Looking for Houses in Queretaro

Since we moved out of the hotel last Friday, Feb. 24, we have not been able to update the blog since we did not get our broadband connection at the apartment until March 4. A lot has happened since our last blog entry, and I will try to briefly recap it.

After visiting a dozen or so houses and apartments the last week of February, mostly in the historic district, we settled on one that was redone about a year ago in a little walkway or patio that gives it its name, El Quinto Patio. The Casa de Papaya, or as Bill had named it, the Papaya Palace, was not to be, and we heard later that it may have been for the best, since the neighborhood may be “in transition”. Our new address is 16 de Septiembre #114, Casa 6, Querétaro, Qto., Mexico 76000, but it is better not to send mail. E-mail is faster and more secure. (As usual, Blogger does a poor job of placing photos, and has now restricted the number of photos allowed so that I will have to post some of the others in the next installment.)

16 de Septiembre #114, White House with Red Trim




El Quinto Patio from the Street.

Casa 6, El Quinto Patio

Our apartment has a door flanked by two barred windows facing the patio/walkway. You enter the living/dining area, and the kitchen is through the door on the left. The rest of the apartment is through the arched doorway at the back of the living/dining room. The arched doorway gives onto a study and behind that a bedroom with its own bath. To the left beyond the arched doorway, and behind the kitchen, is the larger bedroom and behind that the master bath. Down the short hall past the master bath is a sliding glass door to the servicio (service area) which is a tile-floored patio with a place for a washing machine in an L to the right. Only the master bedroom has no windows, which might be a good thing during fiesta time. For this nearly new two bedroom, two bath, one study apartment with patio, we pay $5,500 Mx (roughly $525 US) a month.
View from Front Door

Of course it is concrete and echoes pretty badly; there are only about 4 hours of direct sunlight a day; and the electrical system is 30 amps, instead of the more usual 100 to 150 amps in the US. We hear that you cannot run more than two appliances at a time (which is typical in the historic district at least), and I will find my super-duper surge protector and battery backup from Georgia useful to protect the computer and other delicate electronics.

Jaime, our agent, really worked hard for us the last week of February, trying to find us an apartment within our budget, as well as in the historic district. We will definitely use him to find an old house to fix up later this year, we hope.

We did not know it when we rented the place, but it turns out that Carl and Francis live a couple of houses away. Shelley, also from Canada, lives next to them and has a border who is in the Peace Corps (a retired guy named Mike), and Gemma, Maria and Bob’s friend, owns a really big house just across the street where she rents out luxury suites in her garden for a few days or a week at a time. Also across the street and close to Gemma’s house is the Hotel de la Merced, that had been a convent of the Sisters of Mercy and later a tenement before becoming a hotel. We had lunch there a day or two after moving in, and it is really beautiful on the inside, although you might not think so from the outside.
Carl's and Francis', and Shelley's

Gemma's across the street