Friends and others so devoted,

Sorry to have been out of touch for so long. As I mentioned, we were going to Guadalajara and somehow that different environment gets us totally out of sync. Seemed like little time for blogging as the place we stay is so social that you seem to have little time for sitting down at the computer (or perhaps it is just that it seems rude!).

Last Tuesday (hard to believe it was nearly a week ago), we caught a 10 am bus from PV to GDL. As we have said in years past, these are quite luxurious coaches that have a good deal of leg room, movies running continually (all in Spanish with no subtitles) and your own personal sandwich (one paper-thin slice of cheese [a Kraft single if I'm not mistaken], one paper-thin slice of meat and one half-inch thick slice of jalapeño trapped between two spongy pieces of Bimbo bread (My sense is that it is called "Bimbo" because each slice contains nearly as much air as the head of any conventional blonde). Despite these sandwiches sounding not the least bit appealing, it's amazing how good they can taste in about your third hour on the bus. You almost wish you had a second.

After 5 hours, we arrived at the station in Zapopan. This is a suburb of GDL, some former village that has now been swallowed up by the big city. You can catch a cab from there and it is faster into town than from the central station in GDL. So by 3:30 we were moving into our little hotel room (The Cupola) at Las Sabilas. This is the same garden style hotel that we lived in for a month two years ago and then revisited last year. WE had come primarily to see old friends from 2009. However, we soon learned that Rebecca was still in New York and, in fact, was no longer going to work at Las Sabilas. In addition, Max, the sort of manager of the place, had had a mental meltdown and was recuperating out at Lake Chapala. So, he was not going to be there. Our only link to the past was Gary Grosbeck, a wonderful man from Chicago. So Gary was going to get our full attention. I hope he was ready.

For most of the 3 1/2 days we were there, we just sat about and reminisced about our previous times together and met and talked with new guests at Las Sabilas and ate. There are about 6 rooms. In addition to Gary, there is Robert, the owner and designer of Las Sabilas, along with two other properties he has acquired. Robert, as always, is a charming host and a delight to talk with. Another guest was Susan Draftz, an American who has lived in Mexico for the last 10 years and has been recently visiting GDL to look for a home to buy. While there, she, in fact, found what she called the house of her dreams and was constantly scheming on the purchase the remodel. While the deal was not completed by the time we left, she certainly was moving in the direction of making an offer.

The other people we had some interaction with of the course of our time there was a couple from Arkansas, Duane and Laura Bender. He was a retired Air Force colonel and while I say they were from Arkansas, they has lived all over the world as you might expect of career military. OUr last night there, Gary, Laura, Duane and Polley and I had dinner together before retiring to finish a couple of bottles of wine before turning in.

Most of our time was just wandering the old historic section of GDL. We lunch with Gary a couple of times. We revisited an old haunt of ours, the Cafe Degollado, which sits on the front veranda of the Theatro Degollado. I caught this photo of Gary and Polley enjoying a lunch in the sunny afternoon.

While we were sitting there we were entertained by three city workers cleaning the gutters and struggling to put all the pieces back together. They hammered and forced things and eventually won. I caught this picture of them basking in the limelight of their victory over inanimate objects.


We later had another lunch with Gary at a place called Chai. Good fast food, Mexican style (that may be an oxymoran!)

If you remember last time we were in GDL, it was so cold that Polley and I had to buy sweatshirts and Polley got her famous toe-socks (which now are sadly beginning to wear out). This time, while the mornings were cool (GDL is at about 6,000 feet), the days were quite warm and it was a welcome change and we made the most of it. Thursday evening we travelled back to Zapopan to visit Candela. This was the GDL version of the restaurant/bar that was in PV, but is now El Patio de mi Casa. We hoped to meet with Francisco the owner. He was not in, but we got a wonderful surprise. Grace, the manager of Candela PV was working as a waitress that night. We had not seen her since we left a year ago and she has since had a baby. She was always so delightful and it was great to see her again. We also met Mariana who is Francisco's partner. It was a wonderful evening

and by the time we left it was as though we leave the mother country for the New World.

Anyway, it was a nice, relatively brief visit. Gary is off on a new adventure. He was headed out to Ajiic to start an 8 day seminar on moving to Mexico. He will follow that with a month in an apartment in Ajiic before returning to Chicago to gather his belongings and move down. We wish him the best of luck and have made him promise to keep us posted.

We caught the 9:20 bus back to PV on Saturday, arriving about 2. The bus trip really does wipe you out, so we stayed close to home that night before getting back into the regular Sunday routine. We saw Bobby play twice on Sunday, once with a guitarist at Epoca and then again from our regular table at Vitea on Sunday evening. As my brother arrives on Tuesday, for a week, we are planning a quiet Monday as we gear up for another week of "That's Entertainment - Mexican Style." More later.