Mexico City
A big blog entry for a big city...
24.01.2012 - 29.01.2012
25 °C
View
Latin America
on sarahm_lux's travel map.
I spent the last 6 days exploring Mexico City. The city is really huge and there is so much to see!
Of course I went to a lot of museums while in the city. Here a list of the ones I visited:
- Palacio de Bellas Artes: a good museum in a great building. The expositions were just not as big as I thought they would be.
Palacio de Bellas Artes
- Museo Mural Diego Rivera: shows Diego Rivera's massive mural Sueño de una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda Central. The rest of the museum is interesting, too.
- Museo de la Caricatura: shows mainly political caricatures.
- Museo de Sitio de la Secretaría de Educación Pública: 3 floors full with amazing murals, most by Diego Rivera.

Mural in the Secretaría de Educación Publica

Mural in the Secretaría de Educación Publica
- Museo Archivo de la Fotografía: small free photography museum.
- Museo Nacional de Antropología: an incredibly big museum on anthropology, evolution, pre-hispanic cultures and indigenous peoples' lives today. I found it very interesting, but also tiring towards the end.

Museo Nacional de Antropología

Museo Nacional de Antropología

Museo Nacional de Antropología
- Museo de Arte Moderno: a nice modern art exhibition.
- Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño: houses an interesting collection of Diego Rivera's and Frida Kahlo's work among others.
- Museo del Estanquillo: had a large exhibition on old Mexican movies.
- Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: shows the medical knowledge of pre-hispanic cultures and the evolution of medicine after the colonisation.
- Museo Nacional del Arte: very big and interesting art collection.
That's a lot of museums, I know, and I'll spare you more details on them...
Obviously I did do other things as well. I walked around the Historical centre quite a few times, enjoying the nice architecture and the good atmosphere. I saw the Casa de los Azulejos and walked through the Alameda Central park. I also went to the Cathedral, which is massive and beautiful inside. The Palacio Nacional is also striking inside and its walls are decorated with several amazing murals as well.
Casa de los Azulejos

Cathedral

Palacio Nacional

Mural in the Palacio Nacional
On Tuesday night, we went to see a Lucha Libre fight with a Canadian couple from our hostel. The wrestling show was pretty ridiculous, but very funny. You should definitely see this once when in Mexico. It's a shame we were not allowed to take our cameras in.
On Wednesday, I visited the Templo Mayor, which was a main temple of the Aztecs. A very interesting site.
Templo Mayor

Templo Mayor

Templo Mayor Museum

Templo Mayor Museum
On Wednesday night, my English friend took a flight back home to England. I could not believe it was time for her to go home. It just made me think of the end of my trip even more...
When I was at the anthropology museum, I saw Voladores de Papantla outside in the park. 4 men climb up a pole and then wind themselves down on a rope in 13 turns, making them look like they are flying. It is a very impressive show. It looks very scary the way they are turning around up there.
Danza de los Voladores
Walking around the Bosque de Chapultepec and along the Paseo de la Reforma with its statues in every roundabout was very nice too.
Monumento a la Independencia

Mexico City sunset
On Friday, I went to the neighbourhood of Xochimilco, where I took a boat ride on the canals. The colourful boats are called trajineras and are a lot like the gondolas in Venice. The funniest thing about the whole ride is that on the big canal you can find anything being sold off boats. Food and souvenirs are on sale, but there are also mariachi and marimba bands floating around and offering to play you a song for money. Although it was not very busy that day because it is low season and it was a weekday, it was a unique experience.
Trajineras in Xochimilco

Mariachi band on a trajinera in Xochimilco
That night I went out with the Canadians and my Spanish roommate. We went for a few drinks, then met some other foreigners and ended up going to a club with them, which was absolutely packed and where we were the only non-Mexicans. You could barely move, but the music was alright and we enjoyed the experience.
I went to visit the Basilica de Guadalupe the next day. This is the church most visited by pilgrims in Mexico. It was a Saturday so it was very busy when I was there. There is the beautiful old church, which was being used for a wedding that day, but you could still go in and look around. Next to it a new church had been build. It is a huge building holding up to 40,000 people. It is a modern round building, built in a way so that everybody has the best possible view. The whole complex around the church is much bigger though. There are 4 more churches and a very nice park with different sculptures, a waterfall etc. You can also visit a museum in the back of the old church which shows religious art, mostly related to the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who the church is dedicated to.
Beautiful old Basilica de Guadalupe

Ugly new Basilica de Guadalupe
The Mercado de la Merced is said to be the biggest in the Americas. I had a walk around and it is definitely very big! You can find everything here, food, clothes, electronics, make up... Just like it any Latin American market really, just with much more choice.
The Mercado de la Ciudadela sells handicrafts from all over Mexico. It was a good place to buy some souvenirs because you can find everything in one place and the prices are fixed, so no need to bargain.
On my last day in the city, I visited Coyoacán, another neighbourhood in the South of the city. It is a very pretty and lively place, especially on a Sunday. The 2 main squares just next to each other are beautifully decorated with trees, sculptures and fountains, and are surrounded by nice little cafés, restaurants and ice cream shops. By coincidence, there was a Fiesta del Tamal going on while I was there. Since I like tamales a lot I had to check this out of course. There were many different stalls offering different types of tamales, both savoury and sweet ones, from different regions of Mexico and even from other Latin American countries. I tried a Tamal con Mole Amarillo, which was very good and different from the ones I had had so far.
Coyoacán

Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares

Tamal con Mole Amarillo
While in Mexico City I had street food for most meals except breakfast. You can find it anywhere and it is really cheap. I tried my way through the different types of tortilla dishes on offer: the freshly filled tacos (your choice of filling and the tacos are freshly heated on the frying plate and then folded up; you also have a choice of salads and sauces you can add yourself), tacos al guisado (tacos filled with stews of different types), tacos de canasta (pre-prepared tacos with simple fillings such as potatoes, beans or pork, sold out of a basket or bucket), tacos dorados (deep-fried taco shells filled with salad and potatoes beans or meat), quesadillas (tortillas filled with cheese and sometimes other ingredients before heating so that the cheese melts inside them), tlayudas (like in Oaxaca, although here they were oval shaped and made out of green maize) and garnachas (I am not quite sure what the difference is between these and the freshly filled tacos...). I also tried a couple of tortas, Mexican sandwiches filled with various types of meats and cheese. What makes them so delicious is that tomatoes and avocado can always be added. Elote is the word used for corn and this is sold on the cob on the street. When the corn is removed from the cob and sold in a cup it is called esquite. Both have mayonnaise, cheese and different sauces added.
And the conclusion is: I had a very good time in Mexico City and liked the place a lot. I am sure there still is a lot I missed though.
Mexico City Busyness

Izcoatl
Posted by sarahm_lux 19:37 Archived in Mexico Tagged mexico_city xochimilco coyoacán Comments (0)