One of the many advantages of using Mazatlán as a summer cruising destination is the ease of inland travel. Maz summers are oppressively hot and humid, giving incentive to travel to the drier, cooler climes of the central highlands. Last summer we'd bused from Maz to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato (still my favorite city in all Mexico) in the state of Guanajuato. This summer, we aimed for Morelia and the Lake Pátzcuaro area in the state of Michoacán. In a word: RECOMMENDED.
Both Morelia and Pátzcuaro flaunt the Spanish Colonial architecture I love. Morelia has 
museums aplenty (I liked the State Museum the best). Its historic government buildings, though still in daily use by civil servants, remain wide open to the casual visitor. Why would a 
tourist want to see where the Michoacán State Office of Finance does business? Oh, maybe because it's located in an 18th-century former granary, festooned with 20th-century murals of the 19th-century revolution. You have to love a country that has such open access to their government buildings — and no metal detectors at the front door, either. Just walk up to the nice guy sitting at the front desk and sign his guest book so they can keep track of the tourist load for budget reasons, and you can wander around gawking to your heart's content. Mexico may have its problems like every other country, but there are a lot of ways (like history, art and architecture) in which Mexico is irreversibly hip.
Here's what we did: August 24: hop on the Primera Plus bus to Morelia (about US $50 per person one-way) at 7:30pm, earplugs & light wrap ready to sleep the night away as the very air-conditioned coach wound its way from Mazatlan to Morelia, a 13-hour trip. Arrive in Morelia the next morning about 0830, taxi to our hotel in Morelia's centro district for an 0900 check-in, mosey to the nearest street cafe for an 0930 breakfast, and Bob's your uncle. By riding a plush bus overnight, we gained a full day of turismo. Did the usual touring of museums, cathedral & churches. Found one museum named the "natural history museum" that was actually a 19th-century upper-class Mexican physician's house with the remnants of his cabinet of curiosities. If you know ahead of time what a "cabinet of curiosities" is it's all very interesting and historic. If you've never seen one before, it can be a little…gross, when you first encounter all the mutant embryos of animals and humans preserved in jars upstairs.
We stayed in Morelia for 4 days. Enough time to watch the weekend fireworks display 
the city performed in the centro cathedral; get a good look at the aqueduct; buy way too many "souvenirs" at the extensive candy market; and find a bar near our hotel that served good martinis. Of course we went there every night. Just to determine the consistency of the quality of beverages purveyed. Because we were being all scientific, inspired by the cabinet of curiosities, so we were.
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