Five Days in Mexico City

"I drink to forget, but now...I can't remember
why I drink." 

I jumped on the travel bandwagon and booked myself a trip to Mexico City (also known as CDMX from Cuidad Mexico). I wanted to visit a Spanish speaking country and I've longed to visit Mexico City. Once I started looking it seemed like every lifestyle website had something to say about Mexico City from Bon Appetit to Vogue to the estimable publication, GOOP. The city is undergoing a renaissance as it has been named a top city for eating due to its culinary history and concentration of gourmet/Michelin star restaurants. In terms of infrastructure and safety, the downtown area, El Centro Histórico was renovated  through a public-private partnership driven by the former mayor and new president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.  According to the State Department, Americans should "exercise increased caution" when travelling in Mexico City proper, which is the same safety rating as going to Western Europe.

Graffiti commentary on the pollution

Many travel essays describe Mexico City as dynamic, vibrant, frenetic, and culturally inspiring. I can totally feel this aspect of the city.  Greater Mexico city has a population of 22 million people and a GDP of $411 billion dollars which is equivalent to the GDP of Peru. The actual city limits of Mexico City has a dense population of 9 million people and  is built atop the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. Thus Mexico City considered the oldest capital city in North America. Truly Mexico City is everything I could have wanted in a week long vacation in an urban area--it has delicious food, friendly people, beautiful architecture, hundreds of museums, great shopping, and on and on.  However, the trip is not for the faint of heart, as Mexico City is crowded, dirty, polluted, loud, often fraying at the edges and at other times crumbing from overuse and disuse, earthquakes, poverty, and lack of investment.

Graffiti covered building along a main avenue

I feel like the city represents the best and worst of Mexico, which is what I want to see when I visit a city. My senses have been rewarded with bursts of intense flavors, colors, and surprises. On day 3 here, I ate 4 tacos al pastor without a regret--slow roasted adobo pork topped with pineapple is a delight.

City Bikes and the Virgen of Guadalupe

Yet in the midst of delight, I've also been reminded of the atrocities in Mexico perpetuated by drug cartels, but also the government.  More than the US, Mexico wears its emotions on it's sleeve. There is music and delicious food lining the streets, yet there is also protest and commentary about historic and systemic dysfunction.  In the first two days in Mexico City, I noticed several separate protests about 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping of 43 students, one of which was inside the National Anthropology Museum. While walking along a major street, Avenida Bucareli, there were metal blockades lining the sidewalks that must be used to block the streets during major protests; many of these metal barriers had the number "43" sprayed painted as a reminder of atrocities. Mexico City has a style of architecture named Porfiriato which is after the Mexican dictator (president of 25 years) Porfirio Diaz. This president is a symbol of advancement and oppression.   Despite the persecution carried out by the Catholic Church, Mayan reenactors perform ritualistic cleansings  and dances mere feet from the entrance of the city's main cathedral. Mexico City is vibrant with contradictions and fantasy. Right next to city wide initiatives to reduce pollution through bikes, a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe hangs on a tree to remind riders who really takes care of Mexicans.

Mexico City Re-branded--from D.F. to CDMX

A few travel recommendations after spending 5 days in CDMX:

1) The city is safe enough, so consider walking as your main mode of transportation:   We stayed in an apartment between Roma Norte and Juarez which are nicer neighborhoods with a good ratio of locals to tourists. We walked literally everywhere. The city feels safe, especially during the day. The metro and bus systems are safe and extensive but crowded. People are backed into the buses like sardines, so even though it meant walking up to 8 miles in one day, we stayed on the side walks in order to see more of the city.

2) Pack for every kind of weather: In the last week of November, the weather was perfection with highs to the 70s F during the day and cooler evenings down to 50F. Apparently it rains as much in CDMX as it does in London so I packed an umbrella. As soon as we left the city limits to visit Teotihuacan, we were no longer in a protected valley and the weather was cold and windy.

A busy street market behind El Zócalo

3) Be prepared for an urban experience:  The city is dirty, the pollution is no joke, and it's a crowded place...but this was part of the stimulation of visiting huge Latin American city. I know it wasn't just me who thought about pollution as I saw many locals wearing masks. The city is not uniformly aesthetically pleasing like many American or European cities. The architecture in the city alternates between the picturesque "Porfiato" style of colonial looking buildings with wrought iron accents to run down mid century architecture, and every building is fair game for graffiti.
4) Party every day: Like NYC this is a city that doesn't sleep. The street food scene is open late with a surprising amount of locals milling about outside taco and torta (sandwich stands). Mexico City embraces both the Cantina and cocktail bar culture and we drank equal amounts of Mexican beer and fancy Mezcal. More than usual, we stayed out late

Street food stand 

5) Eat the street food: I was reassured by our food tour guide and also my guide books that the street food is safe to eat if you follow some simple rules.

• Make sure the area around the stall is clean. For example in the mornings, I watched vendors sweep the area and clean their utensils. 
• Look for vendors who have a least a small line or a brisk business. 
• The best prevention is cleaning your own hands. Use hand sanitize or wet wipes before eating. Every street food vendor offered us a squirt of hand sanitizing gel before we started eating. 
• Don't drink the tap water, but definitely drink agua fresca (diluted fruit juices) whenever you can. 

6) Prioritize and relax: We tried to strike a balance between leisurely days that were still packed with sightseeing. In such a huge city, it's impossible to see everything everything I bookmarked in my guidebook. So I made a list "must see" places according to my out touristic preferences. My list included: The National Anthropology Museum, Templo Mayor, at least one art museum, a Diego Rivera mural, Teotihuacan and a food tour. Because we walked everywhere, we got to know about 3 square miles of the city really well. I can err on the side of an over-scheduled trip, so it's good to have a travel partner to remind me to relax and enjoy the scenery. With this laid back attitude we also enjoyed sitting in cafes eating freshly baked croissants while watching the locals walk their dogs...and other every day life activities in Mexico City.

Tacos al Pastor in action

Now for a summary of our trip with a lot of pictures. 

Fruit Market by Olga Costa (1951)

Day 1/Saturday: We woke up early and went to flea market set up around Jardin Pushkin. Paul met an enthusiastic coin collector aka a Numismatic named Armando. His passion for coins was inspired by his desire to give inanimate things meaning. For every coin he picked up, he could tell a story about the year it was minted, where the mint was located and the symbols on the money. When he heard I was Cuban, he immediately brought out a book of bills and showed me Cuban money from 1960-1961 in which the bills are signed by "Che" Guevara who was then the secretary of the treasury. We both agreed about the irony of seeing the name of an ardent anti-capitalist on newly minted money. Armando sent us on our way with a warm welcome to Mexico City and instructions to enjoy his very Mexican but also very international city.

Just 2 rows of typical Mexican sweets including
 limes stuffed with sweetened coconut

 Mid morning, we picked up a food tour of El Centro Histórico with a local company called Sabores de Mexico. Rodrigo, a Chilango (native of Mexico City) showed us around the historic downtown area over 4 hours, introducing us to quintessential dishes and establishments in the downtown. The highlight was el Mercado de San Juan, a huge gourmet market. The market sits near the same plaza where Aztecs used to conduct their trade and markets before the Spanish conquista. The gourmet adjective does not necessarily  mean "fancy;" it means fresh products, a huge variety, and vendors with a dedication to quality. At el Mercado de San Juan we tried out "pre-hispanic" foods like grasshoppers, ants, and the many salsas made from these insects. I didn't take a picture of fruit stalls. However, the fruit vendors are timeless as a painting entitled "Fruit Market" from 1951 that hangs in the city's museum of modern art depicts  a recognizable scene of a vendor selling fruit in 2018. Also on the tour we visited Dulceria Celeya, the favorite bakery of Frido Kahlo, where I bought her favorite sweet, sweetened shredded coconut stuffed into a candied lime.

"Typical" non-industrial corn farmed outside CDMX

Probably my favorite stop was at a long standing street cart called El K-Guamo where we ate some of the most delicious ceviche I've had. Despite its location in the center of the country, markets in CDMX have access to fresh fish from both the Pacific and Gulf coasts of Mexico. We topped off our day by spending the evening at a Mezcal bar called Mano Santa which sources its mezcal from a single distillery in Oaxaca...and then we ate more street food.

No Scorpions were eaten...

Fried Grasshoppers aka Chipolines

Angel of Independence at the end of
Paseo de Reforma

 Day 2/Sunday: We walked close to 8 miles, starting with a leisurely stroll down el Paseo de la Reforma which on Sundays is closed to vehicular traffic. As we strolled down the avenue, locals road their bikes, scooters, and roller skates down the broad avenue to the base of the statue known as the Angel of Independence.

Paul eating a tlacoyos--similar to a quesadilla but from Oaxaca

Bikers approaching the Angel of Independence

Continuing on El Paseo de Reforma, we walked to the Bosque de Chapultepec which is the second largest park in Latin America. It contains many museums including the National Anthropology Museum and two major modern art museums, El Museo de Arte Moderno and Museo Tamayo. We walked through the main museum of modern art which  has a similar circular architectural design like my favorite DC museum, The Hirshhorn.  I loved that this museum exhibited primarily  Mexican artists.  After seeing all the collections, I felt like I had a grasp on Mexican style from the famous murals to the expressionist and abstract movements that followed afterwards.

Courtyard of the National Anthropology Museum

Eaten by a stone jaguar

Next up el Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Anthropology Museum) which is a national jewel due to both its collection of artifacts and the architecture. The museum contains artifacts from the pre-Columbia cultures of every region of Mexico. It's hard to describe the scope....it's like visiting the British Museum which has a HUGE amount of impressive antiquities, but every single artifact is actually from Mexico. All of these different Meso-American cultures flourished in Mexico until the Spaniards arrived. Often we think of just the Aztecs and Mayans in Mexico, but this museum demonstrated the variety of cultures that came before the Mayans; others who existed throughout Mexico; and also the different manifestations within the major empires like the Mayans and Mexicas.

Reproduction of the Temple of the
Feathered Serpent from
Teotihuacan (100BC-500 BCE)

I want to mention that all the cultures engaged in ritual human sacrifice which was executed in a variety of forms from "auto-sacrifice" of having warriors fall onto a ball covered in spikes to playing the "ball game." Originating in 1400 BC, almost every ancient Meso-American culture had their own version of the ball game; some considered it a proxy for warfare and conflict resolution. The game captured western imaginations since it often culminated with human sacrifice of either the losing team or captives who were sacrificed in place of the players. I remember visiting the ball game court at  Chichen-Itza as a kid and having my mind blown by this concept of human sacrifice.

Ball game rings--a rubber ball was bounced
 from the players' hips through the rings

Facade of Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada

Day 3/Monday:  On Mondays, all the museums are closed, so we planned a day that was off the usual tourist track. Our tour guide from the Sabores de Mexico food tour recommended we make a point of visiting the library, Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, a building with a storied history. The library started out as a chapel of a wealthy Jesuit congregation called San Felipe Neri.







In 1857 the chapel was converted to a famous theater, and finally in 1959

Vlady Mural

 it became federal property and turned into a social sciences library. From 1972-1982, a Mexican-Russian artist named Vlady painted a huge mural entitled "The Revolution and the Elements"  depicting famous revolutions like the French and English Revolutions to musical and intellectual revolutions.  The very modern mural is an unexpected departure from the Baroque facade of the church. The mural is impressive as psychedelic colors cover every square inch of wallspace in the library. Mexico is known for its muralists from Diego Rivera and David Siquieros to more abstract painters  like Rafael Tamayo, so it was interesting to see a modern but still very leftist iteration Mexican mural art.

The "petrified" world of capitalism and Christianity
 depicted behind us

Fresh ingredients including Mamey:
my new favorite tropical fruit

In the afternoon we returned to el Mercado San Juan to shop for ingredients to prepare one meal. Despite visiting a city known for its restaurants and street food, we wanted to experience shopping and cooking with such fresh ingredients.

We stopped at the stall of a vendor we had met on our food tour.  Shopping in a market is a personal experience. We told her what we wanted to make and she picked out exactly the right amount of ingredients meant to be perfectly ripe for the next day. She was focused on not wasting any food and adamantly sold us only what we needed for one meal.  We decided to make chorizo and egg breakfast tacos--perhaps one dish NOT sold in Mexico City. In addition to fruit and vegetables we bought four eggs from the chicken vendor ( for sale right next to the chicken feet), Oaxacan cheese, and 10 fresh tortillas, literally hot off the press, for 5 pesos.

Finished product

Catedral Metropolitana presides over the Zocalo plaza right
next to Templo Mayor

The ruins of Templo Mayor with the
cathedral in the backdrop

Stairway to the shrine of Tlaloc

Day 4/Tuesday: After cooking breakfast at our apartment, we headed to another "must see" sight in Mexico City: Templo Mayor (aka The Greater Temple), the ruins of the primary Aztec Temple in the middle of downtown. Just to review some basics, what we now know as Mexico City was actually built on top of the Aztec (sometimes call Mexicas) capital city Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs initially  built their city on the shores of Lake Texoco and used canals as drainage and transportation (think Venice).  As it usually goes with history, the Spanish defeat of the Aztecs was an extended and complicated battle ending in a siege and the razing of Tenochtitlan upon which the Spanish built their new capital. The  Spaniards filled in the canals and used the supplies of Aztec buildings (including temples) to build their new city. The historic downtown including the National Palace and the main cathedral were built over the main Aztec temple and other important structures.

The monolith of Coyolxauhqui that was found in 1978
prompting the excavation of Templo Mayor
(see tiny human heads in the middle for scale)

Fast forward to 1978, employees of the electric company were digging near the cathedral and uncovered a hug monolith stone turned out to be an 8 ton carving of the moon goddess. This discovery prompted excavation of the temple site which is now a museum designed to exhibit the ruins of the Greater Temple. Templo Mayor is comparatively young compared to other ruins in Mexico--the Aztecs started construction on this temple in 1325 BCE and it was enlarged by successive rulers over the next 200 years until the Spanish showed up. I was moved by the contrast of an Aztec temple against the backdrop of colonial architecture. The Spanish did their best to obliterate not only the Aztecs but most the indigenous people in Mexico.  The filled in the canals of Tenochtitlan and now parts of Mexico City are sinking. Despite literally being buried, within Templo Mayor a person can visit an ancient altar and a pavilion devoted to worship of Aztec gods and ritual human sacrifice, all within view of the city's largest cathedral.   No matter how conquerors try to bury history, they can't. 

Employees of the National Institute of Anthropology are protesting
road repairs that are being done adjacent to Templo Mayor and
could damage artifacts and other Aztec buildings in the area

Facade of the Church of San Francisco

On our walk from downtown back to our apartment in Roma Norte, we strolled along Madero Street, a main pedestrian thoroughfare between the Zocalo plaza and another main park called Alemeda Central. There are a few cathedrals and chapels along this road, so we stopped in what looked like a random but pretty church. When we walked inside, it was an exquisitely gilded chapel called the Church of San Francisco. It is the remaining part of a large monastery that started as the headquarters to Franciscan monks who came to Mexico on the Pope's orders to evangelize in New Spain. The first church and monastery were constructed soon after Templo Mayor was destroyed. Ironically, two previous iterations of the church have sunk into the soft soil underneath Mexico City and had to be torn down. This current church, built between 1710-1716 is also sinking, clearly evidenced by the stairs leading down into the chapel. After having spent 2 hours immersed in Aztec culture looking at Templo Mayor and its accompanying archaeological museum, I was struck by this building that was basically created to evangelize and thus replace the Aztec religion and holy sites that had been razed. I have mixed feelings about my encounters with the ruins of pre-Columbia/pre-Hispanic cultures.

Golden altar and epic religious art inside the church

The Spanish as a colonial power did their best to make New Spain by oppressing the indigenous people of Latin American. Yet in the 1500s the Aztecs were a brutal culture and the Spanish were able to recruit enemy tribes from outside Tenochtitlan to defeat the Aztecs. Hernan Cortes probably would have made a great human sacrifice for the Aztecs, and he knew it. Only one conquerer can remain standing. There's something about Mexico City that actively inhabits the tension of its history from the Spanish conquest, the indigenous peoples who dominated beforehand, and then the modern tumultuous history of Mexico as evidenced by a very recent revolution from 1910-1920,  huge murals that are an homage to socialism and current political changes with the election of a president who is not from the two main political parties. You can be immersed in history while also eating delicious street food.

A Lucha Libre mural inside the Arena Mexico

Luchando in action

Enough of the philosophizing. Tuesday night, we rounded out a day of history with some good old fashioned fun at the Lucha Libre. That's right! Lucha Libre is Mexican-style professional wrestling that was more like acrobatics on steroids. The luchadores wear fantastic costumes and interact with the crowd asking the crowd to cheer and boo. There are good guys and bad guys and the fighters have crazy names like: Red Cloud, Blue Diamond, Gold Angel, and several iterations of Son of the Devil and names of demons. The fight runs promptly from 7:30-9:30pm and includes individual rounds, tag team, and trio wrestling in which there are 6 men in masks and spandex somersaulting around the ring. We paid $13 per ticket to sit ringside. The fights are best enjoyed drinking a dark Mexican beer in a glass rimmed with Tamarind and chili salt.

Indio beer with a tamarind chili rim

View of Teotihuacan and the "Avenue of the Dead" from atop the Pyramid of the Moon (likely to a fertility god)
Look closely at how the Pyramid of the Sun mimics the shape of the mountain behind it. 

Pyramid of the Sun aka Pyramid to Tlaloc the god of water

Day 5/Wednesday: Our last day in Mexico City, we took a day trip to Teotihuacan, a large ancient city and ruin complex 1 hour outside of the city. Teotihuacan was a major economic power between 100 BC-600 BCE. They had a monopoly of the obsidian mines and access to rich natural resources. The National Anthropology Museum has found evidence that this major city in the center of Mexico was trading obsidian with the Mayans in Guatemala. Teotihuacan roughly translates to "City of the Gods" which is the name the Aztecs gave to this city. Teotihuacan is an active archaeological site, so more accurate histories are being discovered about the city. We do know that that city was large and multi-ethnic, with a population of at least 150,000. Near 550 BCE the inhabitants of Teotihuacan experienced major political, environmental  and religious crises. Historians speculate a mix of drought, climate change, and political instability led to widespread unrest in not only Teotihuacan but other civilizations throughout central american. In the midst of this crisis in 550 BCE, inhabitants destroyed vast parts of the city including burning down temples along their major Avenue of the Dead.  There is also evidence that they tried to destroy one of their main temples to the feathered serpent and build a temple to a new god.

Partial view of the Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent
 (see Day 2 for picture of reproduction) 

When the Aztecs stumbled upon the city in the 1300s, Teotihuacan was deserted so they named it "City of the Gods" because they assumed only Gods could have built the enormous pyramids. We had an excellent guide who emphasized that the pyramids were built as a conduit to the heavens and Gods. All rituals, including human sacfrice and the labor on the temples was an attempt to get closer to the gods and thank them for their blood sacrifice of creating the human race. The names we use now in Teotihuacan such as "Pyramid of the Sun" and "Pyramid of the Moon" were given by the Aztecs. More likely, the Teotihuacanos worshiped a goddess of fertility and a god of water.  The depictions of gods throughout Latin America have many similarities and the Aztecs and Mayans drew much of their culture from the Teotihuacanos.

View of the Pyramid of the Moon sitting
on top of the Pyramid of the Sun

The pyramids are enormous and the view of the complex is stunning. It's not such an extensive ruin complex as some of the Mayan ruins like Chichen Itza or Tikal which have many more pyramids and buildings. Teotihuacan is impressive considering that these pyramids were built over many hundreds of years and without the use of a wheel or beasts of burden.

Required photo on top of a pyramid! 

We finished the day, and our trip, with an epic dinner at a fancy restaurant. We had eaten so much street food that we wanted to sample the gourmet food scene before leaving. We chose Nudo Negro, a Mexican and Asian fusion restaurant, which offered a tasting menu. I didn't take my camera, but the experience was lovely because of the food and the staff who seemed invested in the experience of eating. Mexico is proud of its history and demonstrates that pride by through industriousness and creativity that shines through every experience in Mexico city: the food, the cultural offerings like museums, preservation of historical sites, and a genuine friendliness of the citizens of Mexico City. Thank you Mexico City! I hope all my friends visit you soon.