MARVELOUS MEXICO
Mexico City is the capital of Mexico and the most populous city in North America. Mexico City is one of the most important cultural and financial centers in the Americas. It is located in the Valley of Mexico (Valle de México), a large valley in the high plateaus in the center of Mexico, at an altitude of 7,350 feet. The city has 16 boroughs.
This year Pat and I asked our kids and their partners if they would join us on a trip to Mexico City between December 24th and December 31st. Dan and Sophia immediately said yes and soon thereafter Jay also agreed to join us. Yay, we said. So, we traveled to Mexico City the eve of December 24th and arrived in Mexico on Christmas Day. The pic above is the view we saw when we opened the shades from our hotel room at sunrise on Christmas Day.
That morning, we took a lovely walk through Condesa. Here are Pat, Dan and Sophia in front of a beautiful garage. Abbey Road, anyone?
The next two photos are of a lovely courtyard/parking driveway, replete with two resting dogs and of the outside of a Spirits shop.
On December 26th, we traveled to Coayacan, the home of Frida Kahlo. The town itself has beautiful old Spanish-style homes, courtyards and plazas!
Frida’s home was an absolute treat. Her Kitchen, studio and backyard were all memorable. Photos of each follow.
The Museum of Anthropology was built in 1964. We were all flabbergasted as it appears like it might have been built 20 years ago. Designed in 1964 by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, Jorge Campuzano, and Rafael Mijares Alcérreca, the monumental building contains exhibition halls surrounding a courtyard with a huge pond and a vast square concrete umbrella supported by a single slender pillar (known as "el paraguas", Spanish for "the umbrella"). The halls are ringed by gardens, many of which contain outdoor exhibits. The museum has 23 rooms for exhibits and covers an area of 857,890 square feet. Below is the umbrella with the City skyline in the background.
The Museum contains wonderful information about the Aztecs and served as a good introduction to the Pyramids in Teotihuacan the following day. The photo below is of visitors photographing other family members beneath one of the great Aztec objects excavated recently.
Teotihuacan is an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico located in the State of Mexico 25 miles northeast of modern-day Mexico City. It is known today as the site of many of the most architecturally significant Mesoamerican pyramids built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Our trip to the pyramids in Teotihuacan was amazing. I am including 4 Pyramid photos. The first is of the Sun Pyramid with air balloons, allowed only til 9:30 am, flying overhead.
The second is of the Serpent Pyramid as we walked into the Sacred site.
The third is of Avenida de los Muertos, viewed from the Pyramid of the Moon; it provides a great view of the Sun Pyramid.
The last photo is the view looking up the Sun Pyramid, which we climbed, before our trek.
What would a trip to Mexico City be without a visit to Lucha Libre? Here are the masks worn by the ridiculously acrobatic and dramatic wrestlers.
The Diego Rivera museum is home to one of Diego Rivera’s most famous works, Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central (Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central), a 48 foot-long mural painted in 1947. Rivera imagined many of the figures who walked in the city from colonial times onward, among them Hernán Cortés, Benito Juárez, Porfirio Díaz and Francisco Madero.Here it is pictured below.
The second mural is a collaboration of two Chinese artists commemorating the great Mexican Artists of the 20th century and their murals.
A walk through downtown provided me an amazing sight, a man hauling a huge cargo manually. The effort was incredible.
Mexico has built cable cars in the poor neighborhoods to transport 7000 poor folks with no other access to public transportation daily from their homes.
The government and artists have transformed what was previously a slum into a colorful artistic community that may be a ghetto but is no longer a slum.
Finally, our daughter-in-law took this photo of our family at the tasty J by Jose Andres restaurant.
I feel like we barely scratched the surface of Mexico City and can hardly wait til my next visit.