This one time we went to Mexico...

Sean's first IRT trip of the year went off without a hitch!

Earlier in May I flew to Mexico City to meet Sean who was flying in from working for two days in San Antonio, TX. I did not know what to expect of Mexico and Mexico City, at all. It was not a country that was high on my list of places I one day hoped to travel to. It actually didn't even make my Top 10. But, to my great surprise and delight I found the Distrito Federal to be a beautiful and endlessly fascinating city that I definitely plan on returning to. Sean's time in Mexico City was limited to four days (two of which were completely taken up with work) and then we spent three more days on the Yucatan Peninsula in Merida. 

While Sean had to spend his first two days in the D.F. working, I had two full days to spend exploring the city. The first day was given over to a full day tour curated by Eat Mexico Culinary Tours with another IRT spouse, Naomi, who accompanied her husband to Mexico as well. We spent the whole day exploring markets and street food vendors with a knowledgable and fantastic guide (AND! If you like food and food related things-you can read more about my EatMexico review on my good friend Jessica's food blog here). It was an amazing way to get to know the city's historic center intimately. And we got do what I love the most- eating some scrumptious food, to boot. 

a tortilleria, pulpo tostada, fresh made tlacoyos- all delicious! 

On our second day in Mexico City, while Sean was still working, Naomi, our friend Kat and I all went to Chapultepec Park to check out the National Anthropology Museum and Castillo Chapultepec. Chapultepec Park is one of the largest urban parks in the Western Hemisphere, it's a peaceful and verdant oasis in the middle of a pretty bustling city. In addition to the castle, and the National Anthropology Museum, it also hosts a lake, a contemporary art museum, a modern art museum, a zoo, and a theater. It's like a small town in its own right! I don't think there was any way we'd have been able to explore all of the park- even if we had a whole week to devote to it. The National Anthropology Museum is definitely a must-see if you go to Mexico City. It was a massive building that houses huge galleries devoted to showcasing artifacts from each ancient culture in Mexico; Maya, Oaxaca, toltecas, and many more. From there we walked across the park and up the hill where the Castillo Chapultepec sits, offering impressive panoramic views of Mexico City. 

snaps from the National Anthropology museum and the castillo

On Sean's first 'cultural' free day a group of us took a guided tour out to Teotihuacan, about an hour outside of Mexico City. Teotihuacan hosts the very well preserved ruins of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican pyramids in addition to a much larger complex of residential compounds that surround the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. We spent the day climbing up one pyramid, walking along the Avenue of the Dead, climbing up the other pyramid and generally walking around totally awestruck that people thousands of years ago were able to construct something so massive that is still standing today when there are houses that were built in the U.S. like fifty years ago that are just falling apart now.

In front of the Temple of the Sun, and yes! we climbed all those steps to the top. 

Now, Friday night was hands down the highlight of this trip for me. Our friends from the U.S. Embassy took us to a Luchadore match....you know what I'm talking about... masked and greased up wrestlers duking it out in a staged and pre-choreographed fight. It was just as fantastically hilarious and ridiculous as you are imagining it would be. Tickets were so cheap at Arena Mexico that we got seats two rows from the ring. The whole event started off ridiculous and just continued to escalate in ridiculousness as the evening progressed.

Luchadores in the ring

On our last day in the city we visited the Frida Kahlo Museum, the Diego Rivera Museum, and the Palacio Nacional to see Diego Rivera's murals. For a girl with an Art History B.A. seeing the places I've only read about and seen digital images of- it was pretty powerful to visit these places. The Frida Kahlo museum was amazingly curated to show a wonderful picture of the life of an extremely talented artist. The Diego Rivera Museum is another astonishingly beautiful place- and one that I had not expected. It's constructed entirely out of volcanic basalt so it has an imposing and foreboding exterior, but the inside is 6 floors of pre-Colombian and Maya artifacts that Rivera collected during his lifetime. On the second floor are the only surviving sketches of his now destroyed murals commissioned by the Rockefeller's for the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. Also, in a side gallery were his larger-than-life paper mache sculptures. Inspired by his studio turned museum we cabbed it across the city back to the historic district to see if we could get into the Palacio Nacional to see his murals depicting Mexican history. 

The only photos I got before the docent told me 'no photos please'

Before we made it to the Palacio Nacional we were all starving, so after a few minutes of searching we came upon a whole in the wall restaurant, that was the size of a closet offering Oaxacan fare. We all sat down and were served beef gorditas, chicken and cheese quesadillas all topped with red salsa and queso fresco and some delicious guava juice. (I don't have any photos of this as I was too busy using my hands to eat this delicious food). Full and content we ambled a few blocks over to the Palacio.

the busy, busy streets of the historic district

different views of the truly impressive Diego Rivera murals in the Palacio Nacional 

And in typical South American fashion, we tried to get into the Palacio Nacional but were denied because none of us were carrying our actual passports with us, just copies. But of course strategically positioned right after the guards is a group of old Mexican men in Bass Pro fishing vests saying that for 150 $MX he can bring all four of us into the Palacio even though we don't have our actual passports, quickly explaining to our suspicious group something about how we would be 'sponsored' by him as he gives us an hour long tour of the building. Kind of a rip-off, I know, but we really wanted to see the murals. And it turned out to be a really informative tour given by a quirky old guy who enjoyed talking about Mexico's political history. 


Thus ended our time in Mexico City. I was sad to leave, but...

On to the Yucatan!