Friday February 8, 2013-Retama Village

For our last full day here with the entire "crew", we hung out with Jim and Nancy, who are leaving tomorrow. Jim had been wanting some authentic Mexican food, and had talked to someone that had suggested a place called the Hidalgo Tacqueria on Expressway 83. He needed to go to the air horn store to buy some fittings for his horn installation, so we rode with him to get what he needed. We also made a couple more stops for Stella and Nancy to pick up some items for the doggies before we met the rest of the group at the Tacqueria for lunch.

It was different! Everything in the restaurant is in Spanish and all the employees only spoke Spanish, so it was a bit of a challenge to order food. The employees are used to "gringos" eating there and they could communicate a little bit, at least enough to take our drink orders. We had a trump card in Nelly, who speaks and reads Spanish, but to make it even easier, we all ate about the same thing. We all had an assortment of tacos, so that wasn't too hard to order. The tacos are small, almost bite-sized but well seasoned and delicious. We all enjoyed our meal and had a great time together.

Another thing that was different about this place was the salsa. The waitress brought one basket of chips but we served ourselves for the salsa. There were about five different salsa choices, from a very mild green to three that were red and marked spicy, then another green with bits of green veggies including avocado that was marked very spicy. We called it three mile island! It not only caused my nose to run, it bled! First time for that! One of the spicy reds had a bad fishy taste that no one liked. Some of us mixed the three mile island with the mild green and made something that we were able to eat on our tacos that didn't light our tongue on fire.

We all went home for naps and some relaxation for the afternoon but met again for ice cream at the Marble Slab store about 7 o'clock. We pretty-much took over the store and enjoyed our ice cream and it was the perfect way to end the week. We will miss Jim and Nancy, but made plans to get together tomorrow afternoon for a potluck dinner. Life goes on...

So long.