the cats went out today!

It's hard work being a cat....sigh!

Lotty and Jakey have arrived!

Lotty and Jakey have finally joined our family. Their owner brought them round last night and they seem to be settling in well. They are extremely affectionate and love being stroked. Lotty is the black and white female who looks like Caesar. In fact, for those of you who met Caesar, you'd be forgiven for thinking these pictures are of him, but they aren't! Jakey is the ginger tom. Lotty likes hiding places and is a bit more shy, but will happily crawl right up to you for a good cuddle. Jakey is more independent and relaxed but is very much a lap cat too! He also likes to sit with his tongue out a bit, as you can see in the photo above. They are still a little stunned, as you'd imagine, but I think they're going to be happy with us.

climbing the walls

Rain

Flying over Mexico

Here, and further down the page, you'll find some of the photos I took from our recent trip to Mexico. The photos in this post were taken at the prettiest airport I've ever seen, Huatulco airport, on the South Coast of Oaxaca State which looked more like a holiday resort than an airport with its high thatched roofs and bright white walls. The floaty clouds are from our flight from Huatulco back to Mexico City.

I didn't take any pictures of the beaches populated with dive-bombing pelicans we swam at and snorkelled in, but Paul did, have a look here. In the meantime, enjoy!

Images from Oaxaca City, Mexico

From top to bottom:

The Institute of Graphic Arts courtyard;

The Institute of Graphic Arts (which has an excellent library on anything to do with drawing!!);

La Casa de La Tia hotel where we stayed (our room was upstairs, we had the nice balcony to lounge on), and last but not least, at the very bottom is a photo of the Flor de Loto vegetarian friendly restaurant where we spent a lot of time when we were in Oaxaca.

We also discovered a wonderful little restaurant just before we left Oaxaca called Tumateca (which I don't have a photo of). It's run by a couple of cool wonder chefs from Italy, Helena & Fabrizio. They moved to Mexico three years ago and ran a bakery in Oaxaca before they opened their restaurant. They made us the best meal we had in Mexico. Everything was freshly made by them as we waited. We ate like pigs. Helena also gave Paul a free shot of Mezcal (a brown tequila) out of her own personal stash and talked to us about the problems Oaxaca has been facing recently. If you ever visit Oaxaca, pop in and say hi and treat yourself to a wonderful meal. They're on Avenida Morelos.

Sorry about any weird formatting you might find, I've tried to fix it but blogger doesn't always cooperate, or perhaps it's my crap knowledge of HTML. Please do scroll down the page for lots more photos from Mexico.

Images from Oaxaca City, my favourite place in Mexico

The Ghandi quote on the yellow building reads, "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Very poignant in a city that has suffered recent violent repression by the government in response to peaceful protests against the outcome of the elections held last year.

Images from Tepoztlan, a small village outside Mexico City

From top to bottom:

Shadows at the museum housing a collection of pre-hispanic art;

an old church (which when the locals walk past it, they turn to the open door, bow their heads and cross themselves before walking on);

a most wonderful restaurant called Botuan we found down a side-street run by super attentive and fantastic Spanish chefs (the meal featured here is Vietnamese Spring Rolls in a spicy tangy peanut sauce, not very Mexican, but it was vegan and exquisite);

the mountains in the background surrounding the town; the pyramid built on top of the mountains for the god Tepoztecatl.

Images from Tepoztlan, a small village outside of Mexico City

From top to bottom:

Arched doorway of the entrance to the old convent, decorated with an elaborate seed mural;

Details from the seed mural;

Images from the old convent and church