Hey everyone, gather ’round the living room and take a nap while I subject you to my vacation slides from February 2011, when Alexia Anthem and I went to visit Mexico.
The trip to Mexico series will be divided into four parts on my blog:
- Mexico City part 1 (this post)
- Mexico City part 2
- Toluca
- Rants about Mexico
This is part 1.
Day One
In spite of taking a redeye flight and essentially not sleeping at all, Alexia and I somehow found the energy to not flop down on the comfortable hotel bed and sleep.
Instead, we walked from our hotel to the park and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Unfortunately the Bellas Artes was closed, so we headed to the nearby LatinoAmericana tower to check out the view and generally be good tourists.
After coming down from the tower, we headed down the street to the Zócalo, a plaza with a bunch of government buildings, a cathedral, and a surprisingly large flag.
Somehow we stumbled our way to a Metro stop. The Mexico City Metro is a rubber-tire train system that’s dirt cheap (tickets are 30 cents USD) and trains come every two minutes. It’s very impressive compared to what we have in San Francisco. Plus they have food stands in the stations, including Domino’s. How cool is that?
A few hundred staircases later we ended up walking down an alley filled with little shops and restaurants and on the way to Paseo de la Reforma, the main drag in Mexico City. Along La Reforma, there’s dozens of bike racks used as part of a bike-sharing program.
Soon we found our way to El Ángel, the iconic golden angel statue seen on Mexico City memorabilia everywhere. The statue is in the middle of a traffic circle. If you weren’t aware of this, jaywalking is somewhat of a national pastime in Mexico. So they didn’t bother with crosswalks to get to the angel, despite it being a national monument. You pretty much have to close your eyes, cross your fingers, and run through traffic to get to it. There’s a bunch of statues at the base of the angel, and a little door with some tombs inside. Protip: if you plan your vacation better than we did, there are days than you can go up inside pillar that holds the angel to an observation deck above.
Day Two
We were joined by Alexia Anthem’s cousin, and finally got to go inside Bellas Artes. The place is free, unless you have a camera, in which case they charge a camera fee. Yeah, I know. Lame. Anyway the place is filled with fantastic murals, including some of Diego Rivera’s best. A strange thing about Bellas Artes is that the outside has a typical Roman look, but the inside is art deco. The contrast between old and new is sort of like a grandfather who snowboards and plays video games.
We took a walk down to the tequila museum, which unfortunately wasn’t open! I suspect it was because they had an infestation of mariachi on the patio outside and were waiting for an exterminator. On the way there, I spotted a fake cable car, which begs the question: is there a way to take it all the way from Mexico City to Fisherman’s Wharf?
