When I moved to Mexico, Iti and I moved in with her parents, Miriam and Arturo. Money was put down on a new-construction apartment that was SUPPOSED to be ready when Iti got here a month before me. It wasn’t ready, and wasn’t ready, and wasn’t ready, due to more tangled Mexican bureaucracy and inefficiency. It’s a bunch of long stories that I won’t get into here; we’ve spent enough time and grief on this stupid freaking apartment.
After a month of imposing on our family, we totally lucked out. Iti’s aunt Maggie’s boss is a woman who lives with her husband in a fantastic neighborhood in Mexico City. They own a duplex (two-flat in Chicago-speak), and they didn’t currently have renters for the ground-floor apartment. Maggie told us about the place, and told her boss Ellen about us, and so…
We get a GORGEOUS one bedroom apartment!!! Yay! The place is really breathtaking. It’s a block away from Chapultepec, the biggest park in Mexico City. You go the other direction, and there are literally TONS of great cafes, restaurants, and stores within walking distance. It takes me less time to walk to a café from my bedroom than it took us to take the elevator down to the garage at Iti’s parents’ place. The place itself is beautiful- very cool rustic Mexican décor: nice tiles on the floors and in the kitchen and bathroom, cool rustic wooden desks and chests everywhere, great patios with awesome plants and flowers. This place has it all! It’s fully furnished, the kitchen is stocked with great dishes, it has secure parking for us, and to top it all off the rent is unbelievably low for the city, and they let us rent month to month! They told us we could stay for as little as one month and as long as we want, whatever we need. Amazing. The only down side is we needed to put my desk in the dining room, which for me is a small price to pay.
Iti, not so much…
Arturo took one look at the place and said it is “un garbanzo de a libra” which is an old saying that roughly translates to “it’s like finding a one-pound garbanzo bean”. It really is that amazing we found such a great place at such a great price! Welcome to the One-Pound Garbanzo! Click on the photo at the top to see an album of our sweet new pad in the city.
It’s only one bedroom, but if you don’t mind a couch and want to see a truly amazing neighborhood in the city, you should visit while we still have the One-Pound Garbanzo!
A Chicago Gringo in Mexico
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