Day 4 Thursday 2/6

 The first stop was Basilica de Guadalupe. There is the old basilica from 1695-1709, and the new built in 1976. The old one could only hold about 1500 people, the new one 10,000. The old is leaning quite a bit. The new was designed by the same architect who designed Museo de Antropologia (Pedro Ramirez Vazquez) and it has a Diego Rivera mural. There is a conveyor belt that takes visitors in front of the famous image of the Virgin so everybody has a minute to get close, take a picture or pray.  Then we drove a long way out to the suburbs to visit the archaeological site of Teotihuacan (The City of Gods). It is huge and dates back to 100 BCE – 800 CE. At its peak about 250,000 people lived there. It includes 2 large pyramids - one dedicated to the moon god and other to the sun god. Bo climbed to the top of both these pyramids when she was there in 1998, but since Covid climbing them is not allowed. The only one you are allowed to climb is a smaller pyramid of the serpent god, which was partially destroyed when archaeologists used gunpowder to open it. It contains another, older pyramid inside because Aztecs used to rebuild everything every 52 years. They didn’t destroy the older structure, though, just built on top of it.

For dinner we went to a well-known and popular seafood restaurant Entremar in Polanco, an upscale part of CDMX. Before dinner, we walked through Polanco to get a feel for the area. The food was excellent and so was the service. The place was completely packed, but luckily we had a reservation. The next problem was finding a taxi to get back to the hotel.  After 15 minutes of walking and looking, we asked a street vendor who told us to go 3 blocks to the metro station where it’s easier to find one. He was right. we finally found a taxi. Mexico City traffic is the worst. It took us 45 minutes to drive the 5.6 miles from Polanco to our hotel. 
















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 8 Monday 2/10

Image
  We had to leave for the airport around 1 pm so we decided to spend the few hours we had left in the morning on visiting the hip neighborhoods of Roma and Condesa. They border each other and both have whimsical tree-lined streets lead to scenic parks, where you can sit, relax and admire sculptures and fountains. This area was originally home to aristocrats and slowly transitioned to a place where artisans could set up shop, and now it is home to a multitude of quaint boutiques, coffee shops and good restaurants. They both have a bohemian vibe and are very safe and walkable. We had not seen that many American expats anywhere else in Mexico City and we can understand why. Ride to the airport was quick 24 minutes. The airport, however, is a bit of a disaster. We were looking for a Delta lounge because we had time to kill and were told that Delta does not have a lounge, but we should try Aeromexico. Somebody pointed us to the opposite side of the terminal so we started walking. About ...
Read more

Day 6 Saturday 2/8

Image
  In the morning, we went to Coyoacan, a very picturesque part of the city with a lovely park with a statue of coyotes in the center and beautiful, colorful colonial buildings all around. We walked around the town and through a market on the way to Casa Azul, the museum of Frida Kahlo. The property belonged to the Kahlo family since 1904 and four years after the painter’s death, in 1958, it was converted into a museum. The house was Frida's family home throughout her life. She was born here, lived with her husband Diego Rivera, spent her final days, and the place where she died. The rooms are preserved as they were lived in, with the furnishings of the 1950s. Frida's personal collection of pre-Hispanic and Mexican folk art is in it as well as a few of her lesser-known paintings and many photographs, letters, and mementos and also her clothes and jewelry. Several of the rooms are in the classic Mexican style, with bright yellow and blue tiles and walls. T he huge garden courtya...
Read more

Day 2 Tuesday 2/4

Image
  Started the day with a lecture about Mexican Muralists – Diego Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros.     It was an interesting overview of the Mexican muralist movement, which started around 1920 and lasted until the 1960s.Lots of pictures illustrated the differences between the styles of the three most famous muralists. Then we walked around the Zocalo and visited the museum/ruins of Templo Mayor, part of the Aztec city of Teochtitlan.     The Spaniards built the colonial center of Mexico City upon this Aztec city.     Wherever you dig for a building foundation you expose ruins.     The archaeological site in the historical district is immense, and it’s probably just a fraction of what’s still uncovered under streets and colonial buildings.     Some colonial buildings had to be destroyed to allow excavation. After the     Templo Mayor museum, we had lunch in a restaurant nearby and then visited Colegio San Ildefonso, which used...
Read more