My mother sent me this email from Puerto Vallarta  and I thought it would make a  mildly strange, hopefully amusing, post Valentine’s Day post.  It doesn’t really work for Valentine’s Day.

From Mom ->

I went into Old Puerto Vallarta this week and wandered through the shops selling silver, sarongs, and embroidered clothes. It got repetitive quickly so I kept walking, hoping to avoid being bombarded by more hawkers promising me the ‘best prices’.  Finding myself a bit lost, as usual, I checked my map and noticed that a nearby spot was marked “Elizabeth Taylor’s House.” Well, how could I miss that?  I vaguely remembered that, in the 1960’s I think, she and Richard Burton had a good portion of their love affair, marriage, fights and films in Puerto Vallarta, back when it was a sleepy little town. I seem to remember that Night of the Iguana was filmed here. So, I had a destination.

I started up the steep hill and hit a dead end. I came down, walked a couple of blocks and started up again. After several blocks, I was the only one on the street, except for the cats, and of course, all the warnings about Mexico and shootings came back to rattle me. Oh well. The map was good. The hill was very steep but steps had been built. Good thing. I’m sure that everyone living here  has excellent calf muscles; it makes San Francisco look tame. I eventually found the street and almost everything was in ruins.  The sign, Casa Kimberley, the name of their love nest, was on a wall but the house was just a concrete shell. The only thing left was the  pink ‘lover’s bridge’ and I’m sending you a photo. I have since learned that the bridge connected two parts of this once luxurious property and that it had been maintained as a bed and breakfast/museum for years but developers were now planning to make condos – what a thought!