CHAPTER 21A. MEXICO-GUADALAJARA

Mexico is a good place to be when the weather is foggy and cool in Sacramento, as it is during most of December and January, so we contemplated spending some time there after we retired. A student in Betty’s adult “English as a Second Language” class told her “Oh teacher, you must go to Guadalajara, it is so beautiful!” Based largely on that recommendation, we made our first trip there in January, 1979 and Betty’s parents were courageous enough to accompany us.

We select the Malibu Hotel from the AAA Mexico Travel Book and make advance reservations for one week. It is a pleasant place with nice gardens, but we have to change rooms because the first night we are right under the night club and it is very noisy until the wee hours of the morning. We look at other places and move to the Caribe Motel a few blocks from the Plaza del Sol. It has a swimming pool and a kitchenette, so we only have to eat one meal each day at a restaurant. We do more looking and move to the small Marquise Suites hotel in a good residential area east of the Minerva Circle near Ave. Vallarta and stay for the rest of our 4 weeks.

Guadalajara is indeed a beautiful city, the weather is advertised as “eternal spring”, and the days are “shirt sleeve” warm during the winter. It is about 5,000 feet high and with low humidity it is cool in the shade and at night. Small hotels and suites don’t have heat, so the best orientation is with a south facing window where the sun will warm the room and a curtain will keep it from getting too hot. The Marquise Suites doesn’t have this south exposure, and it is quite chilly; Betty’s parents keep warm with the kitchen oven on and door open. We still haven’t found the right place to stay, but enjoy the city otherwise and plan to return.

In January of 1980 we return to Guadalajara with our longtime friends Gregg and Mary Jane Myers. We have flight problems on the way; our early morning flight from Sacramento to L.A. is canceled because of fog. We are able to get on another flight and just catch the L.A. to Guadalajara plane, but our luggage doesn’t make the change, and we do without clean clothes for several days before it finally arrives. We stay at the Caribe Motel this time, but find the Andrea Suites on Ave. Vallarta a few blocks east of the Minerva within a week and move there.

The Andrea is not luxurious, and the furniture isn’t very comfortable, but it is clean, has daily maid service, the south side suites are well warmed by the sun, and with rent control it is very inexpensive. The people we meet there that return every year are the reason we like it so much. Many are from areas much colder than Sacramento, and they stay from October to April, while we go for only 6 to 8 weeks right after Christmas. There are a dozen, or more, couples who are very sociable and have frequent parties to eat, drink, and talk. We often go to restaurants, plays, etc. together and also play bridge with several of the couples. We return to the Andrea every year thru 1991.

Gregg and Mary Jane go with us to Guadalajara for two more years; then they buy a time share in Mazatlan and afterwards spend the winters there. Gregg and Glenn develop a margarita formula we use daily for sun-downers on our balcony; we like the “margarita especial” served at the No Name Restaurant in Tlaquepaque, but they won’t tell us their formula so we experiment with combinations of tequila, controy (Mexico’s Cointreau), and fresh lime juice until we are satisfied with the taste.

The margarita formula we use is one part lime juice, two parts Controy, and three parts tequila. Temperature is important; the mixture is kept in the freezer and the glasses are chilled there. The drink is served over ice cubes, sipped slowly, and we don’t recommend more than one. The drink is so good we planted a lime tree at home and now keep a margarita supply for special occasions in the freezer where it lasts for over a year. (We have since reduced the tequila portion to two parts, but still claim it is the “world’s best margarita”!)

There are many excellent restaurants in Guadalajara and we usually eat out every day about 1 PM. The suite has a two burner gas stove, sink, and refrigerator so we fix breakfast (always including papaya) and an evening snack of tomato, cucumber, and avocado. Good supermarkets are close; fruits and vegetables are inexpensive and of excellent quality. Jicama is plentiful, and with lime juice squeezed over it, and a little salt, goes well with our margaritas.

The favorite restaurant at first is Pierrot’s, a French restaurant owned by Pierre Dhainaut, an émigré from Paris. We don’t become acquainted with Pierre at first, but later he opens Le Restaurant de Pierre in a residence only a few blocks from our suite and we get to know him well as we eat there 2 or 3 times a week. In the early days at Pierrot’s a very charming maitre ‘d treats the ladies like royalty, and adding in excellent food we are brought back often. Specially delicious is a marinated hearts of palm salad, but Mexican portions are huge and we soon learn to order one salad divided between two people, or in Spanish “una ensalada para compartir”, to accompany our entree. Very often we can’t finish the entree and ask for it to be prepared to go.

The restaurants open for lunch at 1 PM, but most patrons don’t arrive until after 2; similarly the normal supper is after 9 PM. When Pierre opens his new “Le Restaurant de Pierre” we usually arrive at one and find him seated at a table, some times with his two teen age sons. He entices us to eat new dishes by giving us a sample, such as fresh oysters which are even better than those we remember from Maryland during the war. Most of the time we order fish, which is always fresh and deliciously prepared. We ask if he can get us sweet breads, and one day he says he will have them for us tomorrow; when our friends at the Andrea hear about it we show up with eight people wanting to order them. Unfortunately we misunderstood, and he has only enough for 3 orders, so we don’t get our favorites this time! He has an excellent chocolate mousse and even tho we are always too full for dessert, we often order one mousse with two spoons.

We have two favorite Italian restaurants; Recco’s is formal and the Trattoria is informal. Recco’s is in a big old mansion near the American Consulate; favorite dishes here are chicken Kiev, and veal scaloppini. The Trattoria is very popular with the large American retired community and “snowbirds” so there is usually a crowd waiting to enter when it opens; they have a good salad bar and our favorite dish here is the barbecued kabob of shrimp.

There are many other good restaurants that we go to in addition to our favorites, above. Among them are the No Name in Tlaquepaque, the Camino Real Hotel, and Sanborn’s. At the No Name one eats al fresco, exotic birds wander, and the women are serenaded; Perry Como once filmed a Christmas show from here.