Our home for the last month

Here is the room that we rented for 5000 pesos for the whole month. Great value. Balcones Alferez http://www.aventuradelcafe.com/xalapa/hospedaje/xalhbaalf.htm

http://www.pradodelrio.com/e_mda.htm

A place to live

(view from our window)

We followed a couple more apartment leads and ended up at a 4 star hotel that someone had recommended to us as they heard that they also let out mini apartments long term. The place was nice and we were sure that it would be beyond our budget, but it was worth asking. The price for the entire month was excellent so we asked to see the room. It was in a modern apartment building on a quiet street right in the centre of the city. It’s basically one large room with a massive bed, huge windows,a wardrobe (with a safe inside), table and 2 chairs, sideboard, bedside cabinets and a really nice bathroom. It gets cleaned everyday, just like a hotel. It doesn’t have a kitchen, but it does have a coffee machine. With comida corridas on offer, who needs to cook anyway? I also found real Bran Flakes in shops here, so breakfast is sorted. No need for my brother and sister-in-law to send me food parcels here! Oh! Best thing – it has wireless internet. Yes, of course we took it and moved in the next morning before work. We opened the curtains and saw that we have a view of Pico Orizaba (the volcano) and the Cofre mountain range through the window. Can it get any better?

Finding a place to stay

We finished work at 2pm and got a lift from Sergio to a place where we’d heard that they were renting out little furnished apartments, but unfortunately, they had all gone. There was a notice on the wall for another apartment to let so we wrote it down. Sergio had found out about a hostal which rented rooms for the month for rock bottom prices so we went to have a look. Sergio described it kindly as “sencillo”(simple), his daughter Laura had been a bit more blunt and called it “feo” (ugly). It looked like a cell, but it was VERY cheap. An option I was willing to consider until David talked some sense into me – we are supposed to be on holiday too and we could afford something a bit better. We had a couple of leads and a couple of numbers and hoped to find somewhere to live today. If the worst came to the worst, we could always say in La Posada Mariquinta one more night. It’s kind of damp and very cold, so I’ll actually be glad when we can move out.