Typical inner courtyard of a renovated city house in Merida, Yucatan, looking from the house-proper toward the small garden "bodega". Many of these narrow, older homes in the city center are now being restored, mostly as rentals/sales to foreign visitors and expatriates. This one is leased for six months by our American friends. Spacious and nicely furnished with older-style Mexican folk art, it is just a couple blocks from the fancy street, Paseo de Montejo (and the international-style Starbucks!). I take the house to have been constructed about 1910-1920. Despite the peaceful look of this scene, the street in front is a noisy one, being a popular crosstown route--but one doesn't hear it in this peaceful patio.