Day 17: Lunch by Chef Alexandra & Au Cacao
I woke up this morning and checked the stats on the website of this blog to notice that the daily visitor count was now around 130 visitors a day. With that in mind, I had to think about the usability aspect of the website. When visitors come to the site, they don’t really see the images and it is hard to find the older posts. I decided to invest a chunk of time today updating the layout of this site. Over I went to Jugolandia for my breakfast and right after that I was back at Starbucks. My friend Alexandrea who is also an excellent Mexican Chef, invited me over for lunch. I had to make sure I got everything done before I met up with her.
I worked away on my site and messed it right up! I messed with the code to get it looking the way I wanted and I noticed that it was not looking consistent in the different web browsers. Time was ticking and I had to get everything fixed in time for lunch with Alexandra. Alexandra is always on time. She does not go by Playa time which involves booking meetings and hangouts in a time frame vs a specific time. In my Toronto life, I book everything in my Google calender. Sometimes I even book my lunches and dinners in there. Since I moved down here, I have only used my Google calender a handful of times and it is usually with Alexandra.
Time was running out and I had to go. With most of the errors fixed on my site, I headed over to Alexandra’s place. Alexandra served us a three course meal which included salad, a main dish of lentils with cumin and shrimps served with a side of mango chutney and a dessert which I have never heard of in my life. It was an avocado gelato. It was a homemade gelato made with fresh avocados, coconut milk, sweetened with agave and garnished with fresh raspberries. It was absolutely amazing and especially so since I love avocados!
After lunch we both pulled out our laptops and went to work. Alexandra gets her clients from TripAdvisor. As I mentioned in my Day 12 post “The Beaches Of Tulum, Casa De Las Olas And Dinner By Chef Iserte” she hosts private cooking classes and also private dinners on request. Alexandra has a deep love for cooking and you can really taste it in everything that she makes. Chef Alexandra’s dining table was now transformed into a bullpen style work area. I continued working on my half broken website until I finally go it all up. It was finally done and everything was working perfectly. If you have been following my blog prior to this date, you will notice the big change in the layout. I am very happy with it at this point.
After our work was done, we decided to head out for a walk in the night. Alexandra has two dogs, Laika and Kika who are both mini Schnauzers and we brought them with us for the walk. We walked around downtown Playa and then went over to the beach with the dogs. Au Cacao is a cafe on 5th avenue that serves different deserts made with fresh cacao. Alexandrea really wanted the brownie so we headed over there. I personally am not one to sit down and eat a whole brownie in one sitting. I don’t normally eat sweets in general. My eating style in Toronto rarely includes deserts and every meal involves a raw vegetable smoothie. That being said, I definitely felt it after I ate it. My body begged me to stop! It was however very good on the taste scale. It was quite possibly, the best brownie I have ever eaten. Next time however, I might go for a half size. That would be just about right for me.
After Au Cacao, we headed back to her place to watch a movie. She had “The Beach”, starring Leonardo Di Caprio in her DVD collection. The movie was about a group of people who decided to create a paradise island living situation in a secluded beach outside of anyone’s knowledge. It was the perfect movie to watch for this life that I am living here in Playa Del Carmen. The only difference was in the movie, their paradise life was not sustainable. This life in Playa Del Carmen however, is very sustainable 🙂
