It’s Friday, the day before we leave for Mexico City down south in Mexico. I’m sitting in Starbucks having a coffee while Caroline is at her office enjoying happy hour with her co-workers. I couldn’t check in with our flight, which was likely due to needing to present our passports to the ticketing window. I bought pesos earlier in the week and scheduled our Uber to the airport an hour ago.

Things are mostly packed but more importantly, the deep cleaning of everything is done. From the shelves of the refrigerator to under the stove, baseboards in the bathroom, and every surface that could be cleaned in that room is super tidy. All laundry is done, as is our bedding, so when we get back home, nothing needs to be tended to aside from possibly turning on the A/C, depending on what the weather looks like when we return. This ritual of housekeeping takes on greater importance the longer we’re away, as when vacation extends beyond a few days, I want to come home knowing that aside from fetching some fresh food and doing our stinking travel laundry, I’m free to bask in the glow of another wonderful vacation.

Hmm, this is mostly true; I’m out of granola and will have to deal with that the day after our return; we are also out of pickled ginger for our Burmese ginger salads, so after buying 10 pounds of fresh ginger, I’ll be occupied with that chore for a solid 5 or 6 hours. Our taxes haven’t been filed yet, and I need to find a new doctor soon after our return as I don’t trust my current one after two appointments where he proved too anxious to prescribe meds with crazy potential side effects when my conditions are relatively well maintained.

On the blogging front, I anticipate that I’ll shoot between 3,600 and 5,000 photos; if I were smart, I’d take less. Prepping the photos while in situ isn’t a problem, but staying current with writing about the day can be a challenge. Should I fall behind and need to work on things after our return, I’ll do that to the exclusion of everything else as I obsess about finishing before we leave for trip number 6 of the 25 planned for this year.

You think you are done preparing, and then after dinner, you realize there are still a dozen things you need to get done before you call it a night. That’s exactly what happened, but now it’s 10:00 pm, and my eyes are heavy. The computer is updated, the phone rebooted, Fitbit is fully charged, pesos are divided between us, documents photocopied, credit card numbers and their phone numbers are noted, plans for breakfast are made, nothing left to do but hope for a good night of sleep instead of a restless one like we’ll have tomorrow night in another strange bed.

Good morning, Saturday, and the butterflies of going to a new place far away. Breakfast was out of the way, a mile walk was able to be fit in, and we had 10 minutes before our ride arrived. Time to power this stuff at home down, take out the trash, lock the door, and go. Next stop: Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.

Got some walking in at Terminal 4, verified that we’d get lunch on our flight, and now we’re sitting down near our gate where there are very few seats. We’ll start boarding in 15 minutes, though our flight isn’t leaving for another hour. By the way, I have a KTN or Known Traveler Number, but Caroline doesn’t; we need to rectify that as it sure is convenient to zip through security. This leg of the trip, I went to that line as with a CPAP, computer, camera, belt, phone, and shoes, it feels like a hassle to go through the regular line if I can avoid it. Next up, we are flying business class for the better part of this trip; this did allow Caroline to move through the Preferred Boarding security line; we board first, so there will be no issue of getting overhead bin space; we get that lunch I spoke of, and we’ll be at the front of the line for passport control when we land in Mexico.

I was certain I’d see the border scar across the desert as we flew south but my vigilance wasn’t good enough. I did see a lot of desert and, on occasion, some canyon areas.

Our three hours and some minutes turned into something less than three hours, allowing us to arrive early, but with immigration nearly a mile away from where we landed and the need to wait forever for a taxi, we were at the airport a good hour although we had no bags to claim. The great thing about our taxi ride was that it was a fixed price deal where you buy a coupon in the airport for your destination, so there’s no ambiguity, and at $14 or 280 Pesos, it was a terrific bargain.

Ciudad de México or Mexico City to us foriegners, we are here. We lost an hour as we shifted timezones, lost that hour at the airport, and needed some time at the hotel to get checked in and figure out which way we wanted to go. The place for dinner I thought we’d go to closes at 6:00 for some strange reason, so instead of getting there 30 minutes before they shut the doors, we decided to go for a walk before grabbing our final meal of the day not too far from our hotel.

We are in Bosque de Chapultepec Park, where the Museo Nacional de Antropología is also located. This corner of the park dedicated to the friendship between Mexico and Azerbaijan didn’t arrive without speedbumps, but the specifics are of little contemporary interest, so I’ll just leave this here without much comment.

Hundreds of vendors line the wide paths through the park, and though the sun came and went as it was replaced with very occasional rain and cloud cover, the festive sense of a beautiful Saturday afternoon is in full effect. From furry monkeys on kids’ heads that squirt water from their tails to Lucha Libre masks celebrating Mexico’s renowned history of wrestlers, it seemed nothing cost much for than a dollar out here. Sadly, we are reluctant to try the various colorful snacks and fast food items along the way as too many Americans have squawked about the dangers to us visitors that will fall afoul of an intestinal bug if we aren’t careful. Somehow, I know they are full of BS, but their poisonous words and fears have infiltrated both of our brains.

There’s something I find peaceful about being somewhere I don’t speak the language, and that’s probably the fact that I can’t tell when people are talking from their butts. I want to assume they are all talking quantum physics, philosophy, or politics using a filter of high intellect. While I can be sure that if someone were translating the nearby conversations, I’d be aghast at the same level of stupidity I find elsewhere, that’s not the case now, and I can easily delude myself, thus making me happier. Happier makes for better smiles, so I gain that, too.

We are now on our way to the restaurant we’ll be eating at but first, we’ll have to backtrack a bit.

There’s a comedy act going on nearby that has attracted about 100 onlookers who are, as they say, busting a gut, but we understand not a word (well, at least we got “pendejo”) and walk on to check out the spitting frog fountain where a bunch of scouts are standing around doing scout things.

This bird of paradise just so happens to look like a flame is burning there or that maybe I over-enhanced the colors; well, it is what it is.

Dinner was Carajillo restaurant I’d learned of before leaving Phoenix and you should be able to see from Caroline’s face that we weren’t disappointed. Prior to getting to this opulent dessert that was nearly as expensive as both of our entrees, Caroline started with a margarita as I ordered a guacamole. We’ve never had a hot guac, but we have now; it even had some ginger in it, not your garden variety version of this popular dip. Our entrees were roast pork for me and encrusted salmon for Caroline.

Having limited Spanish skills comes with its perks; what Caroline thought she understood we were having for dessert was slightly off. We thought that the many tables receiving flaming towers of chocolate and gold leaf-covered strawberries with a small tower of deep-fried ice cream topped with berries and more gold leaf were celebrating birthdays or anniversaries; nope, this was the dessert option we unintentionally got too. Under the burning cone at the center was the fried ice cream. Do I need to mention that this dessert also involved dry ice and several servers clapping while another one provided light effects with his phone?

With the loud thumping music of this trendy hot spot, the boisterous, well-dressed crowd, and the extremely well-trained and good-looking staff, we were surprised at the sense of celebration going on here and how there’s nothing in the Phoenix, Arizona, area that comes close to matching any of it. Without a tip, the meal, including the appetizer, a mixed drink, sparkling water, two entrees, and this dessert, came to 1,500 pesos or $84. Muy elegante and a great start to this Mexican vacation.