The reason is that ginormous supermarkets are all over the place and have vastly better selection.
A long, hot walk through Cancun
Amira and I walked 9.2 miles yesterday, and it was 90 degrees out. It wasn't too bad. We found shade wherever we could and took it pretty slow. Walking around a city is by far the best way to get familiar with a place. And it's great exercise, too.
My office today: the beach in Cancun
Work, work, work.
The simple trick for overcoming AirBnB’s biggest flaw
When people go on vacation, they might specifically know where they’d like to go. “Let’s go to Italy!”
As a nomad, I’m less particular about where, exactly, because I intend to live everywhere eventually. The real question is: when? Living nomadically affords the delicious luxury of opportunism. Rather than going to that one-and-only place, maybe I’ll look for extreme deals. Maybe I want to live in a treehouse. Maybe I want to live in an ancient farmhouse. Unfortunately, AirBnB blocks you from easily finding the location of your dreams. Read the rest of this post on Medium.
Cuban transportation 13 (a continuing series)
Everyone knows that horses are used by a huge number of Cuban farmers. But they even use horses in the cities, in this case to haul trash in Trinidad.
My office today: the Plaza Hollywood Starbucks in Cancun, Mexico
The joint is empty because I got here at 7am, opening time. I love this table because it's on a kind of loft peninsula.
Nomad product: the SleepSentinel portable smoke and carbon monoxide alarm
The SleepSentinel is a Kickstarter project to make these portable smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Great idea!
Mexican shrines 1
This one is in the park across the street from our house.
Mexican Costco is just like American Costco except Mexican Costco sells organic cactus
You can buy organic prickly pear cacti at Costco, which Mexicans call nopal.
We lucked out on this wonderful park
Amira booked us a great apartment in Cancun. What we didn't know was that there's a really cool park more or less across the street. It's a native habitat for Yucatan jungle flora, and has a long trail where we can walk and run. It has fitness equipment, too. Plus, on the other side of the park is a Costco, so there's that. ; )
My office today: a Mexican mall
I'm at Cafe Riviera at the Gran Plaza mall in Cancun, Mexico.
Our last apartment in Havana
Havana Vieja, actually (the old part of the city). This cost only about $26 per day, and we booked it through AirBnB. It was a great price, and the owner, David, was super helpful to us in 100 ways.
Hot dogs play an outsized role in the Cuban diet
You see hot dogs everywhere -- breakfast, lunch and dinner -- in Cuban meals. They're a huge item at the supermarket.
I suspect the reason is that they're cheap. And they're cheap probably because Cuba doesn't have other "cold cuts" type products to direct all the nasty, rendered animal parts to. So all the scraps go into hot dogs.
Here, they're served as complimentary bar food at a government brew pub in Havana.
Fortunately, I didn't pack any "white weapons"
This sign was in front of every airline check-in counter at the Havana airport.
I don't know what's going on here, but I'm pretty sure Santeria is involved
A chicken was sacrificed on the corner of the block where our Havana apartment is. The dogs have been pissing on this for two days.
Every day Ché sighting
Ché imagery is everywhere -- and I mean everywhere -- in Cuba. It's almost all part of the revolutionary canonization of the man, who is the revolutions' martyr. The thing is, the Ché imagery is all government propaganda. It's rare to see Cubans voluntarily displaying it.
(American flags, on the other hand, are constantly displayed in various forms by Cubans -- I'll do another point on that in the near future.)
My son Kenny took this picture at something like 3am in Havana.
My office today: the cafe in the lobby of the hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana
It's right across the street from a government WiFi hotspot.
How you know it's a Cuban wedding
Tail fins.
Look at this awesome restoration
Havana is famously crumbling into ruin. But there is a few (far too few) major and apparently successful restoration projects.
This one is in the middle of Havana Vieja.
As you can see, the facade on the right above the first floor looks beautiful. The corner edge and ground floor haven't been completed yet.
Dinner for two
Amira picked up this chicken dinner from the government-owned brew pub near our Havana apartment, and also made a salad from produce she bought at the local market.
It's not possible to get a salad anywhere near this big, fresh or good in restaurants. "Vegetable salads" in Cuban restaurants involves a tiny amount of shredded cabbage, a few tomatoes and a few cucumbers. Salad dressing is non-existent, but most restaurants give you mystery oil and industrial vinegar -- two or three of the high-end tourist restaurants did have olive oil imported from Italy.
Anyway, this salad was a real treat.