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Sunday, June 30, 2013
Hello everyone.
I have made a few improvements to our website and added one extra page for you to see the reservation schedule for Casa de Ambar. It is very reliable calendar the courtesy of Google.
You can login to see it at: http://bestbedandbreakfastinmerida.com/calendar.html
Monday, June 10, 2013
Our new website is up and running :)
http://bestbedandbreakfastinmerida.com/
Here is our new and updated website, where you can see the house, plenty of photos as well as reservation form if you would like to stay with us and explore the wonderful town of Merida.
Please leave my some feedback if you have any interesting observations, suggestions or just to say hola!
see you in town
Mariusz
Here is our new and updated website, where you can see the house, plenty of photos as well as reservation form if you would like to stay with us and explore the wonderful town of Merida.
Please leave my some feedback if you have any interesting observations, suggestions or just to say hola!
see you in town
Mariusz
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Hola everyone,
Casa de Ambar, our Mexican home in Merida is still being rented as a whole, but my car trip south is coming soon. September 15th this year we are initiating a "Bed & Breakfast" and welcoming new guests from all over the world.
Here is an article written cheerfully by my last guests who left last week after enjoying great seven days in our home. Some of you might find the use of F-word offensive, but I hope it won't spoil your reading. Looks like they had a great time and some strong words only add to the expressiveness of what Merida has to offer. Here is the whole article with the pictures.
Casa de Ambar, our Mexican home in Merida is still being rented as a whole, but my car trip south is coming soon. September 15th this year we are initiating a "Bed & Breakfast" and welcoming new guests from all over the world.
Here is an article written cheerfully by my last guests who left last week after enjoying great seven days in our home. Some of you might find the use of F-word offensive, but I hope it won't spoil your reading. Looks like they had a great time and some strong words only add to the expressiveness of what Merida has to offer. Here is the whole article with the pictures.
Did you ever have a dream where you were playing a new video game and drinking a two liter bottle of cream soda and eating a fresh pizza for breakfast? And then when you woke up you realized it was Saturday and you could live that dream because you are a grown-up and no one can tell you what to do? I just spent a week in Merida, Mexico, and my life was living a dream.
(My friends gave me permission to use their pictures so don't freak)
SEXPAND
Last week I was in Mexico with four friends, which I will call Jay, Aye, Aytch, and Ess. The above picture is me standing in front of the building right in front of the one we rented. Merida looks like it was at one time a prosperous city but now has a lot of abandoned buildings in all the neighborhoods. I wondered what happened to the city, and what sort of industries it had before. Being from San Francisco, I would have expected this sort of urban decay to come with a healthy share of crime, but that's not the case with Merida. There seems to be a secret public service announcement to "be nice to tourists" because everyone was super nice, even though we weren't in a super built up tourist location.
SEXPAND
Though the front of the house we rented was humble, the inside was a fucking palace. The five of us payed less than $200 each for the week, which feels criminal. The weather was tropical and humid so I spent a lot of my time goofing around in the pool in the court yard. During the day we could see iguanas doing sun salutations on the roofs of other buildings and in the night geckos crawled on the ceilings (btw, I want to try to eat iguana, anyone have any recipes?).
Every day we would wake up and ask: what do we want to do today? Hang out in town? See some ancient ruins? Swim in a cenote? (that is a fancy Spanish word for really deep pond in a cave that is probably full of human remains from the Mayans). We did whatever the fuck we wanted.
SEXPAND
Here are Jay and Aye in front of Chicken Itza (pronounced "chicken pizza" (not really)). This was an amazing site that still had skull carvings all over the place and was full of iguanas. It was a lot more touristy because there were all sorts of folks trying to sell us hammocks.
SEXPAND
This is me in another section of the same city. The repaired parts have concrete because its not like they are trying to hide where they had to reassemble the fallen parts. In this city we weren't allowed to climb on anything.
SEXPAND
Afterwards we went for a swim in this cenote which was supposedly 60 meters deep. You can't see it in this picture but there was a walk way where you could jump into the pool from thirty feel up. I jumped in once with Aye but that was enough for me because I hate heights and pools of water that are unreal deep with human skulls at the bottom and probably full of anacondas.
So anyone remember when I was talking aboutshaving my head? The women on this trip are the ones that talked me out of it. I was still threatening to do it because it was balls hot so my friends tried to cut my hair on their own. I was in a powerful position in that if I didn't like it, I would just shave it off anyway. My friends think I made them sound like bitches in my original post, so if they read this I'm sorry about that. You guys are very much not bitches.
SEXPAND
The operation was a success, but part of the agreement was that I would get to shave Aye's beard the way I wanted, which turned into this:
SEXPAND
Which brings us to the Merida zoo. Reviews online said shit like, "if you like animals, this place is sad," but the truth is that this was the best fucking zoo any of us have ever been to. First point: its free. Second point: so many fucking big cats. Third point: all animals so close you can touch them. Lets face it, all zoos are kind of sad. They are prisons for animals that have committed no crimes. But as long as you acknowledge that, some zoos are better than others, and Merida is the best.
SEXPAND
HIGH FUCKING FIVE, TIGER GATEWAY.
SEXPAND
I'M A GROWN WOMAN, IMMA RIDE A MERRY-GO-ROUND IF I WANT!
SEXPAND
I'M A FUCKING REBEL I DON'T GIVE A SHIT.
Anyway, the whole week was one of the best in my life. My friends were awesome, the food was always great, and the weather, even when it was flooding the streets with typhoon rains, was always a blast. I really wish I was still in Mexico.
ETA:
SEXPAND
I gained a bit of weight on this trip, fucking sue me.
SEXPAND
I still wish I knew what happened to this town. Maybe I buy I house here because its so cheap.
SEXPAND
Aye weighs about 40 lbs less than me but he has baboon strength. They had these benches every where but we never defeated one another arm wrestling.
LDiscuss
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
In Merida, every weekend is a holiday
Here is today's article in Montreal Gazette about Merida, city I am proud calling my home.
Sunday festivities at Plaza Grande MERIDA, Mexico - A man in a white tank top, black drawstring shorts and flip flops drags a beat-up bike from the front room of an abandoned house on a wide boulevard lined with mansions. For 30 pesos, less than $3, the rusted, one-speed "Cherry"-brand bike is mine for the next two hours. I pedal along the Paseo Montejo, passing pastel-coloured mansions, once the homes of wealthy plantation owners, now the headquarters for banks, insurance companies and car dealerships. A group of children play a game of Twister on the sidewalk. Others join an impromptu art class, dipping their fingers into jars of paint set out on card tables in the street. A girl cruises by in high-top pink tennis shoes with a matching pink tricycle. Then comes a mother and her two daughters on a white three-wheeler the size of a washing machine. Along the "Bici-ruta" (bicycle route), three miles of city streets closed to auto traffic on Sunday morning, no one wears spandex. No one owns a fancy racing bike. No one bothers with a helmet. Weekends are family time in Mexico, and no city seems to celebrate them with more gusto than the Yucatan’s capital of Merida. Free musical and folk-dance performances take place around town nearly every night, but the whole city, it seems, turns out for an all-day street carnival called "Merida en Domingo" - Merida on Sunday. The party gets a jump start on Saturday night with musical performances in several locations, then builds to a crescendo on Sunday with dancing in the Parque Santa Lucia and the region’s largest Mayan handicraft market on the Plaza Grande, the site of the ancient Mayan city of T’ho. It’s all free, and as with any good party, everyone’s invited. Some highlights: -Noche Mexicana: Local dance groups perform and craft and food vendors set up stalls Saturday nights in a park at the top of the Paseo de Montejo. Named for the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Montejo, who founded Merida in 1542, the boulevard is sometimes called Merida’s "Champs-Elysees" because of its wealth of 19th-century buildings such as Palacio Canton, home to the Anthropology & History Museum. I found a table on the patio of the Tala Bistro in the Hotel Casa San Angel, the former home of a well-known mathematician, now an antique-filled boutique inn. On the menu was a Yucatan specialty, Sopa de lima (lime soup), and fajitas made with hormone-free beef. Locals gathered around red plastic Coca-Cola tables for cold drinks made with rice milk and tacos filled with shaved pork cooked to order by the street vendors. The concerts are free, and there are plenty of folding chairs, but arriving early is essential. It was standing-room only by the time the costumed dancers took to the stage at 9 p.m. -Corazon de la Merida: "In the Heart of Merida" is another Saturday-night celebration, this one on Calle 60, a narrow main drag, and the side streets surrounding Plaza Grande in the 470-year-old city’s historic center. Towering above the shade trees is the 16th-century Cathedral de San Ildefonso, built by the Spaniards with stones from Mayan pyramids. I watched a lone man sitting on the curb playing a saw as if it were a violin, then peeked in at a classical-guitar concert in the Teatro Peon Contreas, a hall that could be mistaken for a museum with its marble staircase and frescos by Italian artists. Vendors came by with caramel apples and pink and yellow cotton candy on a stick. A clown kept the crowd entertained with a dance routine that called for the audience to mimic his and a partner’s moves. "Dancing with the Stars" it was not, but still lots of fun. -Merida en Domingo: The all-day festivities begin at 8 a.m. when the streets along the Bici-ruta close to traffic, then continue through the afternoon and evening with musical, comedy and dance performances at various locations. I was in awe of a woman in a tight, pink dress, red-sequined sunglasses and white sandals staying cool in the 90-degree heat while dancing with her partner for nearly an hour on a bandstand in the cozy Parque Santa Lucia, once a stagecoach stop, now the site of a weekly antiques and crafts market. People-watching is best from the terrace of La Dulcera Colon, a century-old ice-cream parlor across from the Plaza Grande. The air smells of roasted corn, vanilla milkshakes and grilled pork. Women from the nearby Mayan villages stroll shaded walkways with handwoven blankets and scarves draped over their arms, hoping to convince tourists to lighten their loads. Most afternoons folk dancers in crisp white shirts and colourful dresses take to the streets for traditional dances performed in village fiestas called vaquerias. Linger long enough and you might get lucky as I did and see a troupe doing "La Danza de la Cabezade Cochino," the dance of the pig’s head, a traditional ceremonial dance in which the head of a barbecued pig (made of plaster these days) is passed around on a platter balanced on the heads of the male dancers. IF YOU GO: WHERE: Merida is the capital of the state of Yucatan. It’s located between the ruins of Chichen Itza and Uxmal, and makes a convenient base for visiting both. Nearest airports are in Merida and Cancun. LODGING: -Hotel Julamis, boutique B&B with eight rooms and a rooftop garden in a 200-year-old building halfway between the Paseo de Montejo and the historic center. Doubles, $40-$75 including breakfast. See www.hoteljulamis.com. -Hotel Casa San Angel, elegant antique-filled inn with restaurant on quiet square near the Paseo Montejo. Doubles starting at $108. See www.hotelcasasanangel.com. MORE INFORMATION / SAFETY: Merida is celebrating its 470-year anniversary this year of its founding by Spanish conquistador Francisco de Montejo. Check a schedule of upcoming cultural events and find tourist information at Yucatan Today, www.yucatantoday.com Mexico remains under a U.S. State Department travel warning; however, Merida is not on any of the main drug trafficking routes, and so far has been spared from drug-related violence. Details at travel.state.gov. |
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