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.

Trip Report: Mexico City, Day Three

The first thing we did Monday morning was head to the supermarket to buy sunscreen. There was one a short walk from our hotel in lovely Condesa.

In the circle of streets around Parque Mexico, the medians are all forested with a central sidewalk.

As in most cities, a lot of the tourist sites are closed on Mondays, so we decided to go to the privately owned Antique Toy Museum. It was pretty close to our hotel, but in the middle of Doctores and as we now knew what that meant, we took an Uber. Uber was our preferred way to get around in Mexico City, super easy and safer than dealing with the crowds on public transportation right now. We never waited more than 5 minutes or so and the trips were extremely cheap. I sometimes had to double check the currency conversion math because I couldn't believe how cheap - usually around $3 for a 15 minute trip.

The Antique Toy Museum is the collection of a Japanese-Mexican man who just likes weird toys. It was five floors packed full of all sorts of strange things.

Most of the toys were from the 80s or earlier, although there were a handful of newer items sprinkled in here and there.

There were only two other groups of people in the place while we were there. In some rooms the lights were off and we had to go looking for the light switch. (There were signs that said it was OK to turn on the lights if they weren't already on.)

Here is Ben being like, "what IS this place?"

I had Aerobica Barbie!

As you go higher in the building, it gets weirder. This guy was two stories tall, in the middle of a large central courtyard.

The top floor and roof was all street art and graffiti. It was all very well done.

If there was any information about why this art is there, we never found it. 

The top floor also seemed to have been some kind of institution at some point. There were a bunch of small bathroom stalls complete with showers, each decorated in a different way.

This place is awesome. You should go. 

It was lunchtime so we got another Uber and went back to Condesa to the row of restaurants our hotel had mentioned. We chose a sushi spot and ordered four rolls for $6 each and they were ENORMOUS. 

I tried to ask in Spanish if we could take the leftovers home ("Lo podemos tomar?") but the guy said to me in English, "what are you trying to say?" and I said, "can we take it?" and he said, "yes." I TRIED.

We relaxed in the hotel for a while during the afternoon rain and then decided to walk to dinner at Maximo Bistrot in the Roma neighborhood, another popular middle-class area with lots of shops and restaurants. It was about a 25 minute walk.

All over Mexico City we were seeing these green squares painted on the sidewalk. It turns out they're markers for a safe space to gather in case of a major earthquake - supposedly, if you stand there, no buildings will fall on you. Good to know. 

Maximo Bistrot was our first pre-planned fancy dinner spot, and it did not disappoint. Ben got a whole roasted fish with mole.

I got steak with potatoes two ways.

And we split this amazing tarte tatin for dessert, with vanilla ice cream topped with deep green olive oil. 

 Delicioso!

Trip Report: Mexico City, Day Two

As it turns out, it takes too long to update the blog when you're actually on vacation. Spoiler: We made it home!

The second day, we decided to walk from our hotel in Condesa to the Centro Historico, the heart of old Mexico City. Google Maps said it would be about three miles. Condesa is beautiful. The streets are lined with colorful houses and big trees and cute shops and restaurants like this. 

I'd googled a little bit to make sure it was safe to walk all that way, and the consensus was "sure!" And, I mean, we're still here today and nothing bad happened (it was Sunday morning), but in general I would not recommend walking from Condesa to Centro Historico through Doctores, which we later learned is considered one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in the city, for some reason home mainly to car thieves. A guy at our hotel told us "If your car is missing, you go to Doctores to find it." We were not that surprised to hear this, because during the walk we saw many people working on cars in what were obviously, in retrospect, chop shops. Vacation!

Because Mexico City is so old, the streets are all tangled up, at angles to each other with lots of roundabouts. This meant we constantly got off-track when we thought we knew where we were going, and it made for some quite dicey accidental diversions in Doctores. At one point we walked through a small homeless encampment. What really freaked me out, though, was coming across a long block filled with people milling about, mostly on the sidewalk but also in the streets. The vibe was strange, like they were waiting for something - what were they all doing? Everyone was masked, of course. Standing around, chatting, looking at each other. Then I noticed the big building on our right said HOSPITAL. Ah, wonderful: we were wandering through crowds outside an inner city hospital in the developing world during a global pandemic. I pointed the sign out to Ben and we veered instantly into the middle of the street rather than threading our way through the crowd outside the gates. A couple of blocks later, all the businesses lining the streets were funeral homes. 

Here's a couple of shots after we were back on the main road.

We did finally reach the Centro Historico. This little chapel was the first historic item we saw.

The Zocalo is the big square at the history city center, lined with the cathedral and government buildings and shops. It's hard to overstate how big that flag is. It's SO BIG.

I had almost booked a hotel here, right on the square (the Gran Hotel de Mexico City) but changed my mind at the last second because of travelers mentioning the noise in this part of the city. Like many touristy city centers it's not particularly safe after dark, either. 

It's hard to tell because the scale is so enormous, but there were tons of people around here, and it was noisy, and after experiencing the quiet beauty of our little hotel in Condesa I was glad I'd gone with that choice.

We went inside the cathedral but as it was Sunday morning, they were having services so we couldn't enter the main part of the church.

There's a cute row of shops behind the cathedral.

Right next to the church are the ruins of the ancient Templo Mayor, the center of the Aztec city Tenochtitlan on which Mexico City was built. In true human form, the conquering Spanish used stones from the Aztec structures to build the cathedral. These ruins were only discovered by construction workers in the 1970s.

We were roughly following a walking tour from one of the books in our hotel, and stopped at Cafe Popular, one of their recommended spots. It was a diner-type place a few blocks from the Cathedral. I got a big plate of papaya.

And chicken enchiladas with black bean sauce and chorizo. This is one of their Especiales de la Casa.

Ben's sausage and cactus leaf is not very photogenic but it was excellent. It came with tortillas. This lunch was like $15, including drinks and flan for dessert.

I don't know what this building is but it looks nice.

This is a famous one, the House of Tiles. It used to be a palace for a rich family but is today the headquarters of a big chain of department stores.

The Palacio de Belles Artes is across the street. This is a big theatre and also houses an Architecture Museum and Diego Rivera murals. We didn't go inside this time.

This is an art museum we also didn't go into.

We did go inside the beautiful main post office, which is still in use today.

The Alameda Central park was packed with people on this Sunday afternoon. The weather in Mexico City is absolutely perfect. I don't know why everyone doesn't live there. Every single day you can just go outside whenever you want and you won't be too hot or too cold. Why am I in North Carolina.

We decided to go over to the Museo Franz Meyer. I didn't really know what it was but it was close by on the map and we like a weird small museum. Meyer collected all sorts of stuff - furniture, art, ceramics - throughout his life and donated it all when he died. The best part was the temporary exhibit of American designer Alexander Girard's work. I had never heard of him but I'm glad I have now.

This building was Meyer's home. Mexico City's tremendous weather means that you can have open air courtyards in your fancy house.

He also had an amazing library.

We hung out in the hotel for a couple hours while it rained, then went to find dinner. We decided to check out Temporal, recommended by the hotel, which was only a 4 minute walk away. We could not find this place at all, even with Google maps. Why are all the roads curved around each other?? So confusing. By approximately Day 4 we had finally figured out how everything fit together. 

Anyway, we made it. We sat upstairs next to an open window. Everything about it was great. My starter was the standout, tomato and corn salad with burrata. Ben's octopus tacos are in the background.

For dessert we split the chocolate tart.

We were both sunburned after the day's long walks but it was worth it! A day full of adventure in Mexico City.