Tag: mexico

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On the Road Again!

After 7 ½ months back in the States, we are back on the road again – this time, bound for Mexico City!

We left Bob’s mother Jane’s house in Mechanicsburg around 8 this morning, with a considerably lighter load than the last trip to Mexico: no Gavin, no Gavin’s luggage, no Ellie the adventure cat, and no bari sax. They have all migrated to Burlington, VT, where Gavin is in their freshman year studying filmmaking. We were also able to leave a few things at Bob’s mother’s house. She passed away three weeks ago, and we will be returning in the summer to fix up the condo and sell it.

Bob in the truck with the cats, ready to go

But till then, we are getting on with our life! And that means driving south.  First stop, Athens, Tennessee, tonight! We are staying at a clean, cheap Motel 8 that accepts cats with no fee and has a number of dining options within walking distance, plus about eight cheap gas stations.

Tomorrow we will hit the road again by 7:30 or 8 AM and drive to New Orleans, where we’ll spend two nights. Then, after another day driving, we’ll spend two nights in San Antonio to break up the 40-hour trip.

The newest addition to our dashboard menagerie, an African wild dog that Aryk gave Bob for Christmas. (He needs a name)

If all goes according to plan, we’ll cross the Mexican border at Laredo, TX, spend a night at the Midway Inn in Matehuala, México, and arrive in Mexico City on Feb. 2, hopefully in plenty of time to find a bar with the Super Bowl on TV. Hasta luego!

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We Have Booked Our Mexico City Lodging!

We have booked a wonderful penthouse apartment just a couple of blocks from Chapultepec Park in Mexico City for our 2 1/2 month stay this winter and early spring.

We have done a bit of research into Mexico City, talking to friends who have lived here or visited, and reading books and perusing online resources, to determine which were the safest and most fun neighborhoods to live in — Polanco, Juarez, Roma Norte and Condesa among them. We knew we wanted to live near a park for running, near public transit, and within walking distance of restaurants and other amenities.

The kitchen and dining room

This apartment in Juarez was on sale for half-price because it was a new listing on Airbnb, so we are getting a big place in a great location for pauper’s prices. It’s also a new apartment, and newly furnished, and the landlord says most of the other apartments in the building are not yet occupied. It has two bedrooms with large closets, a little room with a bar, a full kitchen/dining/living area, a patio, and even a roof garden, where the landlord, Eduardo encourages us to practice our instruments. He doesn’t normally allow cats but is making an exception after I begged. (I think he thought it was worth it for the income.) This is the unit: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/40229764

  • A little patio for the cats

  • Huge closet in the master bedroom, which has a king-sized bed

This location is perfect for us because it’s just a couple of blocks from Chapultepec Park, one of the largest city parks in Latin America. This park is more than twice as big as New York’s Central Park, with a zoo, seven museums, live music, and of course great running (which we missed in Tlaquepaque). There’s even a lake where I can kayak!  

Chapultepec Forest Lake (Source: Pixabay)

The apartment is also a couple of blocks from Paseo de la Reforma, a wide, tree-lined avenue that runs across the heart of Mexico City. We’ll be able to run down it to the city’s historic district. It’s also about three blocks from Calle Chapultepec, another popular avenue with lots of restaurants and nightlife that starts at the park by the same name.

Paseo de Reforma (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Fortepan — ID 73834: Adományozó/Donor: Romák Éva)

There are several close subway stations, which is good, because we will park our truck in a secure parking spot when we arrive and not use it again until we leave.

We are confident this is an apartment where we – and the cats – will be able to spend a safe, happy two and a half months in Mexico City.

Enjoy our YouTube video about our successful search for a place to stay in Mexico City!

By Lisa
Hamm-Greenawalt
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Back in the Saddle Again

It’s hard to believe it has been seven months since we left Mexico. A brief summer interlude in Vermont getting one of our vacation homes ready to sell and settling our youngest child, Gavin, into Champlain College in Burlington turned into a much longer stretch in the USA when Bob’s mother, Jane, called us in August to say she had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Enjoying a boat ride in Montreal during a weekend off working on the Vermont houses

So after spending the summer painting a house, tiling a kitchen, planting two gardens, refinishing a floor, staining two decks, replacing windows, and doing more tasks than I care to remember on both houses – punctuated, thank God, by a couple of long weekends in Montreal and Burlington and many visits to local craft breweries – we moved into Jane’s house in Mechanicsburg, PA, in October to care for her in her last months.

While living here, we kept busy. Lisa signed up for National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo) in November and wrote a long-postponed book. Bob threw himself into the editing of his many videos from our time in Mexico for the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel. We both spent countless hours studying Spanish and practicing our instruments (Bob saxophone, Lisa guitar). We spent 9 days in Cancun in November, during a period when Jane was doing better and we needed a break.

The official winner’s certificate for Nanowrimo. Lisa wrote a YA fantasy novel called Elephant Rock.

We also spent time with some of Lisa’s family members around the winter holidays, and got to know Jane’s neighbors in her over-55 community. As her health deteriorated, we became quite attached to her regular visitors from Homeland Hospice, who became our family’s lifeline: her CNA (certified nursing assistant) Sherry, who came every day to bathe and dress her; her hospice nurse Hannah, who visited weekly; and our social worker Pam, who supported us all in too many ways to count.

Jane was able to lift a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve. She passed away a week later.

Meanwhile, we cared for Jane and tried to keep her comfortable. We watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy with her. The kids came home for Christmas break and got to spend time with their grandmother. Bob’s sister Beth came to visit regularly.

And on Jan. 7, 2020, at the age of 89, Jane Greenawalt left us.

Now the funeral is over, the spawn are back at college, and we are officially empty nesters. Although Jane’s stuff still needs to be sorted and dispersed, and her condo needs to be fixed up to sell, we are deferring that till the summer.

It’s time for us to get back to our lives, at least for a while. So we are planning to return to Mexico later this month and spend the rest of winter and half of spring there. We’ll come back in late April, before Gavin’s school lets out for the summer, and spend some time in Vermont before returning to PA for the next round of heavy lifting.

This time we are headed for Mexico City! We are excited at the prospect of living in a big city, after spending the summer in rural Vermont and the fall in this Harrisburg suburb.  We are currently deciding between several condos in a safe neighborhood – Condesa, Roma Norte or Polanco – near a huge park (a requirement for us as runners). We are also looking at language schools, because we plan to study Spanish every day, at least for the first month, the way we did in Tlaquepaque last year. It will only be for two hours a day this time, because Lisa is editing her book and we want time to enjoy the city.

We’ll keep you posted as things develop! Right now the plan is to leave Jan. 28 and drive our trusty Toyota Tacoma (with two cats on board; the third now lives with Gavin at school) slowly south, stopping in Cincinnati, Memphis and Austin on the way so we can see some friends and take some breaks from the road. We should arrive in CDMX (Ciudad de Mexico, Spanish for Mexico City) on Super Bowl Sunday.

Wish us luck! Hasta luego!

Mexico City, here we come!
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Messy Suitcase Video: Why Guadalajara?

Beto (Bob) is developing his video editing skills, and working on putting the many videos he has made over the past year of traveling in Europe and then Mexico up onto the Messy Suitcase YouTube Channel! 

After toting his GoPro all over Mexico, and now Vermont, plus the drives back and forth, he’s just learning how to edit the footage, so please be patient, and feel to comment with words of encouragement.  Each video will get better, and they will be packed with fascinating info and our illuminating comments and observations.

We’ll hope you’ll follow our the Messy Suitcase YouTube Channel,  and ring the bell to be notified as we put more videos up. We are also open to new ideas!

Enjoy the video Why Guadalajara? 

Why Guadalajara? video

 

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Where Are We From?

It happened again recently. We were sitting in a rooftop bar in Montreal, sipping palomas and enjoying the view of the waterfront, when a woman at the table next to us leaned over and asked, “So where are you from?”

“Uhh…,” I offered hesitantly.
 
“Umm…?” Bob said questioningly.
 
It’s a difficult question right now, “Where are you from.” How do we answer it?
 
We’re from Mexico. At this moment. Sort of. Except where in Mexico? A few months in Guadalajara/Tlaquepaque, a few in Guanajuato. Next up, Mexico City.
 
But we’re currently living in Ludlow, Vermont.
 

But …

But we’re not “from” either of those places, because we just finished living for a decade in Colorado.

But we’re not “from” Colorado, either, because before we moved west, we lived for about 20 years in New York.
 
But we’re not really “from” New York, either, because we were both born in Pennsylvania (Bob in Mechanicsburg, outside Harrisburg, and Lisa in Williamsport, the home of Little League Baseball). And we both lived in a ton of different places before meeting in New York.
 
In Mexico, when they ask, “De donde es?” (“Where are you from?), they are asking, “Where you were born?” We can say “Somos de Estados Unidos” or “Somos de Pennsylvania” (We’re from the United States, or We’re from Pennsylvania.)
 
But to everyone else? Lately I’ve been saying, “We split our year between summers in Vermont and the rest of the year exploring Mexico.”

Ask the Kids

We asked the kids how they would answer the question, “Where are you from?”
 
“Easy,” Gavin said. “I just tell them I’m from Colorado. They want to know where I came here from before college. That’s Colorado.”
 
“Colorado,” agreed Aryk. “Except that I was born in New York. And I live in England. But I just say Colorado.”
 
And that’s where we’re from. Right now. What would YOU say?

By Lisa Hamm-Greenawalt

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Missing the US, Missing Mexico, Part 2

Things We Won’t Miss About Mexico  

Despite our obviously huge affection for Mexico, there are some things we won’t miss, including:

·       All the beggars and people missing limbs
·      Having to carry small change to use public toilets ·       No seats on the public toilets
·       No (sometimes) paper in public toilets
·       Having to carry toilet paper everywhere, just in case
·       Poor WiFi
·       Random power outages
·       Having people come up to us in public spaces or restaurants trying to sell us stuff
·       Being stalked by salesmen or women in stores or galleries
·       Occasionally paying the price for bad street food with four or five days of stomach discomfort
·       Creepy crawlies, especially:
o   The large frequency of spider sightings
o   Massive bugs, some on the ground, some on the ceiling, some flying
o   Cockroaches
o   Scorpions
·      Aggressive street dogs on our running route in Guanajuato
·       Dodging dog poop on the ground while walking in any town
·       The occasional stench of sewage while driving through Guanajuato
·       Car-eating topes (speed bumps), often unmarked
·        How hard it is to ride our bikes
 
Riding on the Via RecreActiva Sunday mornings in Guadalajara,
when closed roadways created our only opportunity
to get out on two wheels
I think that’s it! As we come up with more, we may update this blog. Thanks for reading!
 
Lisa, Beto and Gavin
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Missing the US, Missing Mexico, Part 1

Now that we’re back in the United States for the summer, we’re experiencing a bit of a culture shock! We’re realizing there were a lot of things we missed about the US when we were living south of the border, and we’re delighted to get to experience them again.

But even more surprising – or perhaps not – is how many
things we miss about Mexico.
 
Enjoy our lists!
 
Things We Missed About
the United States
 
These are some of the things we missed about the U.S.
when we were living in Mexico:
 
·       English-language book stores (especially Barnes
& Noble)
·       Noodles & Company
·       Really good hamburgers
·       Brick oven pizza
·       Having white wine on restaurant menus
·       Lilacs
·       Yards and green grass
·       Being able to put toilet paper in the toilet
·       Being able to drink water from the faucet
·       Being able to brush our teeth with water from the faucet
·       Did we mention being able to drink water from the faucet?
·       Cheezit crackers
·       Toilet seats on public toilets
·       Toilet paper always available in public toilets
·       Being able to ride our road bikes
 
Things We Miss about Mexico
 
Here are a few things we miss about Mexico, now that
we’re back in the States:
 
·       Low prices for everything
·       Tlaquepaque, and the fact that there was always something free going on in Plaza Hidalgo
 
Ballot Foclorico in Plaza Hidalgo, Tlaquepaque
·       The incredible views of Guanajuato below and the eye-popping, jagged mountains beyond from every window at Casa Estrella
 
Guanajuato views
·       The fervent Roman Catholicism, including:
o   Gorgeous churches, basilicas and cathedrals, even in the humblest villages
o   Bloody Jesus statues and other curiosities inside churches
o   Parades to accompany statues of Nuestra Senora (our mother Mary) from church to church
o   Easter pageants, especially the bloody Jesuses carrying their crosses, accompanied by costumed throngs
 
The Virgin of Guadeloupe. She’s everywhere.
·       The food! Especially:
o   Nieve de garafa (fresh, hand-stirred ice cream made inside metal barrels, with
unconventional flavors such as tequila, elote and blackberry cheesecake)
o   Michoacan ice cream
o   Cuarto de Kilo (awesome Guadalajara hamburger chain with crispy, lemon-pepper-dusted French fries)
o   Pollo Pepe (great chicken place, also a chain)
o   Gus’s, our favorite the taco place in the basement of the mercado (market) in
Tlaquepaque
o   Mercado fruits, veggies, breads, and fresh chicken and fish
o   Valentina’s, our favorite pizza place in Tlaquepaque, with its rooftop garden
o   Cat-shaped bolillos (small loaves of bread) from Pasteleria Don Pedro
o   Amazing donuts everywhere in Guadalajara (who knew Mexico was such a big donut destination?)
o   Mexican street food, especially elote (corn) and chayote (a unique Mexican squash) with queso y crema (cheese and a uniquely Mexican thick cream), then doused with salsa. The lonches (meat sandwiches), tacos and fresh-made potato chips were also excellent.
 
Elote in Tlaquepaque
o   Pasteles (cake) and pan de elote (corn bread) from La Petit Plaisir, the French bakery across the street from the Guadalajara Language Center
o   Chocomilk in any restaurant, which is a refreshingly frothy, blended confection
o   Cremax cookies 
o   Raspadas (shave ice with fresh fruit and syrup)
 
Raspada Frambuesa (raspberry)

·       The drinks! Especially:

o   Horchatas and horchata fresas (a rice and cinnamon drink, sometimes accompanied by strawberries)
o   Aguas frescas (fresh water with the essence of fruit, including mandarin oranges and jamaica, a therapeutic flower)
o   Tequila and mescal
o   Mexican craft beer
o   Limonada (lemonade)
 
Horchata fresa and tacos in the Tonala mercado
·       The sounds! Especially:
o   Mariachi music
o   Church bells
o   Crowing roosters (who expected to miss this sound?)
o   The song played by the Zeta Gas truck (“Zeta, Zeta, Zeta Gas!”)
o   “Agu-AA!” yelled by the Pura water garafon (jug) delivery man
o   The daily jangling bell of the trashmen
·       Atlas FC Futbol (soccer)
·       Lucha Libre (wrestiling)
·       Adorable roof dogs
·       Waiters never rushing us and always waiting for us to ask for the check
·       The weather (warm days and cool nights, with the occasional dramatic downpour but not a speck of snow)
·       Speaking Spanish all the time
 
Got this shot into the goal at an Atlas futbol game
Next up … Part 2: Things We Won’t Miss About Mexico
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