Day 3: Lonches and more cobblestones

In spite of extensive post-prandial napping Monday, we slept long and hard. David did mumble something about getting up to make coffee at 4 a.m., but I persuaded him that 4 is much different from 5 or 6, and we both managed to wrest a few more hours' sleep out of the night.

When I say it is tranquil here, I have to acknowledge some exceptions. There is a particularly mellow rooster with an internal clock problem who crows pretty much most of the morning. Then at odd intervals we hear people shouting with megaphones. Sometimes the shouter is female, and it sounds like one of those are-we-having-fun-yet public spectacles. Most of the time, though, it's just a guy in a truck selling something: bottled water, gas, fruit...

Then there is the relentless birdsong and the odd clicking noises the hummingbirds make. It's a tough job, but someone has to listen to that stuff. ;-)

I have taken to lounging about the place, still dressed in pyjamas, during the period immediately after breakfast. This is the wrong approach, probably, as you will see. By the time it seemed reasonable to go out and scrounge a bite to eat, the day had turned quite warm. The main street is only a block up the hill from us, though we get surprisingly little noise from the traffic. David led me purposefully past a couple of delicious-looking holes-in-the-wall to a place called Danny's, where he had breakfasted on his last trip. The menu held all sorts of enticing things (including something made ostensibly of cheese, eggs, and jam, but when we flipped the menu we discovered it was actually ham they were talking about), but the true bargains were in a category called "lonches." Now, I would hate to spoil my amateur status by actually looking the word up. It appears to be a cognate of lunch, but that's always a risky thing to assume. David told me that prior "lonches" he had experienced were a sort of pre-packaged picnic style meal, such as a cold quarter of chicken. My carne asada lonche turned out to be grilled meat with onions and tomatoes in a freshly baked roll, somewhat sweeter than you might expect to get at a US deli. His pork version was the same. Ironically, Danny's is located directly across the street from a Subway. David assures me there is also a Señor Sushi chain.

I suggested we acquire a supply of lunch ingredients, so that we could eat in the relatively cool comfort of the B&B during the hottest part of the day, then go out to dinner in the evening. So we picked up some sliced ham, local (pot-type) cheese, and tomatoes from a small shop. I managed to remember what little Spanish I had, and we did fine.

The meal at Danny's had been lovely and just enough, and I didn't feel too tired yet, so we decided to press on to the Pharmacia Guadalajara, source of all the little things we felt we needed. Of course, it wasn't quite as close as David remembered, but we kept pushing on, past among others a restaurant that promised: filet mignon: big base ball. Huh?

Perhaps I should explain at this point that I was feeling a little frustrated. Normally, I am the one who obsessively plans the trip, poring over multiple purchased and library books until I have a good idea of various spots we would want to seek out, including restaurants to try, and so on. And I always have at least one good map, if not more than one for specialized purposes such as public transportation. This trip I pretty much walked into blind, and I managed to leave David's little real estate company map in Elliott's car on Monday. So I was starting to feel a bit crabby and disoriented because of that. Fortunately, David was able to find a few decent maps by ducking into various real estate agencies on our way (you can't throw a rock around here without hitting one), so by the time we were ready to head back from the pharmacia I was able to get a bit more familiar with our surroundings. We ended up taking a bathroom/rehydration break at the same restaurant where we had lunched before, so I was able to take pictures.

A common beverage here is an agua fresca, which is like a diluted smoothie, I guess. It's a really smart thing to drink, because you really need to be constantly rehydrating yourself. Needless to say, beer and margaritas, though providing a delightfully anaesthetic effect, are diuretics, and so at least in the middle of the day they are THE ENEMY. As it is, I feel like more of a drunk than ever, surrounded as I am by former alcohol and other substance abusers who are now living the clean and sober life.

The way home was, again, torture, even without benefit of alcohol, and when I took my shower after a brief nap I could taste the salt on my face. Still, I was motivated enough to go out again to replenish my liquor suppy--I had decided it was stupid to drink whiskey when I'm in the very country and even province where tequila is produced, but finding an appropriate mixer is something of a challenge. For the short term I picked up a bottle of fresca, which is okay.

The book Elliott lent me is The Hour of the Cat by Peter Quinn, and I am enjoying it so far.