We woke up later than we have been which was fine as we got to meet a new group of hotel guests along with the Owner, Jorge, and his family. The hotel is so rambling and without a focused lounge area that people can hang out in that it is easy to think that there is no one here other than for the few things that go bump in the night.
Jorge gave us some ideas and tips for places to go and see or eat at which was nice.
We spent the day back in the Centro Historico looking at the ruins of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, that Cortes demolished so as to ensure Spanish/Catholic supremacy (and to have some great stones to build with). The excavated area represents a tiny fraction of the original city/temple as the rest of it is buried below current Centro Historico buildings. It is likely that there are some really amazing artifacts littered around under present-day Mexico City but without razing more of the city (which is what they did to get what we see today) these things are likely to remain underground for a while to come. Not that the current buildings are all that much to look at for the most part or indeed in good condition but since they are standing and owned by someone…
After nearly four hours of archeology and interpretation (Spanglish is getting pretty reasonable at least the written Spanish to mental English) we broke back out into daylight and headed off to a restaurant on the way to our next venue: The Museo de Arte Poplulare. I head pollo con mole which was nice but not as good as the mole we had at the Best Western restaurant on the main plaza of all places. Darcie had a combination plate that was very good.
The Museo was wonderful. Filled with fun Mexican art pieces, a lot of them influenced by the Day of the Dead art forms. They were having an exhibition of piñatas some of which were terrific although I am sorry to say the photos don’t really do them justice (what do you want for a point-and-shoot?). In addition to this there were all sorts of pieces that I will try to post online somewhere when I have spent some time photo-shopping them.
We also stopped in at the Main Post Office or Coreo Nationale which is an amazing, guilded french-colonial pile across the street from the Museo de Belles Artes that we went to two days ago. It is well worth the visit (it only takes a few minutes to wander through)
Our last cultural stop for the day was the Diego Rivera Mural Museum which contains one giant Rivera mural and a bunch of little (by comparison) paintings by a number of his contemporaries. Seeing as we are art-philistines and we had spent 6 hours or so looking at objets we kind of whisked through after spending ten minutes or so absorbing the mural.
On our way home (we walked the two miles rather than brave rush hour on the Metro) we stopped at the Mexican equivalent of a donut shop and had hot chocolate and churros. Churros for those that don’t know are fried strips of dough much like donut batter that are then rolled in sugar and sometimes cinnamon. They were delicious and became dinner. Sinful.
Sounds tasty and terribly, terribly worthy. How's the Chinese food?
ReplyDelete