Teotihuacan and Monarchs

The last couple of days have been fun, but have involved a lot of driving. We rented a car and left Mexico City on Wednesday morning, and let me tell you, driving in Mexico City is not for the faint of heart! Signs are sporadic, one-way streets are all over the place, there are no lanes, stop lights and signs are merely suggestions… I am so thankful for Selso’s expert driving!

Wednesday we headed to Teotihuacan, an ancient city which dates back to the 2nd century B.C. The site contains two pyramids, the pyramid of the sun and the pyramid of the moon. I couldn’t make it all they way up the higher of the two (I’m afraid of heights) but the kids and Selso managed to scale the 213 foot pyramid.

Not much is known about the people who inhabited Teotihuacan but the Aztecs found the site deserted and believed it had been built by giants. We were also able to tour the Palace of Quetzalpapalotl which contained multiple rooms decorated with murals of a jaguar and parrots.

We attempted to go around Mexico City on our way southwest to the city of Toluca, but unfortunately (see above) we ended up back in the city and had to drive through some decidedly unpleasant areas. We were in the slums, and it was quite disturbing to see how many people live. We finally made it out of the city (no small task) and to Toluca, where we crashed for the night.

Today we drove about three hours northwest to see the winter home of the monarch butterflies. We drove through the countryside (much of it looked like central California, with its rolling brown hills) until we reached the parking lot. From here we hiked approximately a mile up the hill in a high altitude. I won’t lie, more than once, we all wondered what had possessed us to make this journey. And then…

The butterflies. They really did take our breath away. The trees were laden with the beautiful orange butterflies. The sky was littered with them and several even landed on Davis and me. It was quite magical.

Our final day in Mexico City

Today we headed back to the Zocalo to check out Templo Mayor, all that remains of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in Mexico City. As those of you who read yesterday's blog know, Tenochtitlan was built on Lake Texcoco, and apparently the Spaniards weren't the only ones who had trouble with flooding. Templo Mayor was enlarged and rebuilt seven times due to instability and sinking issues. If you take a close look, you can see how there are multiple levels of rock -- this is due to rebuilding on top of the same location.

Look how cute Selso and Isa are! The Catedral Metropolitana, which we visited last week, is in the background on the lower left.

The wall of stone skulls.

Attached to Templo Mayor is a museum housing many of the artifacts uncovered at the temple. The Eagle Warrior, in the middle, is particularly important to the Aztecs. They were a fighting people, and eagles were of special symbolic importance.

Next we headed to Coyoacan, formerly a suburb of Mexico City, and now a neighborhood. It is a pleasant place and we had a delicious lunch of ceviche there. We've definitely had tasty food (and a couple of less-than-memorable meals) but so far mostly chicken and steak huaraches or tacos. This was a little different and fabulous. Even the kids devoured the ceviche.

Right next to the restuarant was a market selling all sorts of food, pinatas, clothes, toys and more. We bought five juicy oranges for about $0.70.

Our final stop of the day was Casa Azul (Blue House), the former home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In addition to some paintings by each artist, we were able to tour some rooms and see some of their collection of art, which included a number of pre-Hispanic idols.

Tomorrow we leave Mexico City and we will probably be without internet access for at least a few days as we tour the surrounding areas. Our stay here has definitely been wonderful. I know a number of friends, relatives, and even strangers, were concerned about our safety here, but I must say we haven't had any problems, and have felt quite safe and comfortable here. We've really enjoyed our visit here and whole-heartedly recommend Mexico City to anyone!

A quiet day

Isa and I were up well before dawn this morning with turista. Yuck! Luckily we are both feeling much better. Selso was also a bit sick, but somehow Rafael, the littlest one, isn’t sick at all. We had planned a quiet day today since so many things are closed on Mondays and we figured we’d be ready for a break in the frenetic pace we’ve maintained, so it worked out.

The kids got some much needed play time and Selso and I fine tuned our plans for the next few days, did some laundry and repacked. Very exciting stuff!

For lunch, we headed to a restaurant located in an 18th century manor house called Casa de las Azulejos (House of Tiles). The interior is beautiful – with a Moorish patio and (another!) mural, this one by Orozco.

On the way back from lunch, we paused by a couple of churches and just looked at the exterior. Take a good look at the building on the right. Many buildings in Mexico City are like this – sinking into the ground. Mexico City is built on the Aztec ruins of Tenochtitlan, which were situated on an islet in Lake Texcoco. Despite severe flooding on this site, the Spaniards opted to stay in this location and in the 1600s, the lake was drained. So the city is sitting on a lakebed and it’s not terribly sturdy!

We only have one more full day in Mexico City, so during lunch we discussed our favorite and least favorite parts of our stay here. Davis’s favorites were the museums and the Ballet Folklorico. Her least favorite is too much togetherness with her siblings. Isa’s favorite was the Ballet Folklorico. Her least favorite was riding the metro. Rafael’s favorite was the fighting portion of the Ballet Folklorico. His least favorite was walking so much (and he really has walked a lot – Selso and I have only carried him a little bit. This kid is a trooper!). Selso’s favorites are all the murals and his least favorite was getting sick and not being able to get a yummy salad. My favorites are the Rivera murals at the Palacio Nacional and the Ballet Folklorico. My least favorite has been missing my friends. I think the general consensus is that Mexico City is a great place, and definitely worth visiting.

Bosque de Chapultepec

We were up bright and early this morning to attend a 9:30 a.m. performance of the Ballet Folklorico of Mexico at the Museo Nacional de Antropogolia (unfortunately, they weren’t performing at the Palacio de Bellas Artes , which is a much prettier and closer venue, this week). We thought we’d given ourselves plenty of time to get there and pick up some breakfast along the way, but we were a few minutes late.

We had to buy tickets for this performance a few days ago, and it is by far the most expensive thing we’ve done. Dinner usually costs less than $15 for all five of us. Entrance into museums is usually a few dollars each (except for Rafael). The Ballet Folklorico set us back $142 (for all of us), but we all agreed it was absolutely worth it. We were all riveted and Isa was literally at the edge of her seat. I’ve seen other traditional Mexican dancing, but this was a whole order of magnitude better. The dances represented a wide variety of Mexican history and culture and the dancers were stupendously talented. The costumes were beautiful and rendered the stage a swirl of color, and the mariachi band that accompanied the dancers was excellent. Truly a delight!

After the performance we had lunch at an outdoor spot in the Bosque de Chapultepec. The Bosque was filled almost to capacity with families, couples, and groups of friends enjoying a beautiful Sunday. Vendors selling all sorts of things had set up shop all over the Bosque and there was definitely an air of a street festival. We headed over to the Castillo Chapultepec, a beautiful 18th century castle, with great views of the city. The castle houses the Museo Nacional de Historia (the National History Museum) which we had intended to skip, but instead kind of raced through. It had some interesting artifacts and information.

Also inside the castle is an enormous mural by David Alfaro Siquieros, entitled From the Porfiriato to the Revolution. The mural is huge, huge, huge, and the kids are standing in front of about a fifth of it. I love the movement and color in this piece.

The Bosque de Chapultepec is also home to the Museum of Modern Art, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Museum of Natural History, Museum of Technology, a botanical garden, and a zoo, but the kids opted to rent a paddle boat and paddle around Lago Chapultepec. Selso and the kids had a good time in the four-person paddle boat, along with lots of other boaters. I sat in the shade and tried not to get burned.

We made it back to the condo, exhausted, around 4:30 p.m. Selso has been picking up dinner most nights from a taqueria across the street, and we enjoy a relaxed dinner in the condo, which is what we did tonight. Tomorrow should be a quieter day!

Xochimilco

Today we took the metro to Xochimilco, which has an extended series of canals. We have taken the metro several times and find it a very convenient, cheap way to get around. It only costs $0.72 for all of us, no matter how far we need to go.

The metro is similar Paris’s metro or London’s Tube, however there are lots of people selling things on the metro, which I don’t remember in these other cities. Men and women walk up and down the limited space, hawking CDs for 10 pesos (less than $1.00), candy, nail clippers…

Once at Xochimilco. we boarded a tranjero (boat) and wandered around for about an hour enjoying the scenery and activity, with many other people, mostly Mexican but also some tourists, on boats as well. It was picturesque, but every few minutes a boat passed us offering mariachis (for pay), flowers, candy, or food, and it got a little old saying, “No, gracias.”

Of course, we did buy a snack (quesadillas), which were made fresh on the above boat. Yum!

Our next stop was the Museo Dolores Olmeda Pinero, who was a patron of Diego Rivera and left her extensive art collection and beautiful home to the people of Mexico. In addition to many paintings and sketches by Rivera, she had pre-Hispanic artifacts and well as several paintings by Frida Kahlo, Rivera’s wife and a celebrated artist in her own right. I had been particularly looking forward to seeing her painting The Broken Column, which according to my guide book is housed at this museum. Sadly, it wasn’t there and I was quite disappointed. However seeing Olmeda's large home, complete with wandering peacocks and hairless dogs, as well as the Riveras, made it a worthwile stop.

Unfortunately, Davis has apparently acquired turista. She’s been nursing a bad tummy ache the last couple of days but seems to be on the upswing.

More Art!

The condo we are staying in is not far from the oldest park in Mexico City, Parque Alameda. It has paths meandering through the trees and beautiful fountains. However, there are no wide open spaces and all the vegetation is behind two-foot fences so people don’t walk on the grass. It reminds me of parks in Paris. All kinds of people had set up shop today, selling food, movies, crafts, clothing and more.

We walked through the park on our way to the Museo Nacional de Arte, the fine art museum in the city. The museum is housed in a neoclassical palacio and contains paintings by Mexican artists from 16th until the 20th century.

Rafael was enraptured by a painting of a man about to be decapitated. We could barely pull him away. The more recent works include several by Diego Rivera, as well as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Juan Clemente Orozco. Great stuff!

The painting on the top left is the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is hugely iconic in Mexico. This image of her is seen everywhere.

After lunch we headed to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the performing arts center. The building itself is magnificent. The interior is Art Deco with beautiful purple marble columns all over the place. Peace Bear got to check out Bellas Artes, too!

The interior also contains murals by Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco and Rufino Tamayo (you can see part of one of Tamayo’s murals on the left). Not surprisingly, the kids were getting a little tired of walking, so Selso and I took turns walking around while the kids sat in front of Rivera’s busy mural, Man, Controller of the Universe, and played I Spy. Pretty cool.

Selso went to another museum – a small one with just a few of Rivera’s works – while I took the kids back to the condo for some much needed relaxing and another dip in the pool.

Mexico City's Zocalo

We are enjoying the sunshine and warmer temperatures here, along with the food. Today we headed to the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main plaza. Along one side of the Zocalo is the Catedral Metropolitana and perpendicular to it is the Palacio Nacional, both of which we visited today.

The Zocalo is in the foreground and the Catedral in the background.

The Catedral Metropolitana is the largest church in Latin America and was built over the course of more than 240 years. It is a spectacular combination of architecture – the whole of which is definitely greater than its parts.

The Palacio Nacional houses the Mexican president’s offices, as well as those of the Finance Ministry, and was formerly home to the Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortes. It was also home to many Mexican presidents, including Benito Juarez, who died here.

The Palacio contains a small museum about Benito Juarez and includes a tour through some of the rooms he and his family inhabited. However, the main attraction is the murals by Diego Rivera. Diego Rivera, who painted during the early to mid-1900s, is arguably Mexico’s greatest artist. My pictures cannot possibly do justice to his murals, which encompass Mexico’s history, with special emphasis on the native peoples’ – mostly the Aztec.

Seeing Diego Rivera's work will undoubtedly go down as one of the highlights of our trip, since Selso and I have both been longtime fans of his work. Luckily, Mexico City is awash in Rivera murals, and tomorrow we will see some more.

Museo Nacional de Antropogolia

Mexico City, at least the areas we’ve explored so far, is surprisingly clean. There are many garbage and recycling depositories along the streets. There are also a huge number of police officers everywhere we’ve been. In fact, I wonder how seriously the locals take them. Today, as we were leaving our condo, I saw a police car stopped in the street and the driver was talking to a second officer who was standing on the curb. When the light changed color, the cars behind the police car started honking their horns so he would move. Not something I’ve ever seen in the States. Also, many of the police officers are women. In any event, all my impressions of the D.F. (Distrito Federal, or federal district, similar to Washington D.C.) so far have been positive.

We spent most of the day exploring the Museo Nacional de Antropogolia (National Museum of Anthropology). I will try to summarize what we saw and limit the pictures, but this is one of the best museums of it’s kind in the world so it will be a challenge. Feel free to skim this blog – I’ll never know!

The Museum, which is wonderfully organized, houses about 13 galleries of artifacts from Mexico’s indigenous peoples. The amount and quality of the pieces is astonishing. I was amazed at how many complete pieces there were – unlike many Greek and Roman sculptures I’ve seen, most of these sculptures still have their noses. It is also wonderful to see so much of Mexico’s ancestry displayed here in Mexico, where it can be seen by Mexicans. In fact we saw a number of school groups touring the galleries.

These are the Olmec heads from the Gulf Coast area. Amazing!

The Mexica (Aztec) Hall is the largest in the Museum and houses all kinds of phenomenal artifacts, including the Sun Stone (top, middle) which is sometimes called the Aztec Calendar. The Aztecs were based in what is now Mexico City, and in a few days we'll be seeing the ruins of their religious center, Templo Mayor. Stay tuned for that!

The indigenous people of Oaxaca are the Zapotec, and these are their artifacts. Look at the noses! Perfectly intact! We'll be in Oaxaca in a few weeks and were very interested in this section.

You can't see the detail on the jade mask, but trust me, it's phenomenal! These are from the Maya, who were in more southern Mexico (the Yucatan Peninsula) and into south America.

These are from the people of Teotihuacan, who pre-date the Aztecs. Look at that obsidian fish -- made from one piece! We will be visiting the ruins of Teotihuacan later in the trip.

You may be relieved to hear we didn't make it to any other galleries. The kids were so done by this time and kept hearing the condo swimming pool calling their names!

We Made It!

Edit: I figured out how to upload my pictures. In the one below, you can see the Bosque de Chapultepec (the enormous green park) and just to the right of it, bordered by tall buildings, is the Paseo de la Reforma. We'll be at Chapultepec today as it is home to, among many other things, Mexico City's famous Museo Nacional de Antropogolia.

We spent the better part of the day on an airplane, but we have arrived safely in Mexico City and are getting settled in. We are staying in a very nice, but cozy, one-bedroom condo near the central district. Mexico City is enormous. Bigger than enormous, gargantuan. It sprawls for miles as far as the eye can see. I was hoping to post a photo I took from the airplane, but for some reason I'm having a hard time with that. In any event, the city is home to some 20 million people. The weather is great -- in the 60s and sunny. After dumping our bags, we took a brief walk around the Alameda and had dinner near the Palacio de Bellas Artes and now we are all very ready for bed. Waking up at 4:15 a.m. will do that to you!

Meet Peace Bear

Davis and I have belonged to a wonderful mother-daughter book club for the past couple of years. At our most recent meeting, we decided to do a project called geo-bear, which one of the moms had read about. The goal is to have the bear journey throughout the world by means of kind travelers. Hopefully, we would get updates about the bear and her location through postcards, emails and notes in the bear’s notepad. We all thought this was a wonderful idea, and in relationship to the book we had just read (Schooled by Gordon Korman), our members’ interest, and the idea that learning about other cultures promotes acceptance and understanding, we named the bear Peace Bear.

Since we are heading to Mexico, we were an obvious choice to start Peace Bear on her travels, and we’ll be looking for someone we can pass her along to. First however, she’ll probably get to check out some of Mexico City with us, so if you see her in a few pictures, you’ll know why she’s so special!

An Adventure Awaits

I absolutely love Washington. I love the trees and the mountains. I love the lakes and rivers. I love the summers and falls. But the winter can get a tad dreary and long. So we are heading south in search of sunshine and adventure, and if we come across homemade tortillas, ceviche and margaritas, that’s all a bonus! Mexico was an obvious choice for us, since Selso is of Mexican descent. We are all eager to learn more about the country and experience its individuality. I am excited to use my Spanish and I hope the kids will pick some up as well.

Our bags are half-packed and I have lists in my head and on my desk, but come Tuesday we’re getting on a plane and our plans and dreams will become a reality. We invite you to join us in spirit via this blog!