Oh, What a Day!

 

Hola!

Well, you know about those days that just seem to go sideways for no reason at all?  We had one of those today!

Not sure how to get started, but I guess I should begin with us heading downstairs to get the car and drive first to Ecoclean Lavanderia and then to Cholula pyramid.  (Breakfast in the dining room was quite good, although Robert did try and order scrambled eggs with bacon for me, and just bacon for himself.  Unfortunately, the order arrived as one set of plain scrambled eggs, and the second plate of scrambled eggs with bacon scrambled in!  Oh well!  We’ll try again tomorrow!)

Amazing model of Puebla's Centro historic!

Love the Zocalo!

Beautifully kept and colored buildings!

And some amazing tile work!

St. Roche church in orange

with a beautiful altar

Artisan quarter

So must stuff to look at!

Quiet brightly colored corner of the neighborhood

Another building of tile!

Tried to start the car, and nada– absolutely nothing happened! Back inside of the hotel to the front desk, and one of the lovely ladies there got the local Alamo number and called. Someone would be at the hotel in 40 minutes.  Well, 40 minutes came and went, and eventually Robert came back upstairs for advice, as he and the receptionist tried without success to reach anybody at Alamo anywhere!  According to R, the phone would just ring and ring!  Very frustrating!

We both went back downstairs with the intention of getting Uber to the Puebla Airport and dumping the entire mess in Alamo’s lap.  However, nice receptionist lady said that she had tried calling again, and gotten hold of someone who assured her that a service man was definitely on his way! So … what to do?  We decided to give them another 10 minutes or so, and eventually, two guys actually showed up!  Diagnosis: Dead battery.

So…turns out that unbeknownst to us, the Alamo guys in Mexico City gave us the car with the headlights turned on, as their office is slightly underground at the Mexico City airport.  Not knowing, we locked up the car yesterday afternoon just as it was and somewhere in the night the battery died.  (The car says it only has about 16,000 km on it, which isn’t much, but it has hand crank windows and insert-the-key-in-the-door-lock technology. No signal to warn that the lights were on, no system to turn off the lights automatically – this is really a low-tech car.  UGH!! The service guys were able to jump-start the car and assured us that we would be fine after about 10 minutes of driving.  And so it was.

Then, we were off with laundry to find Eco Clean!  (This is the very first Hilton Garden Inn we have ever been in that doesn’t have their own washers and dryers!  Oh well!)  The directions to get there were very convoluted – I’d like to say the layout of the streets here is very confusing.  There are roads within roads, but not sure how to explain it!  It’s like there are “highway” lanes in the middle and “local” lanes to the side.  These, of course, run parallel, sometimes with a barrier between, and sometimes not – can be very confusing, even for the GPS.  You can’t even be sure you are on a freeway (or tollway); you can be motoring along just like on the Pasadena Freeway when, suddenly, there is a traffic signal!  You just have to be really careful, as well as quick, to be able to get where you want to go!  

Not wanting to turn off the car just yet (gotta charge that battery!), I sat in the car while Robert took laundry into the shop, used his Spanish and came back out with the receipt for pickup tomorrow night … again at 6 pm!  What is it with this country and 6 pm??

After that, we headed to Cholula and see the pyramid and museum as well as the associated church.  Robert wound us up the hill close to the site, but whoops!  Absolutely NO parking anywhere we could see, and neither of us liked the idea of walking miles in the noon-day sun. So, we turned around when we could (not easy; lotsa one-way streets around here) and made our way back to the hotel.  We also had to drive very carefully because of the many colossal speed bumps (I think the local word is topas) they have around here; they are much larger than anything we have at home.  Have rescheduled Cholula for first thing tomorrow morning, and instead, we Ubered back into Puebla for lunch and another walk.  

As it had been a fair to partly stressful morning, I pulled out the “I need a Big Mac” card. Fortunately, it was easy to find – right on the Zocalo!  And truly, it was exactly what I needed, even!  Robert opted for a Chipotle-Ranch burger, which he seemed to enjoy!

Then headed out for the Artisan quarter of Puebla. Lovely day here; on the hot side! And we also stopped in St. Roche church, which was truly beautiful! Realized that I’m certainly not the shopper now that I used to be!  Lots of lovely crafts, including the famous blue and white Talavera tiles and plates, but nothing that really spoke to either of us!  Finally caught an Uber back to the hotel, and Robert was able to get in several hours work for Caltech.  

We’ll be heading down to dinner here in the hotel soon, and then settling in for Thursday Night Football (!) – you’d be surprised what you can find here on TV!  We have also added several American chains to our list: Dairy Queen, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Forever 21, Applebee’s, Sam’s Club, Walmart Supercenter, Home Depot … and on it goes!  The Americanization of Mexico!

An observation from two experts on Mexico after one week of experience: This is an incredibly clean country.  There is no trash on the streets and we have noticed cleaners working constantly in the museums.  Dare I say, What a contrast to many other countries we have visited or, for that matter, places in the U.S.A?

Lots of love and more later!

m

xxx