As a AAA inspector, I eat in hundreds of restaurants a year. I am there to note the quality of food, atmosphere and service but, like any other diner, I am a people-watcher as well. Recently, as I was enjoying my dinner in Mazatlan, Mexico in the Three Diamond-rated Papagayo (on the patio, as I often do) a mother and her two teenage sons sat down at an adjacent table. It was about 9 p.m., a late dinner for me, but not by Mexico standards as they tend to eat dinner between 9 and 10. They were there for a dessert treat.
What stood out to me was not so much that they were excited about the dessert options of decadent triple layer chocolate cake, crunchy nut and caramel cheesecake or creamy chocolate mousse. It was that they brought to the table with them a deck of cards and a sheet of instructions for a new game. They were pumped, they were really excited and they were competitive.

You may very well ask yourselves, why did I think this so special?  I will take you back a few weeks to dinner I had at a very popular place in Puerto Vallarta where hour-long waits for a table are not uncommon. There, I watched a family with their three teens eat together, yet not be together. The entire meal the phones were out and text messages were flying. They just shared space.

Tonight it was a treat to watch a different family learn a card game from the written rules, jokingly call each other cheaters and then read the rules to prove they were not. They learned, they laughed, they spent real time and they ate really yummy desserts.  As I got up to leave from my dinner, I commented to them how refreshing it was to see a family interacting like that.

Sometimes the simple things I see on my travels remind me of what is important.