It's Still There

On the next corner from the restaurant in Jalapa where we enjoyed our "chiles en nogada", I saw a place that I remember from nearly fifty years ago... the Hotel Salmones.

I mentioned already that Irma was the wife of one of my Spanish professors in Ohio.  In my junior year of college I studied in Mexico and fell in love with the country.  Irma had insisted that I visit her family, so one weekend I took the bus from Puebla to Jalapa.    I met her father, her brother and sister-in-law,  their three children who were then just kids, and two of her aunts.  They all lived together in the family home.  I was on a college student's budget, and I stayed in a respectable but very basic hotel downtown.  

A couple of years later, in the summer of 1975, after I had completed my first year of teaching, I returned to Mexico, and I took my dad along with me.  One of the places that we visited was Jalapa.  Back in those days Jalapa had about one quarter the population that it has today.  There were not that many hotels back then, and the Hotel Salmones was about the best in town.  I vaguely remember our room as being clean and comfortable, but rather dark and old fashioned.

So, the hotel is still there, and it appears to be well maintained.  The sign outside says that a single or double room costs 400 pesos (about $20) per night.  Adjusting for inflation, that's probably cheaper than it was when my dad and I stayed there.  I looked up the hotel on the internet, and in spite of its budget prices, it gets decent reviews, and the rooms look more cheerful.

It is hard to believe that it has been nearly fifty years since I first traveled to Mexico.