Mexico- Day Seven

Around 4:30am there was a huge thunder and lightening storm but when we woke up it was blue sunny skies. My back was bothering me, it didn't care for the mattress too much I think. We went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast which had a huge breakfast buffet with both Mexican and American favorites. I had mostly the Mexican offerings as did A. Z. was thrilled to find chocolate frosted flakes and ate one small box and then gave me a 2nd box to hold onto for "later" (actually she ended up saving it for the plane ride home).

A. took Z., J. and M. to the aquarium in Veracruz, Acuano de Veracruz while N. and I took a taxi to the mall. She wanted a new pair of sandals, I wanted to find a traditional Mexican shirt for Z. to wear to the wedding, and we wanted some alone time together to just hang out and talk. I found a shirt for Z., actually a small men's shirt which was big for her of course, but she likes things baggy and she'll get a few years of use out of it. N. tried on many pairs of sandals and found a pair she liked. So then we decided to have some coffee or something to drink and went to a dept. store restaurant. N. ordered coffee and I ordered a lemonade which was not sweetened and had seltzer instead of water. I had some Splenda minis in my purse and needed about 8 or 9 of them to get it sweet enough to drink (but it was still pretty sour) LOL. It was good though! We split a sweet roll. We had a nice talk and it was good to get to spend some time together.

At this point I was pretty sure I had an actual head cold, not allergies or tiredness. We took a taxi back to the hotel and got there a bit after checkout time (which was 1pm). The guys had checked out of all but one room which the hotel allowed us to keep for an extra hour and put all the luggage in there. We talked about staying longer, but decided to just get everyone going and head back to Orizaba.



N. lived in Veracruz for 5 years before coming to the US, so we took a little ride around areas she lived and worked. Then we stopped at a restaurant on our way out for a late lunch. It was a seafood restaurant by the water, but they had meat for those of us non-seafood lovers (myself included). Our table was inside but right by the open doors to the outside and the ocean was quite close. It was comfortable in there because there were both the ocean breezes and the breezes from the ceiling fans above our table. In fact it was so breezy that our napkins and empty soda cans kept blowing away.

We drove back to Orizaba and as we got closer the traffic slowed way down because there was construction work on a bridge ahead of us that was causing the traffic to go down to one lane. All along this slow down there were people selling food. A.-Jr. stopped at one point and bought something. It was a rectangular block that was made of some kind of small round seed (it looked like quinoa or millet) and held together by a little honey (and I don't know what else). It was very light in weight and tasted good, not too sweet. We all got a decent sized chunk to try.

There were huge, and I mean huge, dark clouds over the mountains and sure enough, just about as we got to the Holiday Inn the skies opened up and it began to pour. We checked in again and got new smaller rooms off of the main courtyard. This time our shower and toilet were together in a room instead of in closets.

It poured and poured and I was feeling lousy with the beginnings of my head cold and we were all tired so none of us wanted to deal with sitting in the hotel restaurant and deciphering the menu for dinner (the breakfast menu had an English section, but the rest of the menu did not and even if you understand what enchiladas are for instance, there would be 6 different kinds that weren't descriptive so it would be ordering somewhat blind. We did that with breakfast with some of the egg dishes, but just weren't in the mood to do that for dinner that night.). So, we broke down and A. went across the street to McDonalds and brought us back dinner to the room. Z. was happy, she hasn't eaten at McD's in years and now she's in Mexico and eats it twice in one week LOL!

We spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the room. Normally on vacation we don't turn on the tv, but this night I relented and let Z. watch a cartoon. It was Pucca in Spanish on the Cartoon Network, which I thought was Japanese, but is actually done by a South Korean company and the character is Chinese. All over Mexico there were Pucca dolls, backpacks, balloons and things, it's very popular there. I've never seen it around here. N. says she's seen merchandise in NYC.

So a lazy evening, one we really needed as we were all pretty tired.