I’ll be well on my way to the border this time in two weeks… I really have no idea where this winter went. 🙁

Having only an easy job to do this weekend, I planned my schedule so that I could go to Centro this afternoon for shopping and lunch and do a final run to Juárez tomorrow morning.

It is hot and muggy this week, but I’m not letting that stop me from living. The trick is to stay hydrated! So once I was done with work around noon, I dressed for town and headed out.

En route to the embarcadero I finally remembered to take a certain picture. Remember this house from last fall?

Here it is today:

What a difference paint makes!

First stop in Centro was the mercado since I wanted to buy some blouses. I went to my favourite dress shop, where the owner can be trusted to be honest about what styles and colours suit a customer best. What she first showed me was exactly what I wanted, but she pulled out other models so I could be sure. They are a bit too big for me, though, so she suggested that I find someone to put a few darts in the sides for me. Hopefully, the dressmaker I used earlier this winter will be available to do that for me this week. “My” price was $280 for one, $500 for two. I’ll probably pay about $100 to get them fitted correctly. Still a bargain for such high quality clothing! The pink one is the same shade as my pink dress, so I wasn’t going to get it, but the owner said that it’s my colour, something her assistant and several friends have echoed so I caved.

For lunch, I had thought to do a shrimp burger at Tony’s, but I’m really fastfooded out. So I bought a small agua fresca for the walk to the Water’s Edge Bistro for a nice lunch in their courtyard. They still have their lunch menu with several choices for $120 each, including a beer, limonada, or a soft drink. I opted for a limonada to stay well hydrated and asked for it sour. It was made perfectly and was very refreshing. For my meal, I succumbed to the lure of pesto (basil!) and Parmesan cheese to have their penne pasta with roast chicken. It was a bit of a heavy meal for the weather, but the flavours were most welcome and I liked how the chicken was diced and then caramelised on all sides. The food is so good at the Water’s Edge and the portion sizes are just right. It’s a nice spot for lunch when I’m tired of Mexican flavours.

I then wandered towards the water and popped in at the art museum to see if it might be open. I’ve been meaning to go for ages but knew that it’s tiny and not worth a special trip out. Well, it was open and admission was free!

The art was… strange. The museum only has a few rooms and the art just got odder and odder the deeper in I went. Here are a few things that caught my eye. None of these are the truly strange ones!

This one is called “night filled with love”:

Lovely landscape.

There were a lot of variations on this theme of dying and moving on to the next plane of existence.

There is something about this one that spoke to me for some reason, even if I wouldn’t want it on my wall!

The museum has those dark ceiling beams I love:

I liked these black and white pieces showing the harshness of poverty:

The courtyard of the museum had an interesting tree:

This is an exterior corridor off the courtyard:

And here’s the entrance, directly across from Macaw’s:

I eventually made it to the Malecón and caught this image of Mazatlán’s Icebox Hill with an iconic pulmonía in the foreground:

Found this house for sale that made me rethink my Mérida plans (*winks*):

I eventually found myself on Miguel Alemán, from which I turned left onto Carnaval to head back to the embarcadero. I popped into the gelato place I like, where they’ve up their price from $25 to $35, and got their delicious “Snickers” flavour (chocolate, peanuts, and caramel), then enjoyed it as I picked my way down several streets that were under construction to eventually end up on Constitución, which led me straight to the Emilio Barragán a few blocks from the embarcadero. I was done in by the time we got to this side and the final schlep home felt very long!