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I Am So Glad We Did This
31 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Sentiments, Travel
Monthly Archives: March 2014
In Mexico, It Was Time for Another Margarita
28 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in Travel
Long-term readers will recall my medical event almost a year ago in Spain. Three posts addressed the event, here, here, and here. Medical insurance was mentioned, but a financial resolution was not. I paid twenty thousand dollars to a Spanish hospital; was I ever reimbursed? The answer was not to be found in this blog until now.
Peeping Tom and Louise
26 Wednesday Mar 2014
There are all sorts of houses in Puerto Vallarta, from dirt-poor shacks to glamorous, sprawling sea-view mansions. We are all curious about how people live, especially the wealthy. What would life be like with a lot of rooms and a big staff and a perfect kitchen?
The Land of Chocolate Milk
21 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Gallery, Travel
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Angel of Independence — Mexico City’s iconic centennial monument — was just four blocks down the street from our hotel. I was astonished to find that the twenty-three stairs surrounding the base were added long after the statue was built. It seemed that El Ángel had actually risen from the earth some fifteen feet since she was built. She hasn’t. Mexico City has sunk around her.
The Miracle Stalker
19 Wednesday Mar 2014
Posted in Travel
You want to be bored? Let me tell you how many ways I’ve tried to fix the right shoulder that has been hurting me for six years.
Never mind. Let’s just say I’m always looking for new ways.
What joy, then, when I found a milagro charm shaped like an arm at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City. These little tin charms, shaped like legs or babies or hearts, are used to send prayers upwards in search of cures. (Frida Kahlo made a whole necklace of leg milagros.) I gave a little donation for my little arm and stuck it on a prayer board with a safety pin. Then I sent a general prayer Upwards.
Calling Dan Brown
17 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Travel
Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Click to enlarge.
You gotta love these people: no one really knows where they came from, no one really knows what happened to them (even though they built what was the largest city in the Americas at the time), their primary deity was a woman, and they built the coolest pyramids around.
I Was Born a Bitch
14 Friday Mar 2014
Posted in Travel
“I was born a bitch,” Frida Kahlo used to say. The folk/surrealist artist has long been revered in Mexico for her art, her brash behavior, her dismal life story, and her legion of lovers. We visited the Casa Azul, where she was born in 1907 and used as home base, in the old and beautiful neighborhood of Coyoacan, now a part of Mexico City.
No Pink Boxes Here
11 Tuesday Mar 2014
“Today we will visit a bakery.”
That was Vicky, our tour guide. To be fair, I’m as much a lover of chouquettes and panettones as the next guy, but we had committed five of our precious remaining expat days, and paid big money for airline tickets, hotels, and the tour itself — and now Vicky is dragging us to a bakery. This was Mexico City, the largest metropolitan area in the Western Hemisphere! What happened to Aztek ruins, Mesoamerican pyramids, Diego Rivera murals?
Continue reading
Oscar Party
05 Wednesday Mar 2014
Julia is small, maybe five feet, and a spry seventy-something — the perfect candidate for a Charlie Chaplin costume. The day she penguin-walked into our living room the applause was loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Continue reading
The Night With the Iguana
03 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Accommodations, Travel
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Approaching Las Caletas beach from Banderas Bay. Credit: Vallarta Adventures
Marcia and I were happy to get seats in the front row for the outdoor show. Friends forever, we were catching up during her first trip to Puerto Vallarta, when suddenly she let out a shriek of sheer horror. Inches away from her knee was an iguana, its ruffled scaly crown waggling, its long rubbery tail slashing about. And it was big. As big as a man.
The Expat Almanac 