el crispito

On the good side, the Hotel Camino Real has wireless (for $10 USD a day) that works in the lobby. It comes and goes in the room so much that it isn't worth trying. Even in the lobby, every fifth click on a link takes you to a page for their service provider so that you have to back up and try again.

We ate at the hotel restaurant yesterday for lunch, where I ordered a pasta alfredo, forgetting until Shawn reminded me, that in Mexico, alfredo always includes pieces of ham. I was able to stop the waiter in time to get it without the ham, but it arrived with tons of mushrooms. Blech.

We went to the bus station to buy our tickets in advance, and we were hoping that we could take an executive class bus. We had read on the Estrella Blanca bus line that Turistar Ejecutivo runs between Tijuana and Guadalajara, but upon asking the ticket clerk we learned that there is no executive service whatsoever. That is a drag because we wanted the seats that recline all the way and the beverage service. Instead we're going to have to ride on a bus for 36 hours in seats that recline no more than those on an airplane, and Shawn simply cannot sleep sitting up. He's very annoyed about that, and I'm kind of dreading it myself, since I know he gets really cranky without sleep.

We had submitted a request for reservations at the Hotel San Francisco Plaza through their web site, starting on Friday. Yet to get in during daylight (the bus station in Guadalajara is not in the best of neighborhoods), we had to bump back our arrival to Friday morning. , soI sent a follow-up message to ask them to move our reservation to start on Friday. I have not received a reply from them about the first reservation request, but m. Many places in Mexico have online reservation systems that send them an email but they seem to check it maybe once a month. Hopefully if they receive the first request, they'll receive the other, but we may not have a reservation upon arriving in Guadalajara. Most likely, we won't actually need one, but it would be nice to know in advance. Oh well. That's definitely a drag about Mexico - reservations just don't seem to be something they handle well at hotels.

Now we're off to phone a guy we met last year in Guadalajara that was planning to return to Tijuana. If I can understand him over the phone (which proved mighty tough last year) and he's in town, perhaps we'll get together with him tonight.