After a trip to La Verdad for some delicious Mexican pastries, there’s really no better place to enjoy them than in the Café-Bar of La Profética, a thirty second walk away. Profética is a café, a good bookstore, and a free private library, all located in a classic tiled building in downtown Puebla. Best of all, it makes good use of the typical Mexican interior courtyard, which very few places do.

You have the feeling of sitting outside and inside at the same time. Ambiente noise and good English music let you speak without being overheard. You can sit at tables or on slightly disturbing, cow-hide covered couches, and shelter from the sun under an umbrella. When it rains, a staff member pops out with a remote control, and an automatic roof rumbles over the courtyard. In a city where the posh people seem to like spending their free time drinking franchise coffee at the suburban mall, La Profética is refreshingly, actually a city hangout.

It’s a great place for languid morning conversations over coffee, a great place to work on an obra maestra with an afternoon beer, (the number of people with Apple laptops can be a bit off-putting, but I have one too so I shouldn’t sneer) and a great place to argue politics in the dim glow of a single tealight with a margarita at night.