La Ciudad de México (CDMX)

This is my last travelogue post for our Mexico trip. I’m kind of hankering to get back to the present. But first I have to cover our three days in Mexico City. This was actually the most interesting part of my trip – a new place, new challenges, flavors, history, things to absorb.

We established our breakfast routine right away. A pastry or roll from the bakery – which was phenomenal – with a hot beverage from the coffee shop around the corner. If it was pleasant weather, we ate in the park; if not, we ate upstairs in the coffee shop.

The first day, we stayed local in the Coyoacán neighborhood. We strolled in a beautiful park called Viveros. There were a lot of people running, walking, enjoying the sunshine. My favorite sight was this man practicing his bullfighting moves with a hot pink cape, lined in bright yellow. It was mesmerizing to watch him. I’m no fan of bullfighting, but his grace and skill was undeniable.

We didn’t have tickets to Frida Kahlo’s house and they were sold out. We walked by it though. There were a lot of people lined up and a lot of vendors. I bought an embroidered tortilla warmer and admired these hats. I wonder how he handled an interested customer? didn’t observe that. Instead of going to Kahlo’s house, we went to Leon Trotsky’s – not far away. It was easy to get in and gave a real historical flavor of what life was like in the neighborhood back then, as well as a view of the terrifying world affairs of the time.

The next day, Saturday, dawned rainy. Amenities in our room included an umbrella, which we used during the morning and managed to not lose. I loved the brooms the public workers used to clean the streets.

We went to a Saturday market in the San Angel neighborhood that was highly recommended. It was very enjoyable. There was so much to see. I was very inspired by the handicrafts for sale. This jeans jacket enhanced with a patchwork skirt really caught my eye.

After lunch, we made our way to the center of Mexico City by subway. A woman very kindly directed us how to take the subway, step by step. It would have taken us hours to figure it out on our own. We didn’t have metro cards — we were woefully unprepared in a sense, but beginner’s mind was a successful strategy from our perspective. They have a system to bypass the metro card. You buy a ticket at a separate window, then pass through a separate gate with an attendant.

The Palacio de Bellas Artes was beautiful from outside. I took lots of photos of it. I like this one a lot where the yellow-orange of the domes is juxtaposed against the clearing blue sky. The Palacio had no paintings. I was looking forward to seeing artworks by my favorite artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, as well as Frida Kahlo. But instead we viewed two photographic exhibits. One was very enlightening, offering historical perspectives of what the territory was like when Mexico City was known as Tenochtitlan. There was a lot of information about the volcanic valley and Popocatépetl. After viewing the exhibits, we spent some time walking in Alameda Central, a big park extending from the Palacio, checking out the corn vendors among many others, and the impromptu dance parties.

Sunday morning. The bakery and coffee shop were open just as they were on weekdays. We watched some kind of ceremony in operation in the plaza in front of the church in our neighborhood. The official name of the church is “Parroquia San Juan Bautista Coyoacan,” and it is a beautiful 16th-century building. The Internet tells me it was built on the site of a calmecac, a school for Aztec nobility, whose ruins still exist beneath the cloister. I would really have liked to know more about the ceremony people were doing there, which involved this woman smudging the space, and then people laying out palms and other greenery in a square shape. There would be drumming. We just observed from afar.

Our day was full of transportation issues of various kinds but we still enjoyed ourselves. The main street through Chapultepec Park, Reforma, was closed to vehicle traffic and many bicyclists, roller bladers, pedestrians, etc. were using it. So the buses were not stopping in the typical places. We finally managed to catch a bus which didn’t take us as far as we wanted to go, but instead let everyone off at La Diana. This stop turned out to be a roundabout with this gorgeous fountain in the center, topped by a statue of The Huntress.

There was a lot to do in this park, but we were overextended and just wanted to enjoy the day. We indulged in a final transportation adventure — checking out rental bicycles which were available everywhere at docking stations like Citibike in New York. After riding, eating lunch, and more riding, we made our way back to our neighborhood by bike. The closest docking station was just outside the plaza of this gorgeous old chapel, nicknamed La Conchita. I’m not sure how this relates to the earlier church I showed, they are close geographically. This one is identified on the governmental website as “almost certainly the first European church building in Mexico.” Also built on top of a Toltec site.

La Conchita: Coyoacán’s Iglesia de la Inmaculada Concepción

Plaza de la Conchita

The whispers of the past were almost audible here and I would have loved to explore further. But I was exhausted and needed to pack. We were getting up early the next morning to catch a taxi to the airport. That’s another transportation story that worked out perfectly due to the kindness of strangers.

PS – One more strange Mexican coincidence followed me home. I was entertaining myself listening to podcasts on the plane trip. Having no Internet, I was limited to only the podcasts on my phone, so I listened to things I had bypassed before as uninteresting. One of them happened to be Between the Covers, a literary podcast. David Naimon, the host, was interviewing Alvaro Enrigue and guess what, the subject was the contact between Hernan Cortes and Moctezuma, which took place right where we were, Mexico City then called Tenochtitlan, in 1519. (Enrigue has written a book imagining it, called You Dreamed of Empires.) I can’t begin to tell you how illuminating this podcast was about the area we had just been visiting. Just one example: they spoke extensively about La Malinche (also known as Malintzin among other names), a native Nahual woman who translated for Cortes. Her presence was everywhere around us in Coyoacan — we had dinner our first night at a restaurant off a street named Malintzin. I didn’t know any of this during those 3 days, but was given this marvelous gift of knowledge on the trip home. It gave me an uncanny feeling for the rest of the long trip and I still feel those uncanny vibrations. The mysteries of Mexico, the magic of reality.