So the trip in Mexico has been good so far with my only two gripes being that everything is really far away and requires hours of car travel and the fact that I have been pretty nonplussed by authentic Mexican food. Other than that it has been fantastic and just what I needed as far as seeing my family for the first time in 7 years is concerned.
On the Day of the Dead or El Día de Muertos was something that was a big part of why it is that I decided to visit during the time of year that I eventually chose. Ok, that isn't entirely true: The fact that a friend of mine just happened to be visiting Da Nang, didn't have an apartment booked, and was willing to capable of looking after Nadi was the main reason why I chose this time, but Day of the Dead was definitely a close second.
Before we get to the festivities surrounding this very important Mexican holiday I want to showcase this very strange villa rental that my sister arranged for us in a part of the country I had never heard of. It is called Guanajuato and apparently this is one of the major cities that people will flock to for this important day. It isn't a huge city, but it is a historical one that has managed to preserve the architecture and there are rules about what sort of buildings and roads are allowed to be built here. This has many benefits, but one downside is that there aren't many buildings that can accommodate 7 people who are traveling with 3 dogs. That's right! My family is just like me in that we bring our dogs anywhere.
So the place that we ended up booking was kind of out of the city center where all the festivities were taking place because while we could have booked a hotel in the center, few of them allowed dogs and it would have been considerably more expensive. Even though my family has financial means, we do not waste them and never have.
Anyway, I don't know who was in charge of making this villa we stayed in, but it was flat-out weird.
The view from the street tells a bit of a story that you are not going to be staying in a typical rectangle house and things get more quirky as you get closer to the entrance. This is still Mexico, so of course the property is surrounded by prison-grade razor-wire.
The interior was going for style over function, which initially appealed to us.
High ceilings tend to appeal to me, but this in my mind was a waste of space. I suppose a place reaches critical mass and most people wouldn't need another bedroom but we were actually one bedroom short and one of us (me) had to sleep on the sofa. Thankfully, the sofa was actually more comfortable than most of the beds and I was located right in front of the TV and the router so things worked out in the end. Nobody had chosen that spot for me, I volunteered.
Almost nothing in this house happened at 90 degree angles and because of this, I feel as though a lot of the land was wasted. The master bedroom was so large that you could have played squash in it and while this might be a good thing to some people, nobody in my family really needs anything like this. Whatever, we thought it was funny.
There were also really long hallways that didn't even have rooms on the other side of them but could have and to us this was a waste of space. Perhaps I only noticed it as much as I did because space is at such a premium in super densely-packed Asia that everyone utilizes the space to its maximum potential.
Outside of the master bedroom there was also this "waiting area" that was complete with land-line phone that was connected to nothing. In fact, there were several land line phones located all throughout the property. None of them were connected to anything and to me this just screams "why?"
One very odd part of the house was the ground floor's only bathroom despite the fact that the ground floor occupies more space than the upper floor does. It was painted a rather ominous red, had windows too small for anything to crawl out of, there were no mirrors, the toilet didn't flush properly and it featured the only seriously heavy door in the entire interior. It also had a lock that engaged from the outside of the bathroom as well as inside. What were they locking in here?
The central thing that made very little sense to anyone was this "diving board" like platform that was on the 2nd floor that overlooked the living room.
I couldn't determine a purpose for this except perhaps to entice people to take photos there and post to IG, which none of us did. Here is a view from the bottom
I guess this is where the master of the house could address the peasantry in the mornings to dole out their duties for the day.
The backyard had nicely maintained gardens and this was great for the dogs. Oh and if you are wondering we do in fact, pick up our dogs' poo poo, even in a yard we are renting.
At the end of the day this place was nice because it was quiet and located on one of the highest points in the city and this lead to us having great views.
It wouldn't be until the main day of Día de Muertos that we would discover that this quaint and remote location would actually be a real thorn in our side. There is no one to blame here though because as it turns out this was actually the ONLY villa in the entire city that was large enough to accommodate all of us and allowed dogs in the entire city. It wasn't cheap either at nearly $1000 for the duration of the stay!