Mexico City: Day 1

Strictly speaking this is actually Day 2 but since we hadn’t slept since Oct 30 at 7am and we didn’t arrive until 2pm-ish (body time) on the 31st at the hotel (Casa Gonzales) all we could do was check in, shower and pass out.  We slept solid until 7:30am on the 1st for the most part. 

We had a light breakfast at the hotel (nothing to write home about) and then sallied forth to begin exploring.  Wandering down to Paseo de la Reforma which is a 6-lane divided boulevard with nicely landscaped wide pedestrian borders on each side, we discovered a really cool temporary display of Dia de Muertos floats:

  I took about a hundred photos but this gives you the idea.

After walking up and down both sides of the Paseo which was pleasantly closed to vehicular traffic on this day (at least until the evening anyway) we headed on to the Metro which, for 2 pesos (or about 17 cents currently!!) will take you anywhere in the city the Metro goes.  You can change lines, turn around, make mistakes etc and as long as you don’t exit the turnstiles you are good to go.  They are fast, clean, frequent and come with traveling entertainment in the guise of street vendors with dvd/cd players connected to what must be a huge battery pack and some mongo speakers in a backpack. These guys (at least that is all we saw hawking) step onto the train, crank up the tunes and start flipping through their collection(s) of probably pirated songs – all at full volume.  It was a lot of fun actually.

Our first stop was in the Coyoacan district to go to Frida Kahlo’s house, La Casa Azul (the Blue House).  Unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool Frida fanatic I would skip it as there is really not much to see.  It cost 55 pesos a person or in our case 120 pesos since I forgot to collect my change (duh).  The house is filled with various bits of Frida memorabilia and a number of paintings by her and Diego Rivera. 

Getting to her house we walked through the Vivero de Coyoacan which is at once both a park and a nursery for the City’s greening projects.  There were all sorts of well-weathered stone artifacts mounted on eucalyptus stumps (no pictures since they weren’t that worth it) and various sculpted bits of eucalyptus. 

There were also some pretty nice looking houses although for the most part they were behind tall fences with in some cases pretty extensive gates.

Notice the small “window” behind the metal scrollwork.

After La Casa Azul we wandered down to the Plaza Hidalgo which was thronging with locals (we got a lot of stares) and had two big markets selling all sorts of things from fruits and veggies (some of which I had never seen and weren’t labeled) to heaping platters of all sorts of ceviche to sit down and tuck into for lunch (or whatever).

There was a concert going on in the Plaza so we bought some ice creams and sat down to enjoy some solid people watching while enjoying the music.  There were all these cool sort of sand paintings for Dia de Muertos which were made out of various colored sawdusty bits and what appeared to be salt, liberally sprinkled with marigolds and marigold petals.

They were all so big that getting a good angle was nigh on impossible.

The plaza was swarming with children dressed up for the Dia. There were some really great costumes (store bought for the most) but very colorful and imaginative, much more so than US versions.  We were pleasantly surprised that there was not a single princess in the bunch.  Everyone was having a great day (unless you were trapped in your car having foolishly and rashly decided to drive through the Plaza).

We also checked out this church whose name I couldn’t see but the guide book suggests was in fact the Parroquia de San Juan Bautista.  Somewhat plain on the outside, at least by Tuscany standards, but go inside and WOW.  Huge paintings, guilded everything, really beautifully carved confessionals and an altar to rival Saint Paul’s.  The clere story windows were stained glass portraits of famous monks of the day all in standard business pose looking innocently over their shoulders with palms variously turned up.

By this time we were tired and while it would have been the right thing to stay, grab a margarita and continue people watching until our pozole lunch had worn off we decided to head back to the hotel.  This was a mistake as there really aren’t many choices for food around here.  We finally ate at a restaurant that while nice clearly caters to the rich white folk that come from the near by monster hotels and presumably the embassies.  The food was nice but expensive – the pozole we had earlier in the day was scrumdidlyumptious, 50pesos and filled us both nicely (particularly since we also had had ice creams earlier).

We have discovered that the hotel’s internet connection is down and their wifi doesn’t seem to be accessible (possibly related) so we are off to Starschmucks tomorrow for a latte and some wifi action.