Trip Report: Mexico City, Day Six

We headed into the old part of the city to visit some museums and attractions. The city was bustling! And all masked up.

We went to the National Museum of Cultures. It's always so interesting to see how different countries talk about other cultures. This had exhibitions and artifacts about all of the major countries of the world. Most of it was replicas, but interesting nonetheless.

 

My favorite - and slightly more accessible than the real thing in Paris!

The museum is in a beautiful old building with a big open courtyard.

After this we went back inside the nearby cathedral hoping there was a public bathroom. There was not. But this time they weren't holding services so we got to see the impressively ornate main altar.

We were hungry and Cafe El Popular was on the way, so we went there again. It was just as good the second time.

Then we popped over to the Museo de Bellas Artes to see their famous Diego Rivera murals. The building is mainly used as a theatre. There is an architecture museum at the top but it was closed for renovations. 

They were taking temperatures upon entry, like every single other place we went, but this time Ben's was too high! They made him go stand in the corner for a couple of minutes, along with four or five other people who were also waiting for a recheck. Everyone was fine the second time so we think their thermometer was on the fritz.

There were murals by other Mexican artists as well.

Then we popped over to the printmaking museum nearby, which was small and deserted and full of random interesting things. Our preferred museum type.

Then we rested until dinner in our lovely calm and beautiful room.

For dinner we went to Pujol, widely considered the best restaurant in the Americas amongst people who spend their time rating high-end restaurants.

The price is in Mexico pesos. We're not insane.

Pujol is the type of place where everything is elaborately plated and also interesting and delicious. They gave us little smoked corns to start (not on the menu).

The thing Pujol is most famous for is their mole. They have an aged one and a "new" one and serve them together on a plate with tortillas and boy, it is far greater than the sum of its parts.

The dessert was a delightful strawberry custard-type thing. 

Pujol is worth it! You should go.

Trip Report: Mexico City, Day Five

I forgot about this for four months so hopefully I can remember the details of the second half of the trip...

I know for sure that on Day 5 we had to get a COVID test. Neither of us had had one before, but it was required for everyone entering the US, even vaccinated citizens, no more than 3 days before arrival. I wanted to get this done as soon as possible to minimize the potential exposure time before testing. Fortunately our hotel arranged for a nurse to come and do the test right there, saving us the surely traumatic experience of standing around for ages in a Mexican Urgent Care.

Hooray! We were both negative. 

We set out for the extremely wealthy neighborhood of Polanco, where several museums are located. This area looked exactly like any other city's expensive shopping district. Soulless but clean and shiny. We stopped first at a food court to get lunch because we had become murderously hungry.

We went first to the Museo Jumex, a contemporary art museum. It had some interesting exhibits but turned out to be relatively small. 

Then we went across the street to the Soumaya Museum, which the internet seemed to indicate is underwhelming, but we thought it was great. This is the personal collection of Carlos Slim, Mexico's richest man, and contained all sorts of treasures ranging from Renaissance paintings to antique harpsichords to a complete historical display of telephone technology to dozens of Rodin sculptures. 

There were also a few of these old cylindrical records. My Uncle Skeeter had dozens of these in barrels in his basement. 

There was one whole level devoted to carved elephant ivory.

I got in trouble for leaning over the railing to take this picture.

Here we are waiting for our Uber. It was juuuust about to rain but we made it in the car before it started.

We went back to our neighborhood and got a coffee. Ahh, Condesa, I miss you.

For dinner we walked over to La Capital, a hotel suggestion. We didn't have a reservation but got a great table and boy, this food and the service were incredible. I wanted to go back again the next night but Ben said we had to keep trying new places. We started with tuna tartare.

I'm pretty sure this is Ben's grilled octopus (it's been a while!). He loves octopus.

I got some kind of chicken thing with burrata and herbs that was the single best thing I ate in Mexico City. Outrageously good. 

I got a nice fruity cocktail.

Then, because we are dumb, we ordered dessert. It was just berries so we thought it would be a nice light closure to the meal but it was enormous. We managed to finish it, though.

Trip Report: Mexico City, Day Four

One of our top priorities for the trip was getting to Teotihuacan, a Aztec site about an hour outside of the city. In normal times we would have taken a bus for about 50¢, but navigating a crowded bus station and then sitting on a potentially crowded bus for an hour each way sounded like a bad idea. Our hotel said they could arrange a private car for $100, but we ended up doing Uber for about half that. 

The drive out there was interesting to give us some context outside of the small parts of the city we'd seen. This is a bad picture of the Mexico City suburbs. 

Teotihuacan is in the middle of a small village. It reminded me of the Coliseum in El Jem, Tunisia; you feel like this can't possibly be the right place, but it is.

The biggest pyramid is the Pyramid of the Sun. In normal times you can climb these pyramids, but they were blocked off because of COVID. This was great news for me, as going up (and especially down) shallow and steep stone steps is probably my least favorite thing on earth. But you know, if I was allowed I would have to do it to be sure I didn't have any regrets. Thankfully I was able to head off this psychological trauma altogether because of the global pandemic.

 Pyramid selfie!

There were a lot of people selling things here. Jewelry, toys, blankets, trinkets of all sorts. It was pretty annoying but I also bought some earrings, so you know, I'm part of the problem.

From the Pyramid of the Sun, there's a long wide walkway down to the smaller Pyramid of the Moon.

There is zero shade at the site and all the guidebooks made a big deal about the heat. I brought an umbrella from the hotel to stay out of the sun, but the heat itself was not really a problem, and wouldn't have been a problem at all if we hadn't had to wear masks. I guess people complaining about this have never been to North Carolina in August.

We have faces!

We sat on a wall here and ate a snack and stared at the Pyramid of the Sun. 

Teotihuacan was a big city. We walked all the way down to the other end.

There are ruins of non-religious sites too, shops and homes.

We saw a dog.

The Temple of Quetzalcoatl is at the far end. If you look closely here, you can see surviving stone animal heads on the exterior.

The trip back to Mexico City took about 90 minutes and cost $20. I honestly felt bad making the guy drive so far for so little money. We always tipped as much as Uber would allow.

We popped over to Ojo de Agua for a late lunch, a little place around the corner from our hotel. We walked by frequently and the food always looked great. These sandwiches were amazing. The people at this restaurant did not speak English and it was always kind of a comedy of errors trying to order anything, but worth it.

After our afternoon rest break we went to dinner at Quintonil, considered one of the Top 50 restaurants in the world. They gave us little bags for our masks.

We ate individual dishes other places that were standouts, but start to finish this was probably the food highlight of the trip. The service, atmosphere, and food were all impeccable.

This is a green chile and corn soup with (I think) thinly sliced jicama.

This is a "crab tostada" with a basil sunflower sauce.

Softshell crab.

Wild mushrooms with adobo sauce.

Tuna and ... something. It was good!

This is roasted chicken with macadamia nut mole, nectarine, and pickled clams. (I took a picture of the menu; I would never have remembered this otherwise.)

When we first sat down an American woman across from us was complaining that the lamb was tough. !!! They were extremely nice to her, much nicer than she deserved. An hour and a half later we were served the lamb, and it was emphatically not tough. It was amazing. Served with chickpea miso and tiny peeled green tomatoes.

This was one of the most interesting things, a cactus sorbet palate cleanser.

And two desserts! Berries:

And mango coconut sorbet. 

After this meal I tried to convince Ben that we should attempt to go to all 50 of the best restaurants in the world (according to this one magazine that puts the list together). We've been to Noma in Denmark already, so only 48 more to go! He maintains this is impractical. Hmph.