Our Dinners with Lara and Derek

Largest man in DF at that moment.

Just a short week after our jaunt down to Austin, we welcomed two of our favorite Austinites to Mexico City for a weekend getaway of their own. Lara and Derek took the go-fast plane to DF and we immediately got down to the weekend's business: eating.

Lara and Derek were only here for a couple of days, and they had told us ahead of time that they were mostly interested in checking out restaurants and walking around town -- which happens to be a Moreno specialty. In fact, we're a little worried that Lara's cute shoes never recovered from our long march through Coyoacan and Condesa.

The first night we visited La Valentina, a place just up the road from us that we had missed and that Lara had heard nice things about. It turned out to be a very boisterous joint with a wide variety of Mexico's traditional fanfare, such as strolling mariachis and even better, a strolling fortune-teller, who was, in fact, a tiny little canary in a cage. According to the little bird, Lara can expect to meet someone soon who will invite her to participate in some kind of project...

The Gammon Beards did some exploring on their own on Friday while we were at work. It sounds like that included taking a sketchy cab ride and getting swept up in some seriously overcrowded scenes in the Zocalo. We tried to make up for their predictably unsettling first day in the DF with a visit to a swanky Spanish restaurant called D.O. Our guests were a little underwhelmed by their fish, but we Morenos were delighted with our choices, probably because we ordered the most gluttonous things (for example, Sergio's rabbit with a foie gras risotto)! Yum. We did all agree on one thing: Spain's jamon is awesome. And the wine was nice too. (Even Sasha liked her beverage: a nice old-school green bottle of 7-Up. Fancy!)

Mmm, fat...

After dinner, we popped over to another one of these super-trendy-circa-1999 hotel bars. This version was in Polanco at the Habita Hotel, and featured drinks on the rooftop patio complete with DJ and film projections. Sasha liked the fireplace, but it was too early for much in the way of people-watching. No matter how hard we try, we will probably always miss the party here in Mexico City. This is a late night town.

Good crowd. Must be $9 beer night.

In the morning, we were off to see Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul and show Lara and Derek a bit of the neighborhoods in DF. The Kahlo house is a museum with some selected drawings and ephemera from Frida and Diego's personal collection. It was a small museum, but it was fun to see the original furniture and studio. And the patio was pretty! Their house is REALLY blue.


We spent a little more time touring around Frida's neighborhood before heading up to Condesa for more walking. We managed to stop every few hours for refreshments, of course. And then wound things up that night back in Polanco with another go at "alta cocina" at the peculiarly empty Izote. Good food, no people. And a strange deconstructed lemon tart...

All in all, it was a lovely weekend with our lovely friends.

Can you tell they use the same fashion consultant?

Now, we're looking forward to another super weekend: Easter in Arizona. Our plans include visiting with Sasha's mom, Aunt Ruth and cousin Bryant, shopping, baseball spring training and maybe, a Rockets basketball game! Oh and maybe eating the best pizza in the United States? We'll have a full report next week.

The Cactus League at Scottsdale Stadium

In the meantime, though, there's some cool stuff happening here at our house this week. We just finished up our second round of painting this morning. Now both of the bedrooms are coated in fresh paint! Good riddance to the mauve/beige scheme courtesy of the resident interior design team, i.e. the Musset Maintenance crew. The guest room/nursery has been transformed by a very bright shade of yellow, which we prefer to think of as citrus-y rather than neon-ish, and "fun and cheerful" rather than "over-stimulating and colic-inducing." Sadly, we ran into some custom-paint mixing dead ends at the local Sherwin Williams, and suffice it to say, we're now committed to the off-the-rack "Fun Yellow". The room looks like a tennis ball. But in a good way. Once things are all dolled-up, we'll post some pictures of the "new" bedrooms.

Even more fun, we've got tomorrow off from work to enjoy a Mexican national holiday (Benito Juarez's birthday, not St. Paddy's Day, though we will consider it a twofer). Because it is also the start of Semana Santa, or Easter Week, we are really enjoying the mass exodus of the city. This place is starting to look like Labor Day in New York City. Blissfully quiet, and maybe a little spooky? There is a rumor that the power company employees are going on strike today which could mean no power or water which would definitely be a major drag ....and could make things a lot spookier.

Not everything is shut down for the holiday week though, for example department store delivery trucks are running, and we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of a giant bed this week. The new mattress set-up gets delivered on Wednesday and we will be sleeping like kings in a matter of days. Not a moment too soon as Sasha is getting larger by the day. This last trimester stuff is no joke.

Speaking of growing families, we'll sign off with a tribute to this little fella: Nathaniel Henry Shugarman. He was born in Washington DC on March 3rd, and his mama is one of Sasha's good friends from her Michigan (and Chicago) days.

Congrats Megan and Keith --- We can't wait to meet the Shugarbaby in person!

Gorgeous!