EL TOUR GRANDE

A series of El Virgins del Guadalupe…

from La Mercado de los Antiguidades at Lagunilla

from The Catedral Centro Historico

from the embarcadero at Xochimilco

from the Oaxaca painted animalitos farm

Casa Roma has been our home of 5 days. We loved the modern contempo decor and warm hospitality which made us feel more like locals at home in a friends house than tourists. Bruno, Carlos, Delia y Celia were so nice. 

Our Cuarto Rojo

Celia and Delia preparing us a different breakfast dish everyday to expose our pallettes to the wide range of Mexicana specialties. A meal that always started with fresh fruits. Weve never enjoyed breakfast so much! What a treat.

Discovering Delia’s chilaquiles con salsa Poblano was one definite highlight of our trip do far.  

Carlos, who is finishing his degree in Graphic Design, was so kind to give us the insider tips. 

Bruno, the owner and AirFrance flight attendant, guided us through the best calles of La Condesa.

El Parque de Los perros at Parque Espana, where dogs in Mexico go to school to get graduate degress in behaviour training and to simply have fun!!!

The last full day in Ciudad de Mexico was a Fiesta de los Museos…

First stop was Museo de Antropologica for 5 hours. Everybody recommended the Anthropology museum and it didn’t disappoint. Some wares were incredibly modern looking and dated BC. Even by their artifacts you can tell that the Aztecs were pretty fierce and powerful. We were amazed at how much culture there were in this part of the world and how relatively little they are recognized.

Eric living out his Indiana Jones fantasy!!!

Lunch at the museum. The Arracherra, con tres chiles, a dish we ordered by accident, turned out to be one of the best cuts of beef we’ve had. Arguably even one of the best meals -ever!!! Lean, spicy, thyme marinated with three types if Mexican chiles. This meal will go down in our top 5 fo sho!!!

Special shout out the elusive… El Yaguar (the jaguar)

Some nice paper cutout peeps from more recent Mexikraftwerk.

Next up was Museo Frida Kahlo. It’s Frida’s childhood home that she renovated and lived in with Diego Rivera. It was nice to see her studio but there is not much else. Where are her works?!?

Since the Frida Museum didn’t take as much time as we thought we taxied to the Diego Rivera house. But we were turned away 40 minutes before closing time! Too bad. The house (or castle) looked nothing like what you would expect from a self-proclaimed communist, it would have been interesting to see the inside. We’ll leave Anhuacalli for next time.

After much huffing and puffing (and you can guess which one if us did the majority of that ;-) we rode the rush hour train back home. We’ve never ridin Tokyo rush hour, but now we know what it feels like in Mexico!

Needless to say Eric was not a happy camper!!! ;/(

Manana vamos a Oaxaca.

Where does one begin to speak and think of what Teotihuacan is? The sheer size and importance of this site is beyond capacity. These guys was truly innovatin!

Eric has a thing or two for stuff from the olden days; from faded ancient threads to moldy handcrafted figurines.  

And as far as old things are concerned it doesn’t get much bigger or glamourous than pyramids. We are still waitings for the ones in Egypt to blow our minds away but the pyramids of Teotihuacan were very very impressive too. Hopefully a prelude to things to come in Egypt.

We rode the bus from MC to reach the UNESCO Heritage site and spent 6 hours just roaming the ruins of the ancient city. What is left is the religious center of the city that mysteriously disappeared 1300 years ago. The scale was amazing and you can only imagine what grandeur it must have been when the steps have not yet crumbled down and the surfaces painted with colorful warriors and jaguars and crocodiles.    

Tucked inside the Citadel are some well preserved relief figures. Most importantly… El Quetzalcoatl, the mythical, feathered serpent deity.

Climbing the pyramids…

Temple of the Sun. The Sun Pyramid is the tallest pyramid at 233.5 ft.

The view from above was amazing, literally breath-taking and windy!!!

Temple of the Moon. The Moon Pyramid is smaller than the Sun but it is this one that is at the end of the grand avenue. These people had such an amazing eye for symmetry and geometry.

MJ was better on the uphill. +cruz did better on the downhill. The ancients must have been tall gigantic people. Each stone was huge! We took it one giant step at a time.

The museum. The Mayan, Aztecs and Toltecs produced produced some really amazing peices!!!

+cruz met some new local friends…

We were here!!!

What a true shame that no one knows why they went extinct! Its a mystery.

This is for La Raza!

Everything exists, waiting to be discovered.

A walk through Centro Historico. Some local flavour.

Mexico’s history in reverse, from present to past, as told by Diego’s mural at the Palacio Nacional.

A case of mistaking the Spaniards as the second coming of the el blanco Jesus.

Some of Diegos estudiantes painted the local mercado…

The Aztec ruins resurface beneath its colonial skin. Mexico City is sinking…

We decided to head south and explore something uniquely Mexicana – a festive little town past Coyoacan called Xochimilco (sho-chi-mil-ko)

En route, we saw some nice signage…

MJ shooting another series of images on Polaroid…

Some nice iron works on the gates…

The afternoon was a nice leisurely float through the Xochimilco Canals, the Venice of Mexico City, a favourite past time of the Chilangos on weekends as they float and dine on the still water while Mariachis strum along…

One section of it feels like a Michele Gondry video with stuffed animals hanging on trees, appeasing a little girl that drowned on the still waters.

It was funny to see all these places which you could actually also see in the movie Frida.

The day began with Centro Historico’s Catedral.

lots of keys for a church! we never did find out what the locks were for. atonement, perhaps.

Yes, +cruz still considers himself Catolico.

MJ, well, shes still on the Catholic training wheels

Jesus Tu Palabra es Verda

Papa Juan Paolo II, who MJ and I have seen at the Vatican in 1987/88? and in a bus in Manila sometime around 1982, respectively.

Part deux coming up…

On Sunday, we hunted a good hour and nearly gave up before we finally found the antique market. En route from El Metro Chilpancingo. Oye mira… Chex out the local Viagra.

It was a great experience seeing antiquities and old & new icons of Mexican cultura.

I love these Lucha Libre paintings. It reminds me of Los  tres rebeldes – Angel, Eric y Miguel.   

A portrait of Frida from O-WAX-A-KA, a sign of things to come.

We finished the day off at Polanco dining at Ivoire. 

One thing we noticed was the abundance of parks in Mexico city. They even hold art and painting classes for kids. What a country¡

They sure love writers here, they have so many streets named after them!

What’s left of a former trendy Japonaise restaurant.