Sunday, April 29, 2018

House photos and trip home

Hard to believe we are leaving.  We have had such a great time.

The last few days I took pictures of the house. Hard to believe we are leaving today.


Front door entrance

Left of entrance leading to private upstairs and private music room doors on left





Library/living room

Main bedroom



Formal Dining Room, not used by us once
Kitchen

Wendy Office, also the room where we had most of our meals


Second bedroom

And the outdoor area where we spent the majority of our afternoons.


We saw hummingbirds daily visiting these flowers


Palm tree that dropped 2 huge palms into the pool



Finish the last minute packing and lug everything outside for our 6AM pickup. At 6AM I get an email that the Uber has been cancelled because my method of payment is not valid, my method of payment is cash!  Anyway change my payment to credit card and this does not work.  Now we have to find a taxi to get us to the airport.  We are on a very busy street but it is 6AM so not so many around.  There is a taxi waiting area around the corner from us, but none there at this time of day.  Wendy walked across the street to the hotel but they would not call one for her, they said they would only call for guests in case something happened, what a stupid policy.  While Wendy was in the hotel Andre managed to flag a taxi and called through the open window that he had one, yeah first issue of the day solved. 

This taxi is a metered taxi, first one of these we have seen.  We think he started the meter as soon as Andre flagged him down as it had time running when we got in, oh well.  No seat belt in the back for Wendy, she is sharing the back seat with some of the luggage.  Not much traffic on the road so it is a pretty quick drive.  We hit a red light right outside the airport and are stopped for about 30 seconds.  WE realize the driver doesn’t start again, Andre pokes him in the leg, he has fallen asleep!  So glad we are at the light to turn into the airport, not much further to go!

Yesterday when Wendy tried to check in online it said her ID wasn’t valid and we had to do it at the airport.  Tried to use a kiosk and got a paper out that check in had to be done at the counter.  There are not too many people here so didn’t take long.  Give our passports and are told we missed our flight, it was at 6AM, what? I checked online yesterday and everything was fine, today I only checked that the departure time hadn’t changed.  She looked again and said, no you didn’t miss your flight it is only on Tuesday.  I showed her my phone that we had a new reservation for today, it is not in the computer that way.  Anyway phone call to Air Canada in Mexico, then a phone call to Air Canada in Saint John and it is eventually sorted, sounds like whoever made the change did not hit the accept button, I am so glad we were at the airport early. 


Merida airport

Houses painted in many colours. Not allowed to have the same colour as your neighbour. 

New constructions, yuck

Landing in Mexico city

Lots of helipads

Cemetery, did not make it to the one in Merida, will need to return

A bit smoggy
On our way to Toronto

Mississippi river

somewhere in the US. The city looks like a shark.

Back in Canada

Toronto


Uneventful flights home, the last hour into Moncton was really bumpy and rough.  Lots of fog and we heard that many flights had been cancelled.  In Mexico City we saw bags go by that were tagged to Moncton, on our last flight we figured out they were from the foreign workers coming to work in the plants for the summer. 

Andre went to pick up the car by taxi while I waited for our luggage.  A whole bunch of names were paged to go to the luggage window, I was the only one that went over, the LeBlanc that was paged was not us.  There were so many papers already filled out waiting for people to come over, their luggage did not make it onto the plane because of weight and balance.  Back to the luggage carousel, only one batch of luggage came around and then they turned it off.  At this point I knew to move very quickly back to lost luggage window, there was about to be a big line up.  Moving quickly paid off, I was first in line and didn’t take long to do the paperwork.  So our last crisis of the day is done. 

We absolutely loved Merida.  If you like the arts/music this is a fantastic city to visit.  This would be one city I would definitely look at spending much more time in at retirement.  We were so busy we never even played one game of crib this time! Until next trip…

Tuesday now, we just got a phone call that our luggage is being delivered today.  Good thing as we leave on Saturday to Dominican Republic and most of our summer clothes is in those suitcases!

Saturday, April 28, 2018

City Walking Tour

Time to get one last load of laundry in before we leave tomorrow.  It will be nice to get home with all clean laundry.  Most of our packing is done, much easier to pack for going home than for coming.

Today we do a free walking city tour that starts at 9:30.  This is something we were going to do the first days we were here, but waited for Jacinthe and Lisa, then we never did it.  So last day here we do the walking tour.  It was very good, we would even do it again.  Lots of the buildings we had already visited, but it was fun to hear the history. 

New cultural center being built



An old blue bug van today

Staircase at the governors palace

Tourist police are here to help you

City Hall meeting room

Mural of first mixed race child, she was a Mayan princess

View from city hall second floor balcony


Was a slaughter house at one point and was only 1 floor.  The things you learn on a walking tour

Our next stop, Casa Montego

Orignal pillars, they did not change the outside, but the inside was totally redone, they exposed this one pillar so you could see it

Marble steps from Italy were added in the late 1800 early 1900 when the area had lots of money from the henequen

Next the Cathedral where we learnt about the Popes visit

It's going to be a hot day when the horses have umbrellas

A stop at a park to learn about the park, a hotel and the first social club of Merida which is now a beautiful hotel

Stones from Mayan ruins were used to built the church. The city was built where there was 5 Mayan ruins. 


After the walking tour we visited 2 more free museums that are in Centro. 





We also needed to pick up our tequila to bring home.  Once more to the big grocery store at the end of our street.  Unfortunately no sales, but we now have 3 more bottles of tequila.  Also picked up some muffins for the plane ride tomorrow.
Mango and Strawberry popsicle, homemade

another bug today

Getting fresh fruit delivery at our popsicle place

Sears is still open here


Back to the house and pool for one last afternoon.  We make a valiant attempt to finish up the liquor, but were not successful.  A few things left over for the cleaners.
Picked up some wings for lunch. They were delicious. Should have done this earlier

Bye Bye rum. $7 CDN for a liter and it was good

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3, enjoy mango margaritas. 


We happened to catch Chris coming into the house, we were so glad to get to see him one more time before we left to say our goodbyes.  Neil was supposed to come over to sort out electricity but had to stay home waiting for internet people.  We sort this out by taking a picture of the meter, we owed 520 pesos for the month.  We had been warned electricity was expensive here, I know we will be paying much more for our home electricity for the month and we aren’t even there!

In the binder at our house there are a number of restaurants recommended.  Tonight we tried one of them that is not too far from our house, wow I wish we had tried it earlier, I am sure we would have been back.  It was just a small Italian place run by a couple of younger guys.  3 sangria, 2 meals, split a dessert, $35 Cdn including a good tip.  There was one other couple there at the same time as us that we spoke to .  They come here about every 10 days for a meal.  They have been coming to Merida for a few years now, they stay for 3 months in a hotel.  We don’t think we could handle a hotel for that long. 
Sangria and complimentary bruschetta's. 

Delicious

4 tables in the courtyard and probably 4 more inside the restaurant

Tiramisu 



Tonight there is a demonstration of the ball court game that the Mayans used to play outside the cathedral in the main square.  There are so many people here to watch this.  It is a rubber ball that 2 opposing teams try to get through a ring that is about 6 feet in the air, the real tricky bit is you can’t use your hands.  It was really fun to watch, teams were made up of 4 men on each team.  It looked really rough on your body, lots of falling on the ground to move the ball around.  At the end of the game they lit another ball on fire and this they passed around with their hands and made baskets this way.  A really entertaining evening that I am glad we went to see, again free. Not sure how historically accurate this was but it was fun to watch.

To start the show, pretty sure this is not historically accurate

Ceremony before the game started

This guy walked around the whole night to get his picture taken

Second half with the ball on fire

Ball going thru the ring

success