Mexico City

In the courtyard of the Casa Gonzales in the middle of Mexico City - the sky is gloomy, it's chilly and may rain any minute, but the internet doesn't work in the rooms so here I am. Annie and I got up at 5.15 a.m. this morning to catch the 6.30 bus, so wooziness is the word. We have left the sunny flowerland of San Miguel behind.

Had very little energy for touristing, so instead we took the Turibus, an open double-decker that tours the city - spent much of the afternoon alternately baking and cooling as we sailed about - the perfect thing to do when you had to get up at 5.15 after a mostly sleepless night. Some observations:
- Mexican women wear the highest heels I've ever seen, even in San Miguel where the streets were cobbled and treacherous. They hobble and totter about, barely able to walk. But I guess women do that all over the world. Mexican people are in general small - even in very high heels.
- A Canadian presence here - a lot of Sears stores, Ernst and Young, Scotiabank - and there's a Saks Fifth Avenue which now is Canadian, is it not? Street signs urge young people to "estudio en Canada."
- Limes go with everything. There are no lemons in Mexico, apparently at the decree of the King of Spain hundreds of years ago. But limes for days.
- Everyone smokes.
- People here love sushi. A huge billboard for a certain kind: "El sushi la mas Mexicana." The most Mexican sushi. That must mean sushi with lime.

Here comes the rain so it's indoors for me, and then off for dinner and perhaps another margarita. I realize that the one I had in San Miguel was like a slushie. I need the real thing.