a monster sized flag in the centro, mexico city
bubbles during a book fair
street food we would like to eat but know we shouldn’t
Cooper I just returned from Mexico trip #1 of 3 in the next month. I hope my bowels can handle all the traveling. Hold on to yourself, this is kind of a long one:
Our time in Zihuatanjeo/Ixtapa was a bit of a roller coaster to say the least. It poured rain for the first two days and then was beautiful, hot, and humid the day of the wedding we were to shoot. Actually, I had a revelation that I didn’t mind the rain because it wasn’t really a vacation for us…it was work. And rain is good to keep me/us inside and working rather than on the beach or in the pool. Thank someone above that it cleared up for the wedding, is all I have to say.
Cooper and I then thought we had to leave on Sunday so we got all our gear together and took a cab to the airport only to realize that our flight was scheduled for Monday. I don’t know what we were thinking except that maybe our brains were smart enough long ago to think that maybe we needed a day to recover before spending all day traveling…stupid smart brains. So, we went standby on a flight to Mexico City (which was scheduled to be stop #1 of 3) to try and get a little of the flying out of the way. Again, stupid brains.
We should have just stayed in Zihuatanejo where there are beautiful beaches and nice people. Instead, we decided to take an adventure into the center of Mexico City and explore. We excited about the notion of taking the $0.20/person metro rather than a $16 cab ride and the metro there was actually a lot of fun…we saw women carrying bags of chicken feet, clowns, and lots of people selling stuff that I don’t think anyone would ever buy. Then we walked around the centro and enjoyed the book fair, a mexican denny’s, zara, churches, a walk in the park, hot fudge sundaes, you know…the usual. We thought it would be smart to head back pretty early because we didn’t want to be out late (knowing that Mexico City had a reputation), but stupid us.
As we were getting on a somewhat crowded metro train to go home, three guys teamed up and were super aggressive in pushing us on the train. I thought to myself, “Allison, they are very aggressive and the train isn’t that full. Something is weird.” Then they took off. Cooper checked his side pocket. All was ok. Cooper checked his back pocket and his wallet was gone. We rain off the train and Cooper tried to get the guys (who got on the train behind us) to give him his wallet, but it was a lost cause. It was of those “doh!” moments where you can’t shake off the recent events…they just keep replaying in your head and you think about what you should have done. Luckily, Cooper didn’t loose much, just dignity, all his credit cards and our cash (I had $2.00 on me). Of course, when you try to save a buck by taking public transportation you end up loosing 100 times as much. At least we didn’t get hurt in the process…it was just one of those weak moments and we have learned some good traveling tips for the future.
This is what it felt like when the shenanigans were happening:
The feeling of having your wallet stolen does this to your brain
The wallet situation was just another low after all the ups and downs on the trip. Then it went up again. As I was getting some Reese’s Pieces in Phoenix and talking to some tall Swedish guy about my Swedish mafia t-shirt (efficient but deadly)…Cooper got an e-mail that he was going to be featured on DailyCandy for their quarterly wedding guide! The little snippet about him is here. Amazing what a little free marketing can do. The next day he had about 6 or 7 times as many hits to his website and inquiry after inquiry after inquiry. However, this event resulted in lots of loss sleep for the guy. He didn’t go to bed until 3am or later each night in an attempt to answer e-mails/edit photos/put albums together. He is a machine. I would like to try and schedule an actual non working vacation for the guy, but I quite honestly don’t know if there is ever a weekend when we/he won’t have something we/he have/has to be doing. Holy moly.
All photos were taken by Cooper. I would love to claim them as my own, but I have to be an honest lass.
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An unrelated but great side note: one of my MaLu totes was featured on the At Whit’s End blog. I love her aprons…if only I cooked.