Whose barn, what barn, my barn

Mexico city is not without it's pitfalls. There's traveler's stomach, kidnappings, and as I now know from the 13th morning, earthquakes. For the first time in my life I regreted getting upgraded to a high floor with a view. All in all thursday night/Friday morning's earthquake 'shook me up' a little. Despite being a california resident for a number of years, I've managed to dodge any serious tremors and at most just gotten a little annoyed from the shaking. However, at about 01.30 on the mroning of friday the 13th I got me a little bit of a scare. I woke with the feeling of being shaken and found, no it wasn't my lady love waking me up for snoring, but the entire building shaking at jerry lee lewis proportions (get the title yet?). Wasn't a serious quake, but let me tell you when you're on one of the top floors of a building on rollers or hydraulics you get enough movin to shake up the minibar and knock the water from the desk on to the floor ( damn those glass voss bottles, and damn the stone tile floors!). This was the first time I was actually scared enough to jump into a doorway in case of ceiling collapse, and I woke up for every aftershock. Despite the shakin, I still had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at the office at 8am, btw that means I woke up at 5am regular (PDT) time. Suffice to say next time I'll take the room without the view.

On the road again

Once more into the breech, yes I'm traveling for work again. This time it's a lot easier since it's on this continent I get to come back for weekends, but traveling to Mexico City is not without digestive pitfalls, and unfortunately cipro came into play as Moctezuma exacted his revenge. On the plus side I did have some amazing meals when I was down there. The biggest standouts were two different sets of duck tacos. At Izote ,a contemporary Mexican fusion restaurant in Polanco on the Mexico City equivalent of Rodeo Dr, I had these super rich duck mole tacos. The mole was sweet and heavy, and the duck was juicy and tender. The food was great, but the experience was fantastic since he restaurant had the kind of service you can only get in developing nations. Every 2 minutes or so the corn tortillas would be replaced with a new piping hot set whether I had eaten any or not. There was also someone basically just hovering outside of eyesight in case we should want anything.


The second great set of duck tacos were at a lunch place near the old tibco office in reforma area. They were duck carnitas with a healthy amount of chopped onion and cilantro. I was a little surprised with both since I don't consider duck to be traditionally Mexican food, but both meals were the kind of delicious where you can't help but thinking about it the day after.