Harrowing Hotel & Dinner Disaster

Okay, okay, so it hasn't all been great. When I checked into the Hilton at the Mexico City Airport, it was the perfect location. Right by International Departures, beautiful lobby, and I had already pre-paid for my room, so ahhhhh... nothing to do but sit and relax, right?

Well, when I got into my room yesterday I immediately noticed a strange smell. After a couple of minutes I didn't notice it again, so I didn't say anything to the front desk. Plus, I was totally exhausted and Ted was with me and he was leaving in an hour and I didn't want to spend that hour complaining. And after he left I just wanted to go to bed.

Anyways, when I got back to my hotel room this evening after my day tour, I couldn't get in. My key card didn't work anymore. I went up to the front desk and they said that it would take a few minutes to fix. The concierge let me into my room with his own key, but I quickly remembered that the key card actvates the lights in the room and I didn't really want to sit in the dark. So I told the front desk that I would be in the business center and they said that when the key was ready they would come and bring it to me there.

The business center is located right by the front desk. I sat in there for AN HOUR writing emails and the like, waiting for my bloody room key. Finally, the concierge brought it to me. I finished what I was doing and headed down to my room. Nope, this key card didn't work either. GREAT. Back to the lobby I go.

I see the concierge, tell him, and he tells me to please speak to the front desk. Well I would love to but now they are helping multiple customers and nobody has time to acknowledge me. I am just tired and hungry and I want to get into my room, for crying out loud! So I wait and wait and wait. Finally, they talk to me and I get my new card in about 20 seconds. Why have I been waiting for an hour and 20 minutes?

I get into my room. Oh, RIGHT. The SMELL. It's even worse and now I am choked enough to say something about it. Turns out that it's coming from the floor drain beside the toilet, which housekeeping has now covered with a wet towel. Yuck. I figure that for my last night in Mexico City, I will take myself out for a nice dinner (there are several nice resturants nearby) and even though I am not keen on eating alone, it sure beats hanging out in my smelly room!

So I stop by the front desk. I tell them about the smell. They want to change my room, but I don't want to since it will mean a lot of hassle and I am checking out at 4am anyways - that's only a couple of hours from now. They know I am unhappy and they are duly apologetic. To be fair, the front desk staff and concierge have been pretty great. It's all the rest of it I am not pleased about. I would have expected a discount on my room for all the trouble but since I prepaid that's not likely.

Anyways, so off I go to find some dinner. I settle on Casa Avila, a nice looking if-slightly-fancy-for-my-taste kind of place. I do a quick check on the menu to make sure I will actually eat something and in I go. I am almost happy to see that there's no-one else in there, so I feel less dumb eating alone.

The waiter asks me what I'd like to drink. Well, that's what he means anyways - his English isn't super great. I want some juice, they don't have any. He keeps suggesting all these alcoholic drinks, but I'm not interested. Finally he suggests lemonade, or so I thought. What actually came is the bitterest carbonated lime drink that I have ever tasted. It was so bitter that I actually winced. Convinced that trying to explain what was wrong would get me nowhere, I said nothing. I settled for the bitter drink. I would survive.

I ask about the Casa Avila salad. I ask what's in it and I specifically ask if there's meat in it. He says no. Sounds great - bring it on. In the meantime he brings out bread and sliced radishes.

While I wait for my salad, I try some bread (pretty good) and some radishes. I had imagined that the radishes would be cool & fresh with a bit of a kick, like they are at home. But these were just covered with salt. More wincing. More bitter drink to wash it down. More wincing.

So now a family of 5 comes into the restaurant, which is fine except that they could have sat anywhere but choose to be only 2 tables away from me so that their kids can stare at me wondering why I am sitting there by myself. It got even better when the father went ballistic and started yelling. Now they are staring at me because they are embarrassed about the scene their father is making. Get me out of here!

Salad comes. Initially it looks great - has endive, mango, avocado, tomato, and ... what's this? Crabmeat? That definitely qualifies as meat in my books. Oh well - it's not like I am vegetarian, I just won't eat the crab. No big deal.

I start into the salad and soon realize that it's drenched, no, DROWNED in salad dressing. It's so bad that I put my spoon under the edge of my plate so that I can get most of it to pool on one side of my plate (the side where I have put my crab). I actually want a paper towel to pat down the greens so I can have an easier time of choking them down, but why bother when I can just wash it down with this bitter carbonated lime drink?

I do my best with the salad. I decide that before I head back up to my room I am going to have some dessert. I saw chocolate mousse on the menu and that's what I want, please. Who cares if it was listed under the "low-calorie" part of the menu? How can they possibly screw up chocolate mousse?

By adding coffee. I don't drink coffee, never have, and generally abhor coffee-flavoured items (aside from an occasional Coffee Crisp, that is). So yes, the menu failed to mention that it was coffee/chocolate mousse, and here I am stuck with yet another consumable that I don't want.

Anyways. I paid. I tipped (it's not their fault they didn't quite have the English down, and they can't read my mind!). And I got the heck out of there. Now I am going to bed in my smelly room and will be home in a few short hours to a place that is all sorts of welcoming!!

Mexico City tour

This morning I woke up early and prepared myself for the Mexico City tour. I had ordered room service for breakfast, and on the form it indicated exactly what time you'd like your food to arrive. You could choose any 15 minute interval between 6:00am and 10:00am. I chose 7:00-7:15am. That would give me enough time to eat, and finish getting ready before I was picked up at 8:15am for the tour.

My food arrived at 6:45am. Which was fine, but slightly annoying. I had just put on my clothes 2 minutes before the knock on my door - why do they ask for a specific time if they are just going to show up early? Ah well, no harm done. Breakfast was pretty good - fruit and eggs and toast and something unidentifiable which tasted ok.

I exchanged a few bucks into pesos and waited to be picked up. Eventually a friendly English-speaking Mexican man arrived and whisked me off to the tour van. We picked up some other people who were also going on tours (not the same one as me though) from France and Peru. While we were driving around town picking up people I noticed that the little man who indicates that it's time to cross the street is green & animated. First you see him walking and as the time counts down closer to the end, he walks faster and faster - he kinda seems to break into a run. I found this rather mesmerizing to watch. I wish I had gotten some footage of it.

We went through the main square of the Zocalo area, and our guide explained that it was fairly quiet in Mexico City today because of it being Good Friday and many of the people are out of town. I noticed large groups of police everywhere, and in particular, a group of cops on horses with sombreros - the Mexican version of RCMP. Quite the sight!

Anyways, we headed to the tour office, paid for our tours, and split off into different groups depending on what we were doing that day. My group was heading to the famous Teotihuacan pyramids and a few other places. It turns out in my tour group that I am the only native English speaker. The driver & tour guide are Mexican, a family of 4 is Mexican, and a group of three sitting behind me were all from Germany. We all managed to communicate pretty effectively by the end of the day - although it started off rather lonely for me.


The first stop on our tour was to see the ruins at Tlatelolco. They were located right in the middle of the city and were many centuries old. We took some photos but did not stay there very long. Off we went to the Basilica of Guadalupe, and it was rather busy since it was Easter weekend. There is an "old" basilica and a "new" basilica - the old basilica is rather like the leaning tower of Pisa, and it is very off-kilter. From the outside you can tell things are not level, but from the inside it is even more apparent as you try to gain some solid footing.


Inside the new basilica there is a painting of Lady Guadalupe (the virgin Mary) on display at the front of the altar. There is an underground level right underneath the altar, and there are 3 or 4 escalators that go back and forth underneath this painting, so that people can pay their respects to it without disturbing whatever service is going on above. Photos are even allowed - with no flash.

The next & last stop on our trip was out to the pyramids. We drove for an hour to get outside of the city limits. Before the actual pyramids, though, we headed to an artisan shop where individuals gave us a tour, information about their craft, and then invite us to do some shopping. This seems to be a popular and convenient (and probably lucrative) arrangement for tours - I remember it from when I travelled to Egypt.

Anyways, we saw how they carved obsidian, how they did craftwork with silver & beading, other souvenirs and how they used the local plants. We had samples of a few drinks made from plants - the only one I recognized was tequila, and no, it does not taste any better down in Mexico. They did point out though, that it's not supposed to be salt, tequila, then lime - like so many in Canada do, but that it's supposed to be salted lime, then tequila. The lime juice "prepares" your throat for the tequila and make it easier & smoother to take.

After we had a good look around the shop, it was time for the big ticket event. We were heading straight to the Teotihuacan pyramids! These ruins are different than the other ones in Mexico in that people are allowed to walk on them. You used to be able to climb up Chichen Itza, but no longer - I wonder how long it will take Teotihuacan to follow suit. I imagine that having thousands of people trod on the archaeological sites does a fair amount of damage.

Once we arrived at Teotihuacan, our guide took us to a few places and we climbed up a pyramid to have a look at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. It was harder than it looked - the steps are really high & steep. Going down wasn't much fun either - you had to go sideways, and it had a bit of the dizzying effect. I can see people just bailing down the steps to certain injury.


Then he let us go and have free time to walk around the huge site - apparently it was about a 1km walk from one end to the other end. It didn't sound like much to me, but in the heat of the afternoon it seemed to go on forever. The walk was punctuated by the huge Pyramid of the Sun and ended with the Pyramid of the Moon. There were people everywhere and lineups to go up and down each pyramid.

After that our guide met with us again and talked about the frescoes in the Patio of the Jaguars and then we were off to have lunch. By this time we were starving! We went to a little local place, and we all ordered various authentic Mexican food. I had chicken tacos - they were okay. We had a great time talking and laughing. The Mexican family that we were on tour with didn't speak any English but their two kids were uninhibited and adorable. We all bonded over food & drink and our shared experience.

Happily fed, we chatted all the way back into Mexico City. We parted ways at our various hotels, and even promised to share photos online. How fast we make friends when travelling!

Tulum to Mexico City

Today we got up early and packed our things. We checked out of our resort and started the 2-hour drive back to the airport. The speed limits are all posted at the side of the highway and they frequently change. Anytime you pass by the entrance of a big hotel, it slows down to 40km/hr and then is right back to 80 or 100 a few seconds later. Needless to say, most drivers ignore the slow-down-zone. And I was getting comfortable enough to start ignoring it myself. Except well, I forgot about the fact that there are Mexican police parked by the side of the road every 5 minutes or so - there are a lot of them around.

Anyways, so I go zooming past one of them, and sure enough, he pulls out and gets on the highway after me. I am sweating bullets now because I can't speak Spanish and I have heard that the police are uber-corrupt down here, and I pretty much want to do anything I can to avoid them. To my surprise though, he goes more slowly than I was expecting, and as it turns out, pulls over a van that was travelling behind me. Needless to say, I drove the speed limit thereafter pretty fastidiously.

After we get to the airport, we check-in, go through security, and settle down to eat some lunch. I hate to admit it, but it was fast food. We didn't really have time to sit down at a restaurant, and convenience food IS rather convenient. I don't think I need mention that I regretted this decision later - kinda goes without saying. :P

The flight back to Mexico City was uneventful. They served us "cracker peanuts" for a snack. The Spanish translation on the package means... "Japanese peanuts"? I don't know. But they were peanuts coated in this cracker-like substance and there was some kind of spice (wasabi, maybe?) in it that gave it a slight kick.

We got to the airport and took the shuttle to Terminal 1 where my hotel was supposedly located. After a few glitches (one information agent insisted that there was no Hilton hotel at the airport), we found it, checked into my room - there was a strange smell but otherwise it looked pretty nice - and headed downstairs to check Ted into his flight back to Europe. While waiting in the incredibly long line for the KLM check-in, I had many close encounters with the woman behind me who seemed to think that "personal space" was just an expression. Ah well, I was too tired and too Canadian to do anything about it.

Ted & I grabbed a snack before he left, and then I was by myself in Mexico City again. This time however, I was feeling much less nervous. I went upstairs, talked to the concierge at my hotel (named "Jesus") and he arranged a tour of Mexico City for the next day. It was exactly what I wanted: they picked me up at my hotel, toured me around a few sites for the day, and returned me back to my hotel. Nice! All this for $55 USD. I'm in.

Another thing I love about the hotel is that it has free Wi-Fi and free 24hr Business Center access, which means I can get on the internet as much as I want in the next 36 hours. Yay! Right now though, I badly need a shower (the salt-water shower I took at the cabana in Tulum just doesn't cut it), and sleep. Last full day in Mexico tomorrow!