The breakfast at our hotel was fantastic every day. Fruit, baked goods, and a traditional Mexico main. On our last day it was grilled bread with cheese, which I am positive has an official name, but since this took place seven months ago I can no longer remember it.
Here's Ben in his cool pants I bought for him on the internet.
We decided to spend the last day exploring the Bosque de Chapultepec, a huge park which contains various monuments and museums.
At the top of the hill is Chapultepec Castle, which used to be the seat of government but is now the Mexican National Museum of History. We had tried to go here the first day, because I always like to visit the local history museum first to get a good feel for wherever we are, but at the time it was closed.
The building and grounds were beautiful, impeccably landscaped.
This was the first place we visited that talked in detail about the period after Europeans came and took over the country. It was a bit jarring to see the usual dark paintings and heavy European furniture, to witness how thoroughly the traditional culture was subsumed under this new rule.
Some of the art in the building itself still retained some of the interesting flair.
The Castle towers over the city, with beautiful views on all sides.
Down there is the monument to the martyred boys we ran across on the first day.
I was really trying to soak up the perfect beautiful weather as we wandered the gardens, knowing what we were in for returning to North Carolina at the beginning of July.
We walked back down the hill and wandered around the park for a bit, ending up in the zoo. It was free but there is also one designated path you have to take that winds throughout the entire thing, and after a while we got thirsty and hungry and nothing was open because of COVID and we couldn't figure out how to get out. It was stressful. If you go to the zoo in Mexico City, take snacks.
By the time we made it back out to the street we knew we were too hungry to bother with trying to find somewhere to eat, so we took an Uber back to our neighborhood and ate lunch at Ojo de Agua across from our hotel. Every day when we walked past there were always people eating beautiful salads, so this seemed like a great opportunity to finally try one. We got a table on the covered patio just as it started to rain. The salads: they were good.
The rain really came down hard for a long time. We sat here and drank coffee and watched it.
The street performers had to huddle under the canopy too which was a little awkward. We gave them some pesos, then returned to our room to wait out the rain and watch some Netflix.
For dinner we returned to Temporal, where we'd eaten the first night. Among other things, we ordered the dessert of the day. The waiter explained what it was, we had no idea what he said but ordered it anyway, and it was beautiful and delicious. What is it? We still don't know.
Mexico City exceeded all expectations. I would love to go back and see some of the things we missed, and do more eating. Lots more eating.
