….and to welcome you to gloomy old London and a bright new home for the blog! I hope you all find your way around. As you will recall, we had creaking problems with the old blog; a lot of people weren’t getting notifications, and there were all sorts of other problems I won’t bore you with. So I hope you are happy with the new page, where you can follow our occasional shop news as well. Let me know if there are any problems and Colin will fix them; apologies in advance for any teething problems!
It’s a weird thing, travelling. I adore being away; I love the feeling of getting home; I’m writing on Sunday afternoon in a grey, dreary, wet London and dreaming of heat and with my mind lost somewhere in the timezone of the mid-atlantic, I suppose, right now.
Visiting Mexico was, I think, the best holiday I’ve had in years. Not a phrase to use lightly, you could say, but we had a perfect time. Week one: absorbed into Mexico City and the world of Luis Barragan, and then Oaxaca, with Will (getting ready to celebrate an upcoming birthday); week two: perfect, perfect life on the beach in Tulum with Valentina, herself escaping from the bitter winter chills of New York City. Each in its own way, heaven, and combined… heaven multiplied. Should such a thing be possible.
We loved crazy, heaving, giant Mexico City… although a week is not enough to scrape its hectic surface. By luck and persuasion we found ourselves in every one of the Barragan masterpieces, bathed in a sea of lilac and pink, scarlet, citrus yellow, cerulean blue… of wide staircases and narrow doors, hidden light, and dream-like transitions from tiny corridors to huge rooms. Perfect.
Our first call was the Cuadra San Cristóbal… a riding stables far out in the Mexico City suburbs, and possibly the most sublime of all we saw:
The following day we visited the Convent and Chapel in the old, historic, quiet distric of Tlalpan, still lived in by kind nuns; a serene and beautiful building. Here, two nuns are waiting outside with Senor Humberto, our taxi driver, who became our companion on each and every trip. 
No photography allowed… but I snuck this shot of the entrance hall.
Then to Casa Gilardi, Barragan’s last major work, with its startling, unexpected, brilliant blue swimming pool; where we were shown around by the handsome young son of the owner and builder of the house… he is now studying architecture (a good education)…
And then to Barragan’s own house, now a beautiful museum in the middle of a strange and dusty neighbourhood sliced through by a giant arterial motorway: 
He first built the pink house, then moved next door to the building with the yellow wall, where he continued to experiment for the rest of his life: 
Stepping inside the front door is like entering the quietest and most private sanctuary in the city; the building enclosed and enclosing, providing glimpes to the city beyond but contained by the tall, vividly coloured walls of the upper terrace. Curiously comforting, and uplifting, rather than claustophobic.
Each room has a silver mercury glass sphere. There are sold in the tiny museum shop. Will and I each brought one home. Not very practical hand luggage.
The sunny yellow ceiling of Barragan’s architectural studio is a final blast to the senses.
Scenes of Mexico City, starting with our crazy, erratic, fun hotel, The Downtown:
I’m reminded of Rome, Palermo, New York and Delhi, rolled in to one perfect messy whole:
Then to Oaxaca; a beautiful town, but one of those places with that strange dependency on the tourist trade, like a Venice, or some small Tuscan hill town, that leaves you curiously unsettled. We fell in love with the quiet, empty serenity of the superb Dominican Monastery, beautifully restored, with polished plaster walls and no windows in the wide, stone openings; we loved the Casa Oxaca hotel, perfection on a plate, with its leafy green courtyard and the kindest staff on the planet; but I’ll be honest: we were both glad to return to the chaos and reality of Mexico City.
And then to Tulum, which I’ve got to rate as possibly the most perfect beach I’ve been to… soft, gentle, relaxed, happy. Valentina has a nose for these places. If you buy $500 of goodies over at Many Kitchens, well… there is a small chance that she may tell you the name of our little hotel with their handsome Urugyan twin chefs, who she writes about here, and their perfect simple cooking, although I believe she is sworn to secrecy….
We woke to sunrises and went to sleep early, to the sound of the crashing waves of the Caribbean Sea; danced salsa at Zebra, watched a film under the stars at Be-Tulum, read books, snoozed in the sunshine, swam in clear warm water… and forgot about everything. A good thing to do from time to time. We cancelled our trip to Merida to have another two days in heaven, and on the day we left a storm blew in, and suddenly I’m back in damp, bustling London, and I feel as if I’ve just woken from a deep sleep filled with strange, happy dreams; and it’s good to be home.
