Short vacations are the best, a hot take
I love traveling but one of the downsides of leaving this continent is that the trip needs to be at least a week long. Timewise, those travel days are expensive. May I be so bold to propose that a long weekend in our hemisphere is the way to go. Only a two to three hour time difference. Minimal jet lag. February is a slow time at the wine lab = I took a series of fun long weekend trips and my houseplants are still alive.
Jamaica
I visited Carmen Sandiego, my friend from junior high at her new posting in Jamaica. January was so busy with work I didn’t have time to do a lot of nerd homework about Jamaica. Thankfully my travel buddy is also my personal diplomatic cultural attaché and she taught me how to say “Gud mornin” in the singsong patois. She drove us from Kingston to Portland - a part of the island with a ton of amazing natural beauty and not a lot of super touristy all inclusive resorts. We visited Frenchman’s Cove which was a dream of a white sand beach, we stayed at a hotel that is also a recording studio and we had a morning swim in the Blue Hole. It’s a deep lagoon surrounded by jungle foliage fed by a cold fresh water spring. There is almost no wave action and the fresh water forms a cold layer on top of the more dense and warmer Caribbean sea water. The water color is constantly changing from turquoise to aquamarine to teal to blue green. It was paradise to swim and float around in. We had the place nearly to ourselves, too.
Later that weekend, we ate jerk pork and chicken in Boston Bay and drank rum punch. I only got a little bit sunburned and saw a stingray within 30 seconds of putting on my snorkel gear. The Jamaicans we met were super polite and friendly, they actually said “respect” while they fist bumped us and on the receipts from the hotel, the words “One Love” were printed below the signature line. Bob Marley songs were constantly playing everywhere. But, there is a travel warning for Americans visiting the island so be careful.
My next trip was a quick weekend in Southern California visiting another friend from junior high and her family and then living my aunt life with my sister’s family playing keepie uppie and legos, starting herbs from seed, making insane tart limonada from her Meyer lemon tree and celebrating Lunar New Year with gf noodles. Auspicious year of the dragon.
Mexico City
The last trip of the month was crashing my friend Katelyn’s work conference to Mexico City. En serio, I love that city so much now I try to seize any opportunity to visit. I took myself out to the taco bar at Pujol which was very much a splurge $$$ and I tasted the famous Mole Madre made in a solera system started more than 9 years ago. The barman mixed a delicious margarita and it was fun to get a glass of Viognier from Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California with the seafood focused menu. Later in the trip, I went to El Molino de Pujol for breakfast and ordered the avocado taco which was a) incredible and b) $3 USD.
The Netflix show “Chef’s Table” season 2 featured Pujol’s chef owner Enrique Olvera - it is worth watching, I learned a lot about high-end Mexican cuisine. And the Netflix show “Somebody Feed Phil” also included Pujol and Rosetta in his Mexico City episode. The leafy Roma Norte neighborhood right around Rosetta is super beautiful to walk around with cute shops, bars and pretty restaurants.
En fin, I got to try a chicharron taco (more meaty than I expected, pretty yums) and ate lamb barbacoa tacos (earthy but very tender texture). Gracias a Dios, on this trip I was more educated about how to avoid gluten so at Contramar I ordered the aguachile without soy sauce or damn Maggi and later in the weekend, I scored a gf plate of buttery gnocchi with anchovy and broccolini at Rosetta - maybe the most beautiful restaurant I have ever been to in my life. Fun drinks with hoja santa and Condesa Gin were drunk at Licoreria Limantour and my friends and I enjoyed another very fancy very spendy dinner at Quintonil. Together, we drank a Patagonian Chardonnay from Bodegas Chacra which I thought was a lovely pairing with the course of striped bass tacos in grasshopper adobo.
In CDMX there are a zillion museums. This trip, I visited Museo Tamayo, Palacio de Bellas Artes and the Anthropology Museum where art historian Carlos from Airbnb experiences did a great job as my hired guide. The Bellas Artes had a show of color photography that was super interesting and that museum’s free audio guide was very informative about the murals by Diego Rivera and his students on the second floor.
I still want to see the work of Luis Barragan and visit this place called Tetelan and walk around the pyramids in Teotihuacan and have al pastor tacos at El Huequito and buy beautiful texiles from Chiapas and ceramics from Michoacan and Puebla … welp, I guess I’ll have to plan another long weekend trip!
Friday night, my friends had an extra ticket to the Lucha Libre wrestling event at Arena Mexico. Everybody including me thought this would not be my thing, but I had a fun time cheering and booing and chanting Mistico’s name. It was … something else.
Video and photo credits to Katelyn and Emily. Follow them on instagram @shesagourmande and @dirtyleftsock. Gracias amigas!
Viva Mistico! Viva Mexico! And cheers to short trips!