Top of the World

I have been largely missing lately as you may have noticed.  A friend and I went on an adventure.  We went to a lovely place called Merida.  It is on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico and is actually the capital of the state of Yucatan.  I had a great time letting go of stress and working on my Spanish (which is still very poor.)
 Almost every day I went to the market for fresh fruit and/or juice.  We ate at  several places. One of my favorite was a cocina economica, which is a place where you buy prepared food to take home.  This was only a couple of blocks away from the place we were staying. We stayed in a privately owned Studio apartment in a true Mexican neighborhood.  It just so happened that I took a couple of my pennywhistles along with me and played while sitting out on the 2nd floor terrace.  This led to an interesting experience.  You see, across the street was a house that was being rented by some musicians who had jobs playing with the Symphony in town.  One day, I was out on the street trying to figure out what a particular tree in a nearby yard was. (It was an African Tulip Tree) One of the ladies (young compared to me) came out and spoke.  She said "We have been wanting to meet you." That rather surprised me. They had heard me playing the pennywhistle.  Then came the real surprise. She said that they had really enjoyed hearing me play.  We chatted for a moment and decided I would come over one afternoon the next week and see her harp.  The day I went over, I also met one of the French Horn players named Meredith.  We had quite a nice chat.
Later I googled the Harpist's name and found out that she is an award winning harpist.  Yep, that put me on top of the world.
Another day, we went to some ruins South of the city. This was a great place because unlike some ruins you can climb up on things.

Here I am on top of the world again.  This structure was pretty high. (I am working on overcoming my fear of heights.)
Then I realized I had a problem- I have to get down from here. And those steps are STEEP!
Let me sit and think about this:

Okay, I confess.  I came down most of the way on my tush. When I got closer to the bottom I did step down the last 5-6 steps.
You will see more pics later.
Oh, here are photos of our appetizers and meal at the beach one day.

Let me tell you, that fish was fresh and delicious.