The Honeymoon: Dinner at Hacienda Sisal

Food, glorious food.

Dinner, man. I love it. I love dinner so hard. Now, I'm not saying I don't enjoy the other two meals of the day and, as any New Yorker can tell you, weekend brunch is pretty much a sacred rite around these parts, but if I could only eat once a day for the rest of my life you know I'm choosing dinner. I would (and do) wait all day for that ish.

So, naturally, the dinners Dan and I had on our honeymoon were affairs to remember. One of our favorites - and, oddly, one of the few restaurants in Cancun that actually served authentic Mexican food - was at Hacienda Sisal.

Firstly, let me say this: Cancun was developed as a tourist playground and there are pros and cons to this approach. Pros: Cancun is very safe, clean, and easy to navigate. The beaches are gorgeous and the nightlife is varied and exciting: clubs to dance all night in, 5-star restaurants to satisfy any Top Chef, casinos to gamble to your heart's content, and bars that offer up not just super-sized but VACATION-SIZED drinks in a rainbow assortment of liquors. (Vacation-sized = you're pretty much getting a fishbowl's worth of margarita down your gullet. Yum.)

And then there are the cons, which are really only one (but it's a big one): if you're looking for authentic Mexican culture . . . this ain't it. It's kind of like going to Las Vegas (land of the android casino) and then saying you've "seen the States." Or going to Paris and saying you've "done Europe." Yeah, no. Sorry I'm not sorry. And before we get snippy in the comments, let me just say: there's nothing wrong with Vegas! Lord knows I love me a little gambling! (Remind me to tell you some day about the time I won $1,500 from an Aruban slot machine.) I think there's room enough in this world to enjoy both vacationing and traveling, and there's nothing inherently wrong with preferring one over the other. I happen to love both.

Anyway, before I went off on my little tangent, I was telling you how Hacienda Sisal is as close as we got to the real McCoy. The architects who built it took a page from centuries past and built a beautiful replica of a Mexican estate home and painted it in dazzling sorbet colors. The interiors are covered in murals of the surrounding desert landscapes, and the huge mahogany bar dates from the 1850s.

The restaurant hosts tons of events, and you can choose whether you want to sit in the area with a stage (dinner-theater style) or in a separate dining room. We chose the separate dining room, which was conveniently located next to a window that overlooked the stage so we ended up getting the best of both worlds: the quiet with which to enjoy our meal and the spectacular flash and pomp of a troupe performing traditional Mexican folk dances. (Which, ohmygodthecolors. How I failed to get photos of their spangled sparking rainbow outfits, I'll never know. I was mesmerized.)

Blurry en flambé!

And the food? Positively delightful. Dan had the prettiest bowl of roasted tomato and bean soup to start, then we each ordered enchiladas, and shared a dish of vanilla ice cream topped with strawberries en flambé to finish. My favorite part of the whole meal was when the chef actually came over to our table and created the dessert in front of us - the sherry that he tossed into the pan made a gigantic fireball, which was obviously awesome though my attempts to capture it are less so.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that summer is almost here and we should all eat more Mexican food because it's delicious and the universe wants us to be happy. Bye!

This is a big picture of strawberries en flambé. Because, you know,
 sometimes you need proof that you ate a meal and it was good.

Windows on the World: New Orleans

View from an alleyway: green shutters and fern-filled balconies
in the French Quarter.

The weather has a strange effect on me lately: a scent will catch on the breeze and I'm immediately overtaken with nostalgia for some place or another. Last week we had perfect spring days: it was bright and warm and sunny and the tulips were blooming beautiful yellows and reds and lavenders and I was struck with a vivid recollection of Paris' Jardin des Plantes and the perfect afternoon Dan and I spent there.

Black and red shutters in the Treme district.

Today is sticky with humidity, and the rainfall has left all living things lush and green. Here and there I'll catch a window box of live flowers, though my neighbors seem to prefer all things plastic, even their plants. My feet were soaked through by the time I got home, so I kicked off my shoes and put on a Bessie Smith album and decided it was time to sit with New Orleans awhile.  

Wrought iron and lace: Faubourg Marigny.

New Orleans is a place that speaks to my soul, maybe more than anywhere I've ever been. There is no reason for this, other than that it is a place with depth and mystery and mood and atmosphere. The food is good. The coffee is good. The people are good. New Orleans is one of the few places in this world that my heart physically aches for at times, along with Paris and Berlin and Portland and Aix-en-Provence.

A sorbet-colored home in Faubourg-Marigny.

There is something distinct, too, about the way people care deeply about their homes in New Orleans: colorful exterior and interior shutter pictures like the plumage of a tropical bird. Houses are painted at least two or three brilliant shades, with porches and balconies covered in hanging ferns. Modest cottages of Faubourg-Marigny or the Treme are treated with the same love and gentle care as the grand mansions of the Garden district - and, importantly, the same reverence for history.

Palms frame the entrance to this grande dame in the Garden District.

I try often not to wish for something other than what I have because, truly, I have more than enough. Days like today though . . . it's hard to not wish for a porch with a rocker to lazily push back and forth, a jazz band echoing from a bar nearby, warm air rustling through the Spanish moss of the live oak trees with a gin gimlet sweating in my hand, like they do down there, in New Orleans. 

"America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. 

Everywhere else is just Cleveland." 

-Tennessee Williams

(Sorry Cleveland.)

The Little Things

What you don't see in this photo is the mad scramble of cleaning
that happens immediately before it. 

We've been in our apartment since February 1st, though it's honestly taken until now for it to feel like home. It was only last week (!) that the final box was unpacked and the last few frames were hung on the walls, so I thought I'd give you all a little update on how our space is coming along!

There is a vast difference between our living room of yore ("yore" being, you know, March) and the one we have now. For instance: we now have a coffee table! Yay! No more precariously balancing our morning beverages on a footstool, or setting them on the floor and then inevitably tripping on them and spilling coffee/juice everywhere. (This happened more times than I can count. We went through an unfortunate amount of paper towel in those first few weeks.)

Thanks to the help of my very green-thumbed momma, we have two lovely window boxes: one of a few pretty pansies, and an herb garden that's coming along quite nicely! We've got rosemary, sage, peppermint, and English lavender that were already started for us, and I've been growing echinacea, cilantro, dill, and chives from seed - growing from seed is slightly more precarious but also more exciting: I was so proud to see my herb babies poke their little green heads out of the dirt. There is something deeply satisfying about gardening, even if it's for our tiny window pots and planters.

(Side note: I've gotten a few emails and comments wondering why Dan and I didn't move to Portland, Oregon as we'd been planning for, oh, months and months. The reason is that last summer I trained to become a certified yoga teacher and was able to stay on as a teacher with the studio I trained at and literally LOVE so we re-routed and are happy to be in NYC for the next year at least. Though after the miserable time we had finding an apartment - seriously, I've lived in New York my whole life and have had many apartments here and this time was easily the most competitive market I've ever experienced - we are likely to stay on for longer. For those who were wondering just how we planned to move our entire lives from the East Coast to the West Coast, the answer is: shipping pods! Friends of ours who moved from NYC to San Diego recommended them, and they seem to be the most cost effective way to move a large quantity of stuff long distance.)

It's been strange and exciting to have a space we call home - although we were only on the road for a year and a half, it was so easy to slip into a vagabonding lifestyle. We miss it often, as Dan and I are plagued with "itchy feet," but it's also been good for us to enjoy the simpler pleasures of having a place to ourselves: we love spending time in the kitchen together, cooking dinner or creating a new cocktail, or playing Scrabble while listening to a new record. And, after all those months of couchsurfing, I love being able to come home, plop down on the sofa, and, you know, hang out in my PJs without a bra on. Luxury!

It's the little things, guys. Really.

This home brought to you by the giant pile of dirty workout cloths balled up in the corner
where you can't see. #IfYouCantSeeItItsNotReal