Adam and Martha are expecting their baby in the next couple of weeks.  They are planning on having at least a week or two of “nesting” time with their little one before they invite company so we decided to have a quick visit.

We love visiting them and we love the neighborhood they live in – Condesa.  There are a couple of large parks and the walking path down the center of Amsterdam makes the whole neighborhood feel like a park, really.  There are large trees everywhere, and (unlike Mazatlán) the sidewalks are WIDE!  (In the picture above, notice PANTS, and SHOES, and JACKETS?  First time in a long time for us!)

There are tons of great restaurants, coffee bars, and hip places like the Hookah Lounge.  But it is a big city, and for the most part strangers don’t greet each other.  Condesa is an area with lots of dog owners and the dogs seem well loved and cared for.  Get a few miles away and street dogs are the norm.

Here’s a shop with a trendy wall out front:

Saturday we decided to go to the Jamaica Mercado because we had heard there was an area with salvage antique house parts.  Adam and Martha wanted to see if there were salvage wood vigas and we wanted to take a look so that we could tell our contractor back in Mazatlán about it.  The mercado was amazing, beautiful fruits and vegetables (the tomatoes looked nicer than ours back in Sinaloa) but the most stunning part was the flower market.  Below is a view from above that I liked, unfortunately no pictures of the flowers up close.  All the flowers were so inexpensive.  A huge bundle of tuberoses for example, for 30 pesos!

As we rambled along we came to the piñata area.  Wow.  Take a look at Adam and Martha with the piñatas, below:

We did find the salvage place finally, and it was like so many places I remember in the Pacific Northwest.  The most wonderful stuff for me was all the wrought iron.

We ate lunch at El Cardenal in Las Palmas.  What an amazing meal!  We had eaten in their restaurant downtown once, but this might have even been better.  They start you off with a cilantro/avocado/cheese salsa-ish dish and hot tortillas.  We ordered a number of appetizers – cheese with squash blossoms, duck tacos, and Martha and Paul’s favorite, escamoles (or ant eggs.)  They brought fresh hot tortillas many times throughout and even reheated the ant eggs when they cooled off as we slowed down.  Yum.

To continue our upscale afternoon we went to Polanco and I got to go to the yarn store, Crochet!  And they bought me some beautiful fuschia colored washable cashmere for my Christmas gift.  Can you believe how lucky I am?  The area with the yarn store was very fancy, with the men hanging around in Starbucks while the ladies shopped.  We took a quick look at the store Arroz con Leche.  They make gorgeous traditional Mexican clothing for children, providing work to the traditional weavers, but updating the styles to be desirable to modern people.  Expensive but gorgeous, and such a good thing to be using the traditional artisans for modern styles.

Later that evening we went to the mall to get a few final things Martha needed to have in place before she has the baby.  As we walked along we saw the kiosk below…yes, you had better believe it that México is very modern in some ways.  At these kiosks you can take care of most of your governmental needs.  Pay property taxes, get printouts of deeds, and many other things.  Nice!

After siestas we decided to order pizza for dinner, and hang out at their place playing dominoes and talking.  We made a friendly wager about when we each expect Martha to have the baby…I said the 19th, and I think the latest anyone guessed was the 24th.  She is due the 30th but none of us expect her to be that late.

December and January are very smoggy and dry in DF and so we were happy to get home to the clean moist air of Mazatlán!  (Above is a picture of the smog out the airplane window.)  But we’ll be back soon, when our little granddaughter joins the family!