Una Noche Perfecta

So, what shall we do on Sunday? We slept late. I still had a nap in the afternoon.

Overnight sleep is earned income. It’s a crummy paycheck of rest after you punch out of your weary daily timeclock. Various taxes on your time are taken out of the balance: A neighbor’s barking dog, the trash truck at an uncommon hour, various bips and braps from your phone.

I prefer naps. They’re like stolen sleep. All honest people will admit that anything stolen is sweeter than anything earned. Me and the cat decided it was 95 degrees, and running a marathon was out of the question. We passed out on the bed under the first ceiling fan that’s ever done me a good turn.

When night begins to fall, you put on your guayabera, and you can walk in the breeze to la iglesia. We went to the church in Santiago. La Parroquia de Santiago Apóstol. Santiago is one of the apostles, better known as James to norteamericanos.

The church is older than sin, almost. Finished in 1637. The mass was in Spanish, and my spanish is no bueno, but if you don’t recognize the Pater Noster in any language, you should go to confession and beg for forgiveness, or maybe alms for Spanish lessons.

So my wife was wearing a nice dress, and I was borderline presentable, so we went out into the starlight and wandered another ten or fifteen minutes down the calle to the Plaza Grande. There’s always something going on down there, but we’d forgotten that they dance the Cumbia in the street in front of the town hall every Sunday. This time, we did too.

The gringos mostly stay on the sidewalk and take pictures. The locals smiled broadly at us for joining in. My wife alternated between a huge grin and an equally huge grimace when I stepped on her feet, but all in all, quite a successful soiree. It’s the kind of dance you can learn by watching other people do it:

The explanation of the lyrics on that video is a hoot.

Then we walked across the park to Picheta, the best restaurant in town, I think. I haven’t eaten in all of them, so maybe that’s unfair, but I ain’t no monument to justice. No matter what the other restaurants put on their plates, only one will let you sit on the roof next to the governor’s palace and pester their bartender. They had three behind the bar when we arrived, but sent out for a fourth when they saw an Irish housepainter was in the house.

The food is dynamite at Picheta, too. We were only abusing our livers on Sunday, but we’ve eaten there before. I’ve had this, for instance:

Butter-and-rosemary aged beef steak, sauté of truffled mushrooms and tree spinach served with mashed potatoes
$ 560.00

I realize that in Boston or New York, you can actually pay $560 for a steak, but to avoid confusion, I guess I should clue you in that Mexico uses the dollar sign for pesos. A peso is about a nickel, so that steak is about 32 bucks American. You can’t get a glass of water in a Ruth Chris steakhouse for 32 bucks. At Picheta, it’s about the most expensive thing on the menu, in one of the poshest restaurants in town. If we’ve chosen a place to live unwisely, the unwisdom of it hasn’t slapped me in the face yet.

This is the view standing in front of the restaurant entrance looking the opposite way from the last photo:

We live in a neighborhood (colonia) called Santiago. It’s an older part of the city. We can walk to the Plaza Grande in about twenty or thirty minutes. It’s fun to walk home in the cool of the evening (78 degrees), the starlight and the streetlights taking turns keeping us company, after una noche perfecta.