Mexico City Sept 2025

 Mexico City Sept 2025

THB is back in Eville, and has created a very short trip summary post. Traveling while posting to Travels of THB has become pretty much impossible given the challenges of reduced eyesight, downloading pics, and dealing with a much smaller screen on a portable laptop. And that's without moving locations, just staying in the same hotel room or cruise cabin. 

All 261 pic loaded perfectly from the i-phone onto the E-ville desktop in a few minutes of connectivity. If you are interested in more pics let me know and maybe THB can hone in on  a few for you (concierge service at no charge). And, you can follow SC for this trip and get more details.

An ingenious device, a cut-down hat rack for  purses, jackets, umbrellas. Used in many restaurants, to the point that the restaurants seem quite crowded

From tour of Frida Kahlo's house/museum. Great stop

THB in a 2000 Sydney O's hat in front of the 1968 O's Stadium 

Another great tour, of one of Luis Barragan's architectural masterpieces; there are several around town, and you need to make a reservation well in advance. This is Marlene, our 79 year old guide with a wealth of stories from her life and times. For example, she worked at the 1968 O's as an interpreter and saw Bob Beamon's famous record shattering long jump (THB saw Carl Lewis 2nd longest ever jump in the 1984 O's in LA, Mike Powell now holds the world record, set in 1991)

One of our tour members moving from the house to the terrace. Barragan was a tall guy, Ann is very short!

 A James Turrell-ish indoor swimming pool (Barragan was influenced by Turrell who did a residency in Mexico City...THB thinks...), so TTHB is counting this visit as yet another of seeing Turrell's work around the world. 

Coming soon to a major USA city near you (with or without mask?)

DB poses with THB in front of a walk down memory lane: Sanborn's, where DB went for hamburgers when she was 13 

In the courtyard of the Archeology Museum

A special treat: a collector's house tour. Pictures from inside are not supposed to be posted on the internet. DB spent her 19th summer attending school in the neighborhood. 

On our last morning, DB and THB visit the Tamayo Museum and the Contemporary Art Museum across the street. Another oddity: there are no 2 dimension Tamayo's on display and the Contemporary was closed do to a labor strike. Hmmmm...

DB's parents had left the litho by Tamayo to her, and it hangs over the fireplace at the beach (so we are one up on the Museo Tamayo)

There were many memories created by this trip. And there were many memories revisited! 

Okay, Okay, Okay...one short story. The traffic in Ciudad de Mexico is also memorable. One day we got on the bus got stuck in traffic a short distance from the hotel. Eventually we moved a little and the driver re-routed to get away from the traffic. Where did we end up: back at the hotel about 20 minutes after we left.

Okay, Okay, Okay...one more short-ish story. we were in the bus and had arrived at our last stop of the day (not counting going to dinner after this stop). We are on our way to visit the in-home studio of our local "tour advisor:" jewelry artist, AJF member, and college teacher.  

We get to a guard house and there's a gate that the bus won't fit under. M, our guide, says we are a 4 minute walk from the house. There ensues a 20 minute conversation of whether we should walk or not. Eventually our tour advisor shows up, and leads the bus through the guard house (the guard having been found to raise the gate) and after about 15 minutes up and down hill and dale we end up at the right location. It was no 4 minute walk, at least the route the bus took. If we had walked, there would tour members scattered all over the development, some never to be seen again. 

Vaya con dios, mis amigas y amigos.  THB

Ps: if you want to see many more images, follow SC's posts, highly recommended

SC' Day 6 Post

Mexico City, Days 1 and 2

 Floor Repair: Stage 1 Complete

glass door unhinged

glass door stored in PH1

 Mexico City Day 1 

we are in room 1816 of the JW Marriott

view from our room

excellent dinner at Carmela y Sol: unique appetizers, share sea bream on pepita salsa and a "pavlova" for dessert, 2 cocktails, one glass of wine, $115 with tip. Uber both ways, $15 total

 Mexico City Day 2

Day 2 or 4

 Pics before heading to Mexico

Sandy has figured out how to snuggle under covers

Last lunch before Mexico City, a 2 giant trucks with boat trailers are taking up mucho espacios in front of the East Ocean restaurant. While we were dining, they were getting towed. They may have to put their boats up for bail in order to get their trucks & trailers out of hock 

Looks like a new Seyed Alevi imprint on a newly installed Emeryville utility box (at least this one isn't in the 2010 post)

Book Review

Flashlight, Susan Choi (read by Eunice Wong): An unusual book in that the many characters are actually aggressively unlikable. Of course, most of them are related in some way to each other, thus THB pulls out a truism: every family has problems and every family’s problems are unique. In the major event (well over halfway) of the book, a father and his 10 year-old daughter are walking at night on a small beach in front of their rental house and don’t return. The daughter is found on the beach, barely alive and dad is never found. Without spoiling the mystery, this portion of the book is based on a true story (way more extensive than THB is relating here). In addition, much post WWII information about Japan, North and South Korea, China, and the US is helpful to the plot and THB can verify much of it is accurately rendered (to the best of his knowledge). Highly Recommended

August updates and off to Mexico City

                                                    

                                                                    Floor Update

                                        what the floor damage looked like at the end of May

Department of Repairs: The plan to finish the entire floor replacement has taken shape. The floor (approximately 1900 sq ft) repair will take place in stages. 

• Stage 1. Remove the sliding pantry and and store with neighbor in the Loft
• Stage 2. New floor brought to the Loft to acclimate
• Stage 3: Box up miscellaneous stuff 
• Stage 4. Move furniture, miscellaneous stuff, and art to one half of the Loft      
• Stage 5. Demolish half the floor
• Stage 6. Put down half the new floor
• Stage 7. Move furniture, miscellaneous stuff, and art to the finished half of the Loft 
• Stage 8. Demolish other half the floor
• Stage 9. Put down half the new floor
• Stage 10. Put in new baseboards, touch up any walls damaged during prior steps
• Stage 11. Put all movable items back in their respective original places
• Stage 12. Re-install the sliding pantry door

All to take place starting September 5, possibly completed as early as end of 3rd week of October. State Farm is covering all "reasonable" costs and so far they have sent us far more $$ than we have paid out.    

looks like most of Loft stuff is already on only half the floor

In the meantime we head to Mexico City on Saturday, joining a trip arranged by the Art Jewelry Forum. Then we will live at the Loft until mi-September, shift to the Beach House, and on October 2 leave for 2 weeks in Tuscany followed by a few days in Florence and a few more days in Munich, back Oct 15.  

August Updates

items sitting on your sideview mirror may appear be closer than you think

DB and Sandy sharing a quiet moment

THB's first e-bike rental

rack located in Capitola across street from beach

LB and THB share a brewski after our e-bike ride

pantry doors updated with  handles matched to rest of kitchen drawers

rare summer event: sunset without tree interviewing with the view

The  twins in day 1 back-to-school outfits ... are these girls no longer identical?

otter afloat just offshore

otter a bit further out, accompanied by two birds hoping for scraps

another pair of birds, the one that is alive is approaching the corpse to scavenge a meal

scuba divers spearfishing for halibut

two more taking a dip...it was hot in Monterey in late August

the scuba guys were very successful

                                                           

Book Reviews:

The Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson (each wonderfully read by Richard

Ferrone, books  pub’d in early 1990s): Red, Green and Blue Mars, is comparable

to the best of other masterfully written multi-book series (by Mantel, Dunnett, O’Brian,

Davies, MCarthy). Sci-fi set in the 2050s to the early 2250s, Mars is being colonizedby a multi-national team of scientists The “first 100” have succeeded in making a cold,

frozen planet inhabitable.

However, they have brought all the issues found on Earth with them and revolution breaks

out as the masses start arriving. Robinson has done a great job anticipating the future:

wrist computers, AI, medical and scientific breakthroughs, and much more.

THB couldn’t put them down. 

Clint, The Man And The Movies, Shawn Levy (read by Mike

Chamberlain): There have been two other biographies of the 95

year-old actor and director and this one has to be more complete,

the guy is still working. He had a unique agreement with Warner

Bros, one that made him very wealthy and mucho dinero for the

company. THB enjoyed the Hollywood dishing, Clint's unusual

multi-family life; Clint is not a nice guy, he does have a terrific work

ethic, grew up a few miles from where THB lived in Oakland

and has lived mostly in Carmel for many, many years, just down

Highway 1 from the beach house. Recommended, just not highly:

he acted in and directed a lot of movies and they are all here ,

every last one.

Another long-time Raaaaaaaaaaw-Hiiiiiiiiide fan in Loft neighborhood?