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!