I went to bed on Monday not feeling great and woke up on Tuesday feeling worse, although I managed to sleep about 8 hours. My lingering cold was starting to feel like a sinus infection, and I could tell I had a fever as well. We stopped by a pharmacy before breakfast. There’s a pharmacy on every block it seems. I commented at some point that I don’t understand how they all stay in business. Ash says it’s because they sell Viagra, Cialis, poppers and steroids. He noticed the signage when we’d stopped in the one this morning. Well Ok then. They know their audience.

However, you can get antibiotics without a prescription and for that I am grateful. For 250 pesos, or about $13, we walked out with a course of amoxicillin and a strong cough syrup. I went back to the condo to take my first round and then met the guys for breakfast.

Across the street from our condo is Azul, a restaurant I discovered and enjoyed on my 2022 trip. Fred met us there at 8am and Jon joined just to visit on his way to a meeting.

Between not feeling great and still “chipped out” from the day before, I went for fruit, yogurt and granola, with a fruit smoothie instead of coffee. Ash had a salmon bagel. I’d ordered the side of bacon, but by the time we got our food Jon had left. The woman said “where’s Jon? I put extra bacon for him.” He’s a regular here.

After breakfast Ash went to join Jon at the meeting. I went back to rest. I decided to take advantage of the great weather and went up to the rooftop. This was my view for the next hour but mostly my eyes were closed. It was lovely.

Ash and Jon returned a little after 10am. We visited some then went to make massage appointments for today at a place I like that’s literally around the corner from our condo – one block down, one block over. Jon went on to meet a friend for a walk, and we walked over to the barber he recommended. We each got haircuts, wet shaves, trimmed eyebrows, waxed ears and nose for 1000 pesos or about $54. Total. Including tips. Back home it would have been more than that for just one of us.

I took Ash to the river area since we hadn’t been there yet. There’s an island in the river that has a lot of arts and crafts vendors, plus a beautiful park on the east end, which is where we ended up. A guy was playing with his dogs, above, and Ash went over to say “hi.” He’s missing Zeus.

We attempted lunch at a place I’ve been to before but it’s closed on Tuesdays, so we went instead to another place at our intersection, Fredy’s Tucan. I’ve passed by it probably hundreds of times but have never ventured in.

It’s actually very big. This is the front, there’s a huge section to my left in the back.

I ordered a juice drink again and tortilla soup sounded good because of the way I was feeling. In my head somehow it was a cup so was surprised when this huge bowl showed up. I also got a chicken salad. Ended up eating all the soup and took most of the salad to go. Ash had a shrimp salad. The food was good, the staff super nice, and reasonably priced. We’d come back.

We got back to the condo around 1:45 and didn’t leave again for about 3 hours, literally laying down and resting the whole time. I don’t think I actually slept, but that I remained horizontal and didn’t even have the energy to read or watch TV tells you something. But I was starting to feel better. Ash said we could cancel dinner but I was like “well, we still have to eat.”

The things you find when you’re looking for photos on Ash’s phone. He took this in the elevator going down for dinner and I didn’t realize it.

If you’re wearing a shirt with a collar, you’re dressed up. That works for us.

We went back to Trio, where we had been Sunday night. The original plan for Valentine’s was to go to Cafe des Artistes, but they had a prefixed menu that we didn’t want to do so are going Wednesday (tonight) instead. Then we decided we’d just leave it open and maybe eat at home because it would be crowded everywhere we went. When we were seated at breakfast, Ash decided it would be good to have a reservation somewhere and got the last table at Trio.

Notice the first balcony, which is where we sat on Sunday. When we walked in Ash asked about balcony seating and the guy laughed. “You just made a reservation this morning, some of these were made months ago. You’re on the roof.” Uh-oh. The way he said it didn’t sound good. If you look closely in the photo you can barely see there’s another balcony.

Turns out the rooftop seating was beautiful, as shown above.

They had us at this table that required you to literally squeeze through these iron poles to get to it; a few pounds heavier and we might not have made it! But we got our balcony seats and in some ways it was better than Sunday.

They had a prefixed menu as well – 4 courses, just a few options each, one price. Our total here was about $140. Overall, we weren’t as impressed with this meal as the one we had Sunday, but it was still good and a value at that price. Ash had a shrimp salad to start…

and I had the carpaccio again. Prepared a little different than the last one, still great tasting.

Ash had a Thai soup….

…I had a veal ravioli. As soon as they set it down, I smelled truffles, something I’m not a fan of. I didn’t notice that in the description. The veal ravioli was great but otherwise it confirmed I’m still not a truffles fan.

I had the filet mignon, but gave Ash the eggplant! I hadn’t noticed that either but it probably wouldn’t have changed my mind.

Ash had sea bass.

Dessert was the best course of the meal. Ash had the black forest cake. The waiter had this whole story about how it’s a favorite and was taken off the menu at some point but then put back on because of complaints of the patrons. It was very good.

I had a passion fruit cake with coconut ice cream and raspberries. Delicious.

This is Jose Luis, our super handsome waiter. I asked Ash “would it be creepy to ask for a photo of him?” Ash says “yes” but does it anyway :)> He didn’t seem to mind. I’d commented how all of the wait staff at this restaurant were men. We had this whole discussion at dinner where I realized that in all my trips here, I don’t ever consciously remember having a female waiter. Certainly not on this trip. I’ll have to start paying attention. Maybe it’s just another “they know their audience” thing (did we tell you that PV is super gay?) and probably nothing illegal about it here.

After dinner, we walked along the Malecon a bit to catch the sunset.

A perfectly timed shot above and below: a little boat sailing in front of the setting sun.

And that was our night. We were going to watch something streaming when we got back but nothing seems to be working in Mexico, although we had no problems in Costa Rica. Ash said we need a VPN or something. A problem to solve for another time. I got the photos uploaded here and we were in bed before 9pm.

Ash woke up this morning not feeling great so maybe he now has what I do. I’m feeling better but still not 100%. Will see how all that plays out today.