cultura building. I had seen several Casa de las Artesanias (Tienda Matriz Monjas, Tienda Aeropuerto, Tienda Paseo de Montejo and Tienda Uxmal) listed on a variety of websites and I was eager to see what they had to offer. We stumbled on the store accidently one day. I excitedly pulled Leroy in and we began looking. The prices were phenomenal and no haggling was involved, just already priced great deals. Honestly they were the best deals I have ever seen on most of the stuff they sell. The prices were so good Leroy would not believe me that they were in pesos and not US dollars. He actually went up to the cashier to ask if the prices were pesos, she verified they were. We did not buy that day because we did not want to be stuck carrying our purchases while we walked around for the rest of the night. Since we did not have time to run back to the hotel to drop it off, we decided to return another day.
A few days later we returned to shop. I had a list of things I wanted: tortilla warmer, purses, wall art and a variety of other sisal products. We got incredible deals on our entire cache and only paid $93 for everything shown in the picture!
We will definitely be going back on every future trip and will be checking out the others when we can. If I could figure out how to cheaply ship them back I would be sending several of the huge sisal clothes baskets back home but I guess I will have to wait until we get our place in the Yucatan.
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