In an exciting twist, I'm blogging our vacation while we're actually on it, mainly because I'm getting old and this way it will be easier to remember details. Also, everyone has to have a negative COVID test to re-enter the United States, so there will be some suspense later this week when we find out whether or not we're going to be stuck here for a while. We're vaccinated, of course (we aren't Republicans, you know), but the Delta variant is spreading rapidly throughout North America over the past several weeks. All things considered, it would have been better to travel the last week of June rather than the last week of July, but we booked this trip when it looked like summer was going to be A-OK all around. Anyway, c'est la vie! Here we are.
Wearing a mask for every second of the ~10 hours we spent in airports and planes was not very fun. I was overall impressed, though, at how everyone basically did what they were supposed to do without complaint. Naturally there were a few jokers at RDU who were wandering around in their loafers and shorts and golf shirts without a mask, but especially after arriving in Mexico City, protecting oneself and others from a deadly disease does not seem to be a very controversial idea.
We're staying at
The Red Tree House, a popular hotel in the Condesa neighborhood well known for its friendliness and hospitality. It's truly lovely, with a gorgeous central courtyard where they serve a delicious breakfast every morning.
This is the jungly view from our balcony.
The first morning we wandered aimlessly around the neighborhood, which is a quiet upper-middle class residential area with lots of good restaurants and shops. We're very close to the Parque Mexico.
Half of the park is for dogs. There were dogs everywhere. We've seen a lot of dogs in every neighborhood, actually.
The Parque Mexico is surrounded by roads circling it in a big ring. This has meant that for the first two days we get very lost any time we try to go anywhere that is only a 5 minute walk away. We're finally starting to get the hang of it.
We walked over to Chapultepec Forest, one of the largest urban parks in the world (according to Wikipedia). We sat by this monument to drink a coffee. It commemorates six teenagers who died as part of the Mexican-American War in 1847, which to be honest neither of us knew anything about at all.
Mexico City is the biggest city in the Americas, but also the oldest. Chapultepec Forest was home not only to battles in the 1800s, but also to Montezuma's Aztec people hundreds of years earlier. There are some ruins of an Aztec aquaduct in the park.
There was also this big tree, which Ben made fun of me for photographing, but I figured it had to be important if they left most of it standing! We found a plaque explaining that it had been planted by Montezuma's men in the 1500s and then died of water contamination in the 20th century.
The park is beautiful and enormous. We only explored a small part of it.
Then we walked back to the Roma neighborhood, adjoining our own just to the north.
We had a lunch reservation at
Contramar, a seafood-oriented restaurant I was very excited to try. This was our first interaction with a business after arriving. We quickly learned that everyone running a public-facing business is serious about COVID. They're all doing temperature checks and squirting hand sanitizer when you walk in the door. Many places have you step into a shallow pool of alcohol to sanitize your shoes (surely this doesn't accomplish much?) and one museum actually misted our clothes with it, too. All servers in restaurants are wearing not only masks but face shields. All Uber drivers are masked with the windows wide open. Mexico City is clearly taking the pandemic more seriously than anywhere in America ever has. Some of it may be hygiene theater, but it's also true that I've never felt as safe in public over the past year and a half as I do here.
Anyway, we sat outside at Contramar and it was a perfect way to start the trip. Their tuna tostadas are one of their most popular items, and rightly so.
We were also brought shrimp tacos by mistake, which we happily ate.
The house ceviche was excellent too.
And we finished with sopes, corn cakes topped with adobo spiced fish. We were going to get dessert but it was impossible.
After lunch we took an Uber back to Chapultepec to go to the National Archaeology Museum. Uber is pretty close to free here, and perfectly safe. A 20 minute ride is about $3 US.
The Archaeology Museum has a huge collection of artifacts from all the ancient people who lived here before Spain came and conquered the native people in the 16th century. Olmec, Maya, Aztec - it was all very impressive.
The building is very impressive too.
Almost all of these artifacts are from this immediate area. Mexico City was built long before Spain came to the new world.
Their civilization was vast and sophisticated.
There were a lot of temples outdoors, too, although Ben went into a possibly restricted area to read a sign on one of them that said it was a recreation.
After the museum, we went back to the hotel to relax a while before dinner. Summer is Mexico City's rainy season, which means it's sunny and 75 degrees with low humidity every day, and then it rains and thunders in the late afternoon or early evening. So far this has worked out fairly well with our natural schedule. This first night, we walked a few blocks over to a casual restaurant that claims to have invented tacos al pastor. We got 8 tacos and drinks and it was $15. We did end up getting caught in the rain on the way home, but that's okay. Viva la Mexico!
