Concert

Today did not start out the best for Wendy.  For some reason her monitor would not turn on her computer.  After trying for a while she woke me up to boot up my computer as she had a demo scheduled for this morning.  Fiddle with her computer for a bit and finally get it working fine. Not sure how or why it came on. First crisis of the day done. It is now nearly 5am so I decide to just stay up.

Around 9, Wendy came with me for her break to pick up some juice at the barber.  We also stopped at a tour company to see about scheduling something for tomorrow.  We really wanted to do a hacienda and cenote tour, but the 2 haciendas I had already visited with Lisa and Jacinthe when they were here.  Now we think we will just go visit the ruins in Mayapan by bus, we will see.  Wendy went back to work

I walked about 30 minutes to visit a tile factory that I had heard about. It is about 15 blocks from where we are staying in a more non touristy part of town.

Me on my way out, I don't look like a tourist at all

only 9:30 tempting

Love the lock and chain on todays bug. Not sure it is to lock the hood or keep the bumper from falling off

Sparrows nesting in the ceiling. We see lots of them early and late in the day

The factory has a large display of the many tiles they can produce. I asked someone from the factory if these are hand painted. Someone had done a book on the process to make the tiles, so he gives me the book to look at. He also lets me have a look at the factory from the doorway. Probably at least 10 people working there. 

Tile factory

After my visit to the factory I make my way towards the main market, stopping at a few places that I see along the way. There is a uniform factory for hotel workers. I see a printing press that is run manually. And of course an Ice Cream break of some sort as it is now over 30 degrees.

This is as bad as it gets for graffiti here.

Old fashioned printing press

Adding red text to a form

Hotel uniform factory

Car is too big for the driveway, this car is not big!

10AM or so, ice cream time

Car parts

I stopped at the market to pick  up a few groceries to get us through the rest of our stay here. 

Nice selection

Fresh turkeys

delivery at the market

love the colours, Tomatoes 28 cents a pound, bananas are cheaper, mangos about 40 cents a pound

shoe & sandals stores in all direction in this section

Father and son outside the main market

Lucky Luke pizza delivery

Found some water

After I get home Wendy receives a phone call from Air Canada.  There is a problem with our connections for our flights home on Tuesday, they are not legal connections.  They have sent us a new itinerary that we leave on Tuesday at 6AM, overnight in Toronto, then get home Wednesday afternoon.  Not only is this a terrible itinerary, but Wendy does not have vacation time available this year to take 2 additional days off.  After a bit of going back and forth we decide to leave on Sunday, our flights are all changed, confirmation received, we leave Sunday at 8:30 from Merida and arrive back in Moncton at midnight.  A long day, but much better than taking 2 days of travel time.  Wendy changes the scheduled Uber airport pickup from Tuesday to Sunday, we are set to go.

We spent the remainder of another hot afternoon in/out of the pool, with a few beverages, we know our end here is not long now. We  listened to some of the music online that we would hear tonight at a concert we would like to see.  It was an older musician that sounded fantastic, really excited to see it.

Fajitas for lunch, and mango margaritas of course 

I had seen there was a free concert at the Song museum. We had went there at the very beginning of our stay here. It is near the Majorada park. This square will always be known to us as the flower square as this is where the flower exhibit was while we were here.  

We had come by the theatre 1 hour before it started, online it was really confusing what time it started.  Some people were already lining up, it is a free concert.  No way were we waiting for one hour.

We walk the back streets to see the orignal arches at the edge of old town. Originally there were 8 gates to help protect the city. Only 3 of the orignal still exists today. These are 2 of them here

From there we went for an early supper at a restaurant by the flower square.  Another good meal, lime soup again for Wendy, and I had the deep fried tortillas stuffed with beans and different toppings. This restaurant is huge and seats around 200 with possibly more seating upstairs.

Wendy loved how the chairs lineup on the left, notice how the tables sideways to the chairs

small supper as we had a late lunch

Back to the concert about 15 minutes before it started and we still get pretty good seats.  The seating is totally different than last time we were here, many more people, and the stage is set up where it looked like it always should be set up, different from our last concert here.

Turns out “Tony” is 92 years old.  The concert may have been some kind of tribute to him, no idea if he was famous or not.  At one point an older couple presented a certificate of some kind. Not sure what it was because it was all in Spanish. You would think with 2 English people in the audience they could have also done it in English lol.

There are about 20 singers on stage with him.  No live music, it is all recorded.  Right from the opening minute we knew this was going to be bad.  Amazing at 92 that he is still up there, but the poor man really struggled to carry a tune, and the 20 singers on stage with him may have been even worse.  There is a small stage in front of the singers that have dancers come out a couple of times, and one man from the audience seemed to think we would all enjoy watching him dance by himself when the entertainment wasn’t provided.  Anyway it was a painful event for both of us, we snuck out after about 30 minutes, we had enough.  This was the only event the entire time that we were here that we were so disappointed.  Actually when we were outside the acoustics sounded better than inside the courtyard.  Headed home and called it a night.

Tony, the 92 year old singer

Large audience compared to the first night we were there