16 Best Places to Shop in Veracruz, Mexico

Café Colón sells 20 varieties of coffee for about $2.50 a pound.

The friendly folks at the Café de Avelino will show you how the experts rate the beans.

Cafécali serves a wide selection of excellent coffees at good prices.

Callejón del Diamante, also known as Calle Antonio M. Rivera, is a captivating pedestrian street with vendors hawking inexpensive jewelry, handwoven baskets, and fleece-lined slippers.

Purchase a full-size love seat or a doll-size miniature at Casa Artensenal de Tlacotalpan. Doña Rafaela Murillo's shop, housed in a building that once served as the town's prison, also carries various objects made of carved wood, including fanciful animals and birds.

You can find just about anything along Calle Hidalgo, but the one thing not to leave without is mole. Derivados Acamalín is famous for its moles, as you can tell by the photos on the walls of celebrities who have dropped by for a taste, but they also produce bottles of local liquors.

El Mayab has a selection of machine-produced guayaberas, which go for less than the hand-embroidered variety.

Galería Vives carries lacy garments and monogrammed handkerchiefs.

The family-run Guayaberas Fina Cab has high-quality hand-stitched shirts and dresses with embroidery that ranges from basic interlocking cables to elaborate floral designs.

Libros y Arte, near the zócalo, has a wonderful collection of books, including coffee-table volumes on the art and architecture of Veracruz, Mexican music, and plenty of maps and travel guides.

For a slice of Mexican life, head to the wildly vibrant Mercado Hidalgo, where you'll find artful displays of strawberries and chilies beside platters of cow eyeballs and chicken feet.

The Mercado Jaureguí, open daily, is an indoor bazaar with everything from jewelry, blankets, and fresh vegetables to some rather dubious-looking natural "healing" potions and supposedly aphrodisiacal body pastes.

The teeming Mercado Miguel Hidalgo, half a block downhill from the main square, sells Totonac costumes, carvings, baskets, and shoulder bags. It's a daily market, but is much busier on weekends. The real draw is vanilla, the region's chief product, which is sold in every conceivable form. Especially lovely are flowers made from the dried vanilla pods.

Stands lining the Paseo del Malecón sell ocean-related items: seashells and the beauty creams and powders derived from them; Coatepec coffee; T-shirts; and tacky stuffed frogs, iguanas, and armadillos.

The Plaza de las Artesanías Miguel Alemán market on the Paseo de Malecón purveys high-quality goods, including leather and jewelry, with high prices to match. It's open daily 11 to 8.

Xinqeño is a little shop that sells its own brand of mole made from a wonderful recipe. Both this branch and the one on the Carretera Coatepec (near the entrance to town), sell the same thing.