Today’s orientation exercise was to explore neighbouring Barrio Santiago, located to the west of the Plaza Grande and a short walk from Santa Lucia.  Santiago is rather different from Santa Lucia in that it has wider, paved streets, is less touristy (not that the other barrios are that touristy) and has the odd modern building, dare…

We’re venturing further and further afield as we ease ourselves into Mérida life, conscious of course that we have three months here, so no point in trying to cram everything into the first few days! So this week is a week of orientation – wrapping our heads around the block grid layout with the Plaza…

Once you’ve pushed your way inside Mercado Lucas de Gálvez, you’ll find densely packed stalls heaving with fresh produce in a riot of colour and smells, though with a mask on the senses were a tad muffled. However, with the market as heaving as it was, I was happy to have the mask firmly on. …

This morning’s orientation exercise was the Mercado Lucas de Gálvez, one of the city’s many vibrant local markets. You know you’re approaching a market in Mexico when the streetscape becomes a touch rougher, a tad down at heel perhaps. Almost always there’s a sudden abundance of car part shops, chain-saw boutiques, plastic toy and sugary…

The Centro historical district of Mérida remains largely intact and surprisingly recognisable – the streetscape seems unchanged with its famous pastel-coloured colonial houses (including ours for the next 3 months – the pink house in the first photo) and grand white-washed limestone palacios, churches and elegant cobbled squares and intimate gardens. I guess what is…

We had a rather mammoth journey over to Mérida. First out of London with a strong wind chasing our tail over to Amsterdam, which resulted in one aborted landing and a 10-min nervous go-around. Thankfully we missed Storm Eunice, Dudley was already pretty hairy.  The new KLM Crown Lounge at Schiphol is really quite special…

We’re staying close to one of last remaining pockets of ancient woodland in Gipsy Hill with Norwood Park, one of the highest points in South London on our doorstep. The name Norwood is a reminder that it was once part of the dense forest of the ‘Great North Wood’ of Tudor times where Henry once…

Since we’ve been here the weather has been remarkably mild and calm. Hardly any rain (other than today of course, just as I’m writing this) – and for this time of the year in deepest darkest winter you’d have expected some miserable cold weather. It has been occasionally gloomy, chilly and overcast but, on the…

The Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in Kensington has to be one of the greatest museums in the world for Art & Design – it’s packed with an endless treasure trove of fabulous objects spanning thousands of years. And being London, it’s free! It has a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects, from Medieval…