The Mercado Adolfo López Mateos is Cuernavaca's main market — a huge, dense, working city market spread over multiple levels north-east of the centre, reached by a footbridge over the ravine from the end of Calle Guerrero. This is where the city actually shops: mountains of produce, stalls of mole pastes and dried chiles, flowers, herbs and medicinal plants, butchers hung with cecina — the salt-dried beef that is Morelos's signature — and household goods stacked to the ceiling.
For a traveler the market does two things well. It is the best cheap meal in town: the fondas and comida stalls upstairs serve pozole, tacos de cecina, and quesadillas made to order for a fraction of restaurant prices, busiest and best at lunchtime. And it is an antidote to the manicured Cuernavaca of gardens and weekend villas — noisy, functional, and entirely unconcerned with tourists. Watch your bag in the crowded aisles, bring small bills, and come hungry.