Day 5 Friday 2/7

 The planned first stop, Chapultepec castle, was cancelled because the president of Mexico was having an event there and no tourists were allowed. Instead we went to an art museum built by richest man in Mexico (Carlos Slim  Helú)  for his Lebanese-Mexican wife Soumaya to hold their extensive and eclectic art collection.  Museo Soumaya is housed in a stunning modern building (designed by Slim’s then son-in-law Carlos Romero) and contains a ton of stuff – 66,000 pieces to be exact.  The museum holds the largest collection of casts of sculptures by Auguste Rodin outside France, and the world's largest private collection of his art. There are 5 levels full of all kinds of art with one level dedicated to Mexican art, and that is where we spent most of the time.

Then to Museo del Cárcamo de Dolores. This museum with the Diego Rivera murals is a small hydraulic structure and also a fountain designed by Rivera. In the 1940s, Mexico City began an ambitious project to bring water into the city from the Lerma River. This water system, of which the Carcamo de Dolores is part, is known as the Lerma System, and still supplies a small percentage of Mexico City’s water. The Carcamo was designed by architect Ricardo Rivas, in collaboration with Diego Rivera, who among other contributions painted the murals inside, and designed the Tlaloc fountain outside. The building was designed as a monument to, and a space to contemplate water, as much as it was a functioning hydraulic water station. The building opened in 1951, and as it was a fully functioning part of the water system, Rivera’s murals were partially submerged. The murals were damaged by exposure to water, and by the time water was diverted away from the Carcamo in 1990, significant restoration work was necessary. It continued until 2010 when the museum reopened. Also designed by Diego Rivera is a sculpture of Tlaloc, the god of water in Aztec religion, who lies partially submerged in the fountain in front of the Carcamo building. This is one of the coolest museums in CDMX, we think.

In the afternoon, we took a taxi to the Geneve Hotel in the Reforma district where we met our friend Phil and his daughter Noah. Noah lives in Merida and the came to CDMX for the weekend. Geneve is a very quirky historic hotel, one of the oldest in the city. From there we went together to a fancy restaurant Blanco Castelar in Polanco. After a fantastic dinner, Noah told us to forget taxis and take Uber instead. She told us to take comfort uber, which is nicer and still cheaper than taxi, and also more convenient and safer. That’s what we’ve been doing since then.

 













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