Guadalajara
In preparation for the Thanksgiving weekend travel rush we got to the airport 3 hours early, as they recommend for international travelers. As luck would have it, we beat the rush and were sitting at our gate within 10 minutes of being dropped off at the airport. Oh well. That left us time to watch a show. We picked up where we last left off with a Doctor Who Christmas Episode. So good. Definitely in the top 10 of Who's. Lots of the Doctor, very little Amy Pond is how we like it.
The flight was uneventful though we've had better experiences on other airlines. We got a meal but it was a ham and stinky cheese-wich. Stinky cheese doesn’t mesh well with enclosed airplane cabins.
Customs was fine though Deanna got picked for extra screening. It was touch and go for a minute there with her ibuprofen but she got through.
The original plan was to be adventurous and take the bus to the hotel but we couldn't figure out what bus to take so we reverted to American tourist mode and got a taxi. I haggled though and talked him down to 200 from 280. By haggle I mean:
Steven: Cuanto para ir a Hotel Morales?
Taxi Driver: 280.
Steven: 200?
Taxi Driver: Ehhh, vamanos!
We saw lots of interesting things on the taxi ride. Crazy driving. Goats. Car models they don’t have in the US, like a VW coupe with a truck bed. Entire families riding in the front seat of a truck. The most bad ass walk signs ever. The walk signs seriously deserve their own post. You know how in America we have the walk guy and the stop hand?
Well here they've got an animated bright-as-hell LED walk guy AND a countdown timer. PLUS, the walk guy speeds up as the time counts down becoming the "running furiously guy". It doesn't stop there though; the STOP GUY has a countdown timer too! It's amazing. It's all the data you need to make an informed cross/jay walking decision. Course everybody here jaywalks anyway....
Sorry for the shakes, there was jostling amongst the pedestrians.
The hotel is pretty awesome. We went fancy for the first night. It’s well reviewed online with good reason.
Next was our walkabout and dinner excursion. Deanna had a friend who recommended El Sacromonte It was 1.3 miles away but we decided to be adventurous and walk while checking out the shops along the way. Despite having GPS and a compass and Deanna, who is freakishly great at directions, we ended up going perpendicular to our destination for maybe half a mile. Oh well. [Deanna insert – I wasn’t paying attention. Just walking and window shopping.]
We eventually made it to the restaurant. The food was amazing. We got appetizers that called themselves quesadillas but were more like calzones. In addition to the cheese there were rose petals inside and it was all drenched in a strawberry aioli. For courses I had pollo el delirio which was chicken breast rolled up with cuitlacoche (some kind of corn and bean type thing) inside and smothered in a sesame sauce. D had spare ribs cooked to perfection (falling off the bone).
We're both quite bad at Spanish, though I'm doing better than I thought I would. I was able to talk with our grandfatherly waiter enough to get the food ordered and get the attention of the fabric store attendants. Oh right, fabrics:
This portion is now penned by Deanna.
FABRICS!! So many great and not so great (Virgin Mary prints on fleece?) fabrics!
I’m most excited that I found something that I’ve been looking for which are really authentic Mexican looking fabrics. Maybe I’m crazy and you can find them downtown or something but I haven’t seen them. Anyway, here’s a pic:
They are so brightly colored and my favorite is the one with the little dude and his donkey.
I’m thinking of maybe making a simple dress out of the black one and some cool looking bags with the other brightly colored ones like this one…plus I already have some leather.
I got some other amazing fabrics I can’t wait to go home and use.
On the far left is some amazing polyester fabric which is the same fabric content as my favorite dress. It’s my favorite dress because it’s cool and flowing and quick drying (for the hot sweaty days of summer when Steven decides to catch me with the garden hose…true story), and is easy to wash and never stains or wrinkles. It’s the world’s most perfect fabric for $3 a yard. The print on it is amazing too and my favorite color blue.
The middle one is for a yellow polka dot bikini. I have a bikini pattern and I thought it would be something fun to make. The fabric was like $1.50 or something so why not?
The purple one on the right is silk charmeuse that is super soft and oh so flowey. I’ve never worked with anything like this and will probably need a steamer but it was too pretty to pass up at less than $3 a yard (probably not real silk but still soft).
And finally there’s a wool and poly blend plaid that I got specifically for a coat pattern I just bought from Sewaholic.
I’ve never sewn a jacket and I’ve only worked with one plaid that didn’t matter if it lined up so this will be a challenge. This one was something like $2 a yard or something crazy! It’s soft and warm and is perfect for a coat.
So Steven and I got back to the hotel and calculated the damage I did to my wallet buying fabric. Only $47 for a total of 22 yards of fabric. That’s an average of $2.13 a yard! That’s the only souvenir I wanted so I’m actually under budget from what I thought I would spend. I think I'm getting better at buying fabric already having something in mind with how I'll use it.
We got back to the hotel after shopping and are already beat. We walked about 3 miles today after waking up super early and spending 2.5 hours in the air. There was a party going on at the rooftop bar of the hotel but when we went to check it out there were signs that it was a private party tonight. Oh well. At least now we’re forced to turn in and get an early start tomorrow.
Random observations:
- No kids in strollers. The only ones we’ve seen in strollers were getting off of the plane. While this does work the kids out more it also makes them more likely to be stepped on.
- We keep getting 2 second bursts of fireworks every hour or so. It's a very lazy fireworks show.
- They have a Mexican version of the E! show The Soup called La Sopa.
- Our fancy hotel not only has the regular soaps and shampoos but also has complimentary shoe shine and sewing kits.
- The hotel has a master power switch for the room that you activate with your room key. This prevents you from wasting power but also makes their alarm clock useless.
- Diet Cokes are called "Coke Light". We like "light" better than "diet" but it's confusing that they use "light", an English word, as the Mexican version of the soda.
- There are bike racks all over and some even have travel time estimates.
- There’s an armoire in the hotel room that Deanna could live in. Steven could almost live in it:
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