Frida and Diego

The holiday weekend is certainly over here in Mexico City. When we emerged from the hotel on Monday morning we immediately noticed a change. The streets were busy with cars, people were walking about purposefully and all the shops that had previously been hidden behind roller doors, leaving us to guess what was inside, were open. It was fun to see the city in a different light. We had a more traditional Mexican breakfast - we each ordered egg dishes. This was accompanied by delicious café con leche.

On Mondays in Mexico City all the main government-run museums close so our options of what to see appeared limited. We'd read that there were 120 of Diego Rivera's murals in the Secretaría de Educación Pública building. The building was in a part of the Centro Histórico we hadn't yet explored. It takes up an entire block with one side bordering a picturesque small square, Plaza Santo Domingo.

It took us a while to find the entrance to the building, as unlike many of the other tourist attractions there was no queue. The murals were spectacular, with three levels to explore centered around two beautiful courtyards. We had the place almost to ourselves which was nice. It was also fascinating to see all the offices and the workers going about their day to day work while in such an amazing environment.

In the afternoon we checked out the Museum of Torture - a large and somewhat macabre collection of fairly gruesome torture devices dating from medieval times. 

Today we continued with the Diego Rivera theme and visited La Casa Azul - The Blue House - where Frida Kahlo grew up and where they much of their married life. The house is situated in Coyoacán - this used to be a small village outside Mexico City until the urban sprawl caught up with it over the last few decades. It's still an extremely beautiful suburb with low rise housing and tree lined streets. The house was fantastic and worth the wait to enter. It includes a number of paintings both completed and in progress by Frida Kahlo, as well as the house set up in the way it was at the time of her death. There is currently a temporary exhibition of her clothes and accessories, which followed the Tehuana style. The gardens were also extremely beautiful and contain sculptures collected by the couple.

The Trotsky museum is also in Coyoacán. It occupies the house where he and some of his family lived while exiled from Stalin's Soviet Union. Trotsky survived one assassination attempt here, before ultimately being killed by a second. A much simpler home than the Kahlo house, it was still fascinating to see how Trotsky - and likely others in the area at the time - lived now almost a century ago.

We walked into the main square of the suburb where there's a stunning fountain with coyotes - Coyoacán means 'place of the coyotes'. We also saw squirrels playing in the trees in the park.

This evening we took a final walk across the Zócalo which has now been cleared of the baseball fan zone.

Teotihuacán

We had an early start to visit the pyramids of Teotihuacán. The site is less than an hour's drive from central Mexico City although traffic can be busy. Our travel was quick as the roads were quiet. The drive showed us a bit more of the sprawling city including views of the slums which stretch for kilometres around the city. The buildings looked reasonably permanent, mostly made from brick and block, although constructed in an extremely ad hoc manner with buildings overlapping and expanded in an organic fashion. Many are painted bright colours making the hillsides extremely colourful. Our guide, Leonardo, explained that most people who live there commute to Mexico City every day for work.

We arrived at the pyramids around 8am before the crowds and many of the shops and sellers had set up for the day. Due to Mexico City's altitude it's quite warm during the day but cool overnight. Arriving in the morning meant we were able to explore most of the site while it was cool as there's no protection from the intense sun. Our first stop was the La Ciudadela and Templo de Quetzalcóatl - the Citadel and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. Leonardo gave us a brief history of the site. In the city's heyday, all the stone buildings would have been covered in stucco and painted in bright colours. We had a demonstration of how plant and insect materials were used to create the vivid colours and then fix them. The climb up the first temple wasn't too difficult although the steps are quite steep.

We walked along what the Aztecs called the Avenue of the Dead, which runs through the centre of the complex in line with the Moon Temple.

The Sun Temple sits two-thirds of the way along and is the largest pyramid by base in Mexico. It's also one of the few that you're still able to climb. Apparently the queue to the top can take up to two hours during the busy periods of the day. As it was early we were able to reach the top at our own pace. The view from the top was incredible!

The final major pyramid is the Moon Temple. From the top the views back down the Avenue of the Dead were spectacular. You can only climb the smaller pyramid in front of the main pyramid, which was almost a relief as by now the sun had come out and it was very hot.

On the way back to Mexico City we stopped at a craft shop for a look around and an explanation of the Aztecs' different uses for the cactus plant: paper, tools, weaponry, needle and textile fibre. We were also able to try some of the Aztecs' sacred drink, pulque, which is the fermented nectar that forms in the centre of the plant. When we arrived back in Mexico City we went for a wander around the Centro Histórico and looked in a few shops. We found another great traditional Mexican restaurant for dinner and tried fajitas and enchiladas in mole sauce.

Mexico City Day 2

We spent another day exploring Mexico City and learning some more about its history. Our guide Hector was extremely knowledgeable and really brought Aztec culture and Mexico City history to life.

The first stop was the Anthropology Museum. The building itself is stunning with a huge floating roof suspended by a single central pillar. There's also a pool in the centre with papyrus growing which symbolises the lake which used to exist where Mexico City is today. Learning about Aztec culture and daily life as well as their rituals was really fascinating.

Our next stop was the Palacio Nacional and the murals of Diego Rivera. The building is beautiful with strong Spanish influences. You can see parts of the building where columns are on an angle and the floor is subsiding - even though this part of the city (which was originally an island in the lake) has housed structures for centuries, the ground continues to settle and compact. The murals were amazing. The largest depicts the history of Mexico and it was great to have a guide to point out some of the quirky things that were added and their meanings. The smaller murals depicted Aztec life which was a great follow up to the Museum visit.

Our final stop on the tour was the Cathedral. It's actually two churches which we hadn't realised from the outside. You can see the sinking city phenomenon here too. There's a plumb line hanging from the centre of the church ceiling which shows how far it has subsided in the last four centuries. They've now installed hydraulic lifts under each of the main columns to stabilise and gradually restore the level of the Cathedral.

After a late lunch once the tour completed we decided to visit the Templo Mayor - the remains of the Aztec temple which the Cathedral is built upon. The stones from the original temple were used by the Spanish to pave the Zócalo. After our visit to the Aztec Room in the Museum in the morning it was a bit easier to work out how the temple may have looked before it was destroyed. The museum at the site also included a number of artefacts and sculptures removed from the Templo Mayor and continuing excavations around the Centro Histórico.

For dinner we went to Café de Tacuba. The restaurant is over two levels and both have beautiful painted tile walls and original features. The food was equally spectacular!

Exploring Centro Histórico

Today was our first day exploring Centro Histórico, the area where we're staying. We spent most of the day walking around, starting in the Zócalo which is just around the corner from our hotel. There's currently a baseball pitch set up in the middle, drawing a lot of attention from a lot of baseball fans from across Mexico. Because of this the road around the Zócalo is closed to traffic, so it's really easy to walk around at the moment. The immense Catedral Metropolitana sits at the northern edge, overlooking and imposing its presence across the Zócalo. Raw and majestic, the Catedral is almost surreal - its materials seem to be industrial concrete and stone but the exterior is ornately detailed in a manner to rival any of Spain's great cathedrals.
 To get our bearings of the city we went to the viewing deck of the Torre Latinoamericana. When built in 1956 this was the tallest building in Latin America. The views across the city were amazing - it stretches as far as you can see, slowly spilling up the mountains in every direction.
 
 Next we wandered past the beautiful Palacio de Bellas Artes and through the Alameda Central park. As well as beautiful gardens the park includes a number of sculptures and fountains.
  We spent some time wandering through the smaller streets back toward Centro Histórico. In preparation for Easter we visited a department store and purchased some treats.

Tonight we met some friends from NZ who coincidentally overlap with our stay here. We went for dinner at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Zócalo. The food was amazing - guacamole made from scratch right at our table, Mexican fusion mains and a delicious avocado, chocolate, orange and mint dessert. During dinner we watched the moon rise huge and full over distant mountains, hanging golden in the quiet sky beside the resolute Catedral before ascending into a hazy mesh of clouds.
  Later our vantage gave us an amazing view of the Easter parade processing around the Zócalo with drummers, musicians and illuminated floats telling the story of the crucifixion. Finally, a battery of fireworks was set off from the street directly below, detonating just above and outside the restaurant. We had noticed a stage being set up earlier in the day, and on our way back to the hotel a public mass was being delivered from it.