Monday, getting new glasses

Today the four of us went downtown in order to get Caro her new glasses.

During our drive towards downtown we went past several buildings that were damaged in the earthquake over a year ago.

You can really see the damage around the balconies. This building is not safe and no one lives there anymore.

We parked in a parking lot underneath Belles Artes and then walked several blocks to the glasses shop. There are NUMEROUS glasses shops in this area of the city and we went to one that Edu knows. The guy looked at Caro's prescription and suggested some changes which Caro agreed to and then we left for a few hours.

Fernando had never been been up the Latin America tower so that is where we went. I had to get over a little queasiness but soon was OK (we were outside on the terrace, on the 47th floor).

I took a picture of both Belles Artes and Fernando/Eduvina while we were up top

Afterwards we had a great meal in a beautiful restaurant before walking to the Zocalo enjoying all the street life and the colonial buildings.

By seven o'clock, back at the optician,Caro had her new sunglasses, her old glasses frames with new lenses and had her new frames and lenses ready except waiting on some extra lense coating that has to be done elsewhere (and won't be ready until Wednesday afternoon).  The prescription that was done by the optician earlier had been sent to another shop across the hallway where the grinding of new lenses to meet the prescription requirements was completed while we were out eating/enjoying the streets.

The optical shop was really cool and we were able to watch the large lenses  (already ground down to needed requirements) being cut to size and then put to their frames.

We got back home about an looong hour later-TRAFFIC!!!- jeesh;  then we were surprised by the appearance of Fernandito. Great to catch up to him.

Sunday,in different directions!

This morning Tete came over and together with Caro they headed to the metro, eventually catching up with Maria Elana, Irma,Olga and Gregorio Jr. They spent the whole day catching up and by 8 PM Tete and Caro were back at Fernandos place.

About 30 minutes after they left Ruben came by to pick me up and together we drove to the Soumaya Museum. I have enjoyed this museum before although this time they moved out some of my favourite paintings and have brought in sculptures and religious works that aren't my cup of tea. Having said that the place is fantastic and we wandered around for a couple of hours. Below is a painting of Otto Von Bismarck that caught my eye

BEAUTIFUL!!

Ruben and I picked up some food and went back to his house to eat our supper and catch up on life etc. We had a great time together.

We were back at Fernando and Tete's house at 8:30 and the six of us chatted for another hour before Ruben and Tete left.

Saturday

Today we went with Fernando and Eduvina to breakfast at Palacio de Hierro. Good food at Canadian prices. i.e expensive ha ha

Afterwards we went past the Frida Kahlo museum in Coyoacan which had a huge lineup outside as she is extremely famous but definitely not to my taste. I had wanted to see the paintings there (just to say I had been there) but the lineup cured that issue! Next we went to a museum designed by Diego Rivera (Frida's on again/off again husband). The museum was full of Meso American artifacts and a few of his famous murals.....MEHH! I can take it or leave it.

Caro and I then went to see Vicky and Arturo. We went to Las Sifones restaurant where I enjoyed a meal that I always get there (mushrooms melted into cheese and served with tortillas).  Mmmm good. We spent a further 90 minutes chatting at their place which is located half a block from where Caro grew up. I haven't seen Arturo in a number of years.

Tonight we are back at Fer and Edu's place chatting etc.

Friday May 17th/2019

Today Fernando,Tete,Ruben,Caro and I went to the nearby city of Texcoco to see Caro's sister Martha who resides at a nursing home and is doing very poorly.

With Mom in a nursing care facility at home I took a look at the situation that Martha is in and while the place is comfortable and the staff appear to treat the residents with the same care and attention as at Rivercrest there is no doubt that Mom lives in a palace in comparison. Martha is in a room with 2 others with no TV and only a small dresser beside her bed. I will guess there is 1/4 the staff.

 Maru had most of her family there as well so it was nice to see Jose Luis (husband), Montserrat (daughter) and Monsi's kids. I was meeting the youngest two for the first time.

Before we left Texcoco the five of us went to a Oaxacan restaurant. Mmm,good food!

The late afternoon was spent back in Mexico City having  coffee/tea at a famous coffee specialty cafe that also sells coffee by the kilo. Caro bought a few kilos to bring home.

Going Back to Mexico City

We had scored fantastic airline tickets ($350 each) a few months ago and Wednesday May 15 was the day we left via Vancouver on Westjet. Pretty cool to watch the hockey game as we flew over the Rockies.

We had a couple of hours wait at YVR before our red eye to Mexico City on AeroMexico.

After landing at 0630 we cleared immigration and picked up Caro's suitcase before finding an airport restaurant for breakfast. (Thursday May 16th)

With breakfast over we caught a taxi to Fernando and Edu's house.

Mexico City traffic was better than normal because there have been many forest fires in the surrounding mountains and because of the extremely harmful smoke most of the schools have been closed. I snapped this photo as we crossed over Tlalpan freeway.

Upon arriving at Fernando's place we were warmly greeted by the two of them. This sense of happiness was dampened later when Caro realized she had dropped her cell phone inside the taxi and there was no chance of getting it back. BUMMER! I spent the next hour (with Lisa's help back home) getting Virgin (our carrier) to block Caro's telephone number and then as an added precaution we cancelled her BMO mastercard as the cell had a BMO app on it and there could potentially be a future problem if someone was able to break into the phone.

The afternoon was spent at the dental office with Caro getting sized up for a crown and me getting an idea what my two issues will cost (a crown and a porcelain inlay).

Tete and Ruben came over in late afternoon. Ruben retired from work two months ago (at 75 years old) and is enjoying the free life (Caro and I know the feeling!)

After a quick trip out for a coffee,tea etc we came back to the house and shortly afterwards I crashed!

Varadero Cuba March 3-March 11/2019

In late February I noticed a week long Sunwing vacation to Bella Costa Hotel in Varadero on sale for $835 each (which included the cost of upgrading room to one with a balcony).

We flew Sunwing; arriving at 0230 hours on Monday morning.

Because there was no free wi-fi available (and no availability of internet pre-paid cards) I did not keep a daily blog but am writing this from notes I kept during our time there.

Our first night (the night we arrived) was very short as we got to sleep at 0400. Our first opinion of the room was that it was in desperate need of upgrades.

 Our opinion of the beach was, WOW!!. The beach was very nice and although there weren't a huge number of palapas there were beach umbrellas that were placed by hotel beach staff in a spot requested by the hotel guests. My mistake the first day was to not put on sunscreen and think that by staying under the umbrella I was protected by the sun...NOPE!!.... I got  terrible sunburn that impacted me the whole week. Caro was much smarter and used sunscreen protection right from the beginning!

We spent the vast majority of late mornings and afternoons under umbrellas or palapas (if we were lucky enough to score one) enjoying reading and/or listening to podcasts.

The Cuban government controls the internet and as such it is necessary to buy internet cards and log-in to wi-fi with these (which turned out to be area specific-i.e. time left on a card I bought later in the week at the hotel did not work in the airport). With no cards available by Tuesday (day two) I decided to turn on cellular data in order to text the kids to let them know we were OK. Turns out they were worried about us not contacting them so this was a good move.

On Wednesday we walked over to the hotel next door (Tuxpan) and were able to buy two internet cards. They cost the equivalent of one US dollar each and give you one hour of wi-fi. With that we were in text message contact with the kids for the remainder of the vacation. I rationed my use of wi-fi until late in the trip when our hotel had cards to sell. I was not surfing the net too much but was using to download podcasts.

We had three long walks including one to the city of Varadero (probably six kilometres) and many beach walks.

The food was better than we remembered from our two previous trips to Cuba. This hotel was 3.5 stars and in the past we would not have considered it for Cuba trips. This time we found the food very appetizing and you can tell that Cuba has spent much time and effort to improve their quality and quantity. Caro enjoyed a meal one day eating an unfortunate cousin of Bugs Bunny! I really enjoyed the pasta (made to order).

We had three nights in the specialty restaurants and enjoyed them immensely. They were Italian, Mediterranean and Cuban.

Our breakfast was always enjoyable as we had a great lady (Cecilia) to make our eggs. She got the most tips of anyone of the hotel staff and Caro enjoyed their  (very) brief conversations as the eggs were frying.

The  weather ranged from extremely hot (the first two days) to stormy and cloudy (the third and fourth days) to windy, but nice for the last few days. Even the lousy days were much nicer than the weather at home!

We started the week thinking we had made a poor rash decision; not only in coming so soon after our south American trip (only one month in between trips) but the choice of hotel however by the end of our time we were both extremely happy and came back home with feeling of time and money well spent. This trip is probably the first where we didn't do a tremendous amount of walking or go on side trips (money was a consideration on that point as we are doing a lot this year).

Our trip home was an all nighter and because our hotel checkout was at noon and the Sunwing bus picked us up at midnight we decided to pay $ C75 to keep our room until 10 PM (money well spent).

Dad picked us up at 0800 on Monday morning (Lisa had dropped us off at the airport when we left).

A wonderful week!

South America Wind Up Blog Post

It was not a smooth ending to our trip!

Our prearranged taxi did not appear at 6 P.M. however there was no problem as another taxi drove by shortly after we gave up on the first one. Our "great deal" on taxi rate with the prearranged taxi turned out to be slightly more expensive than the one we actually used. Ha ha! - live and learn I guess!

We got through United's check in with no problem,then through security and then had to complete passport control. That took quite a while however we had lots of time to kill so no problem.

We took off a little late at about 10:30 PM and then 10 hours later we were in Houston. Caro slept a good bit of the flight but as before on the way down I did not get any decent hours of sleep. I listened to many hours of podcasts.

Houston was a gong show. We arrived late and by now had only an hour and 10 minutes to get to our Air Canada flight. In our immigration entry line there were only 2 officers for the approximately 60 people a head of us. OH NO!! YIKES

Finally through that mess we were now in a serious time crunch. We got our luggage with no problem, put it on the "Connecting Passengers" baggage belt, thought we were home free to try and make our way to our next flight, but "No", there was ANOTHER security line to check our carry on (even though I'm pretty sure we were still in the secure area of the airport). Now we were in trouble. We probably had less than 15 minutes before our flight was scheduled to lift off and as luck would have it Air Canada is in a different terminal. Let the quick jogging begin! We hoofed it out from the far end of terminal C; caught the terminal transfer train to terminal A and continued hoofing it to the far end of terminal A only to discover that the gate doors had already been closed for boarding any more passengers. Damn!

I had anticipated issues with this connecting flight when I first made the reservations and really couldn't understand why it was considered a "legal" connection but wasn't too concerned as I knew there was another flight to Calgary a couple of hours later.

The Air  Canada representative at the (now) closed gate door asked if we had connections and of course we did. She muttered under her breath to herself  "the next flight is cancelled". At this point she entered the codes to open the boarding gate doors, went inside and found out the doors to the plane were not closed, so "bless her heart" she came back out and got us on the flight! Thank you Air Canada!

The Calgary flight was good, and the immigration was easy. We were not over our duty free limit and carried on to the Edmonton flight having noted that our bags would have transferred without us picking them up (the same as when Dad and I went to Europe and had landed initially in Toronto).

We got in to Edmonton on time but our bags didn't.

We were assured they would be right behind us on another flight but as it turned out they were not! Boo Air Canada!

My bag arrived 3 days later and as of this writing ( 5 days later) Caros' is supposed to have just arrived in Edmonton. The problem appears to be originating in Houston.

We had an awesome time on this trip, seeing many great sights, and enjoying ourselves immensely. We did a lot of walking and the totals according to my cell phone  (not including any sea days while on the cruise) were 227.6 kilometres/ 350,650 steps.