Right is left and left is right

This Daily Prompt made me smile as I got to remember that I was once a first-time visitor in this not-so-small city in central Mexico.

One Sunday afternoon -maybe a couple of weeks after we had settled in- my husband and I wanted to enjoy some well deserved rest from the unpacking and the cleaning and all that moving implies so we decided to go downtown for some sightseeing.  Someone had told us that the cathedral was something we couldn’t miss and had pictured ourselves sitting on a bench enjoying the weather, the view and the people.

Well, we ended up lost and our tired feet could not take one more step into the unknown.

We knew we were close as we could see at least 3 churches that seemed to be as important as a cathedral.  But which one was it?  They were not that close to each other and we had heard that there are approximately 400 churches in this city so we were not sure which of those tall bell towers was the main one.

Let’s ask someone, I told my husband who, like most men on this planet, did not want to.  So after a couple more blocks -and some begging on my part- we approached a police officer we spotted at a corner whose jacket read something like “Tourist Help”.

• Hello, officer, how do we get to the cathedral, my husband asked
• Oh, that’s easy… first you go right three blocks from here
• Are you sure? Because you’re pointing left, I said
• Oh, yeah, I meant left!  Then you turn left again at the drugstore
• …but you’re pointing right
• Oh, yeah, I meant right

And that went on for ten minutes making us feel that this person did not really know so we asked someone else a couple of blocks from there.  Same story!

Which made me realize that right is left and left is right in this city I now call home.

Yes, we got there and enjoyed the rest of our Sunday… and then, of course, took a cab when it was time to leave.