April 30, 2024: Welcome to our April cocktail hour. I’m so happy you’ve dropped by. It’s the perfect time of year to have drinks on our screened-in porch, with the soft and cool breezes and the trees greening and swirling all around us.
I can offer you some chilled Prosecco or any wine of your choice. Mike can make a delicious jalapeño-cucumber margarita or a great dirty martini. Or we can offer a Michelob Ultra or Hop Slam. I can also offer sodas or seltzer water of various flavors. Salud!
How is your year going so far? Have you read any good books, seen any good movies, binge-watched any television series? Have you planned any adventures or had any spring getaways? Have you dreamed any dreams? Gone to any exotic restaurants, cooked any new dishes? Have you been surprised by anything in life? Have you enjoyed the simple things in life? Have you learned anything new, taken any classes or just kept up with the news? Have you sung along with any new songs? Have you undertaken any new exercise routines? Have you marched or otherwise participated in political protests?
We started our month by finishing our trip in Colombia.
Cartagena, Colombia (April 1-6)
We flew into Cartagena from Medellin on April Fools’ Day; we arrived in Cartagena around 9:00 a.m. and, thinking we wouldn’t be able to check into our room until 3:00, we readied ourselves to leave our luggage and go out to explore. Luckily, our room at Casa Quero Hotel Boutique in the city’s Centro Histórico was ready, so we rested a bit in the air-conditioning since we’d been up since 3:30 a.m. for our flight. We wandered a while in the heat and humidity, admiring the colorful colonial town, and had a superb seafood lunch at Buena Vida before wandering to leafy Parque de Bolivar and admiring the colonial buildings around its perimeter. By then we were sweating up a storm, so we headed to our hotel’s rooftop pool, where we would end up spending nearly every afternoon in the Caribbean heat.
Tuesday morning, we took an hour-long boat ride to Isla Bela, where we lounged in the sun, swam in a clear blue cove, drank coco locos, ate a delicious fish lunch, and took a very choppy (& hilarious) ride back to Cartagena. Wednesday, we took the hop-on hop-off bus, visited the fortress of Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, saw the skyscraper hotels of Bocagrande (known as “Little Miami”), and took photos with the palanqueras (women who originally sold fruit from baskets carried on their heads, but now pose for photos for tips). Thursday, I was having terrible stomach problems and didn’t want to venture far from the hotel, so we walked around in an air-conditioned shopping mall and through some parts of our neighborhood. Friday, I finally felt well enough to explore the characterful outer walled town of Getsemaní, with its cute cafes, bars, fruit vendors, umbrellas, flags, and murals everywhere. We spent every afternoon at the hotel rooftop pool, enjoying the afternoon breezes and the tepid but still refreshing water.
The food scene in Cartagena was fabulous. We had excellent meals, and only one was ruined by a too-attentive waiter at Lobo de Mar; he stood looking over us during our entire meal. During our time in Cartagena we ate shrimp on fluffy bao bread, pork belly, camarones, crab meat with rice, pizza, kibbeh and pork wraps, ceviche, whitefish, and sushi. All the food was beautifully presented and delicious.
Springtime in Virginia
We finished up our trip to Colombia, returning home early in the morning of Sunday, the 7th, after a miserable overnight flight on Avianca. The first week we were home, I felt like a zombie; I took naps several afternoons and felt heavy and sluggish. I don’t know why because there was only an hour time difference between Colombia and Virginia. Now we’re slowly settling in at home, enjoying the near-perfect spring weather. I loved colorful and charming Cartagena, but I was happy to escape the miserable heat and humidity there and return home to cooler climes.
I’m still behind in my reading goals, only finishing 4 books this month, bringing my total to 14/52. I’m having fun immersing myself in books set in Japan as I get in the mindset for our hoped-for trip in September-October to Bali, Indonesia and Japan. I finished A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding by Jackie Copleton (wonderful – about the aftermath of the Nagasaki bombing) and The Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns (about all the mixed-race babies born to Japanese women from American servicemen after WWII). I’ve got plenty of others in the pipeline. I’m also in the process of reading Lonely Planet: Bali, Lombok & Nusa Tenggara. I’m busy making lists of places I want to see from blogs and Instagram posts. Luckily I have a lot of time to prepare as we don’t have any big trips planned until then.
We do plan on going to Richmond in May to celebrate, belatedly, my daughter Sarah’s 40th birthday, which was April 26. I can’t believe my oldest daughter turned 40! What that means about me, I prefer not to think about. May should bring a new baby into our family as Adam’s Maria has her son, to be named Michael (not Miguel, as Adam hates that name!). In early June, we hope to go to Atlanta for a week to see Alex and his family, and to hang out with little Allie.
We only saw two movies this month, La Chimera (okay but not great) and The Zone of Interest (which I hated with a passion for too many reasons to count). We don’t binge watch any TV series, but we spread them out over long periods of time. We finally finished up Curb Your Enthusiasm. We love Larry David, but I was a bit disappointed in the finale, which was a kind of repeat of the Seinfeld finale. We’ve been watching a lot of series, but our favorites are Annika, Somebody Somewhere, True Detective: Night Country, Succession, and Better Things. We just started watching Shōgun, Unforgotten, On the Verge, and The Tourist.
I had hoped to visit my sister in Carbondale, Illinois for the solar eclipse on Monday, April 8 (Carbondale was in the band of totality), but since we just arrived home from Colombia on the morning of the 7th, I would have had to get in the car and immediately drive 14 hours to get to her house. That wasn’t going to happen. We did have about 85% totality at 3:24 p.m. in northern Virginia and definitely saw the crescent of the sun as the moon moved across it. We saw the overall light dim and we could even see the crescent-shaped shadows under our Japanese maple. The tiny gaps in the leaves acted like multiple pinhole cameras, projecting the sun’s image to the ground.
Mike and I officially began collecting Social Security even though Mike is still working. He plans to go hourly in September and be fully retired by the end of 2025. We met with a financial planner who gave us a good idea of where we stand in retirement.
We went to Artie’s for drinks and dinner one night and talked for a long time to a young couple at the bar. We always love the lively atmosphere there.
I was too tired to go to Riverbend Park in time to see the bluebells in bloom, which I do every year around April 7. By the time we finally walked there on the 21st, the blooms were all gone. We met Mike’s sister for Thai food on the 24th at Burapa Thai and Bar, where a woman told me she loved my bag and asked where I got it (I was carrying one of the three mochilas I’d bought from Colombia). I told her I got it in Colombia, and she told me she was Colombian from Bogotá, although she’s been in the U.S. many years. That’s why she’d recognized the bag. It’s such a small world sometimes.
On Friday, the 27th, we went downtown to see Artomatic, a temporary art installation (closed April 28) that “aims to strengthen the artistic community and build an audience for that community by bringing together artists to temporarily transform available space into a creative place.” I found a lot I liked there, but there was more I didn’t connect with at all. The whole thing occupied an empty 8-floor office space and I’d say I only liked about 20-30% of it. Plus, as it was an unused office space, there were no open windows or air conditioning, so it was stuffy, warm and uncomfortable.
We went after for a drink at Mercy Me, inside the Yours Truly DC Hotel, and then drove to Falls Church where we finally, after many years, returned to Space Bar, famous for its craft beers and creative grilled cheese sandwiches.
Here are a few parting shots from springtime in Virginia. I’m sure summer will be upon us soon enough.
I hope you’ll share how the year is panning out for you, and what plans you have for 2024. 
~ wander.essence ~ 
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