Visitantes. Dia Tres.

Well, I hope everyone's feeling rested and ready to read after a weekend and half a week off from blog posts. I know I'm feeling ready to type and upload photos! 

Friday we woke up with big plans for the morning which were nearly derailed by my discovery that chicken taquitos (and steamed vegetables?) were for breakfast at the hotel breakfast buffet.

Then we made our way through the extremely empty and quiet 8am-ish historic center of Mexico City to our destination...

...El Cardenal, a wonderful classic old school restaurant, renowned for absolutely everything about it, including breakfast.

Put El Cardenal on your must list. Basically this was the only meal we needed all day. 
After the restaurant we went back to the hotel for a minute, so here's a good chance for me to finally show you the outside of the hotel.

And then, ready for our day, we headed back out. First stop: the Gran Hotel Ciudad de Mexico, which I had "discovered" by accident one day on my mission and was always quite curious about. And then a few years ago it turned up in the opening scene of Spectre, so this portion of the morning was our James Bond reality tour.

Then we strolled the Zocalo for a minute. Most of it was taken over for a concert thing they were setting up. (Consider that foreshadowing for my day 5 post)

Walking to the National Palace entrance...

And the insides of the Palace. Basically this is like the US Capitol, but of Mexico. Visitors are free to roam the courtyards and visit the famous Diego Rivera murals. Also: there are so many cats. It's a much more interesting visit than you might think.

Check out the lean on this building, a great example of sinking into the lake beneath the city. Passing by the Zocalo on our way to our next stop it was filling up a little more.

Next Stop: Templo Mayor, the Aztec temple they bumped into while building the Zocalo subway stop. Along with the ruins themselves, there is a museum containing an exhaustive collection of things they found in the temple site, including very goofy looking human sacrifice knives and lots of complete animal skeletons.

After Templo Mayor, we made our way away from the Zocalo as lunch was beginning to happen. We weren't on our way to have lunch, though, we were still too full from that breakfast.

We would find out that this dog was not there to make friends.

We strolled down Calle Republica de Cuba, which some claim is the birthplace of the Torta Cubana.

And then we wound up in the Quinceñera District, where they discourage taking photographs of their wares.

Next Stop: the Metropolitan Cathedral!

through el Centro again...

Next Stop: the Palacio de Correo, which I had once visited on my mission with a companion who needed to send a package home. It's a beauty. It'll make you wish you had a package to send home.

Next, a little walk through Alameda park before a little exploring of the Palacio de Bellas Artes

From there we began walking back to the hotel down Lazaro Cardenas (a street) which always seems to be crushingly crowded and hectic. After a long morning into early afternoon of city walking, being out was beginning to be exhausting. We dipped into "...Fan!!! Center!!", which I had observed from El Moro the night before and become curious about. It turned out to be a six story tall collection of independently run kiosks selling comic books, movies, video games, Japanese treats, etc etc etc just everything nerdy. It was immediately overwhelming and beyond my abilities. And in a collection of so many interesting things, everything just seemed to cancel everything out. One single Fan Center kiosk is probably more interesting than the Fan Center collection on a whole. Or, I don't know, plan two days to look at all of it and tell me what you find. Still, it's very cool that Mexico City can sustain such a bustling market of geekdom. You won't find anything like this in the US. It was very Tokyo.

Fighting our way through the crowds back to the hotel, we dipped into another Pasteleria Ideal and I explored the second floor cake showrooms. Here's just a sampling of what I saw. Imagine this for room after room.

Then, finally, we were back at the hotel. After a bit of a rest, we Uber'd over to the Vasconcelos library, which we had seen on YouTube the night before our trip. It is a tremendously impressive place and was very busily being put to use. Not just a showcase wild fancy modern library with great views and a whale skeleton.

As the library closed I just could NOT get any reception for an Uber, so we walked back to the city center. It wasn't so far.

I had an address for a taco place that sounded good written down, but when we got to it I thought "There is no way I'm making my mother go into there" and we walked back up the street and into a restaurant we had passed on the way down that looked civilized. Although the name of the restaurant was nowhere on the building or the menu or the receipt, I was able to figure out where we were on google maps and it turns out it was a well-regarded restaurant called Bosforo. Lucky accident! It was very dark, it was very hard to see and cut my food. But it was still good. I had rabbit in peanut mole and we shared a few other things.

Then we walked back to the hotel, passing some additional tempting eateries and Mexico City's Chinatown, or approximation thereof.

Day Three was a good but tiring day where the final acts were a little underplanned, and that's ok, but Day Four had a good plan. You'll see.

Visitantes. Dia Dos.

Ok. If this seems like the longest blog post you've ever seen, know that it was edited down from 650 pictures taken that day. We did three things that could've been all day activities in themselves (well, two of them could've been) and then had three dinners. It was a big day. If you had just 24hrs to spend in Mexico City, this might be the itinerary I'd suggest for that day. If you're into getting totally worn out.

Ok, let's go.

First morning in Mexico City, first visit to the hotel's breakfast buffet. It proved to have a very intriguing selection each morning. You'll see. After breakfast we caught an Uber and got the heck out of town. First thing you have to do when you get to Mexico City: Leave.

You see, we were on a little trip to see the famous pyramids at Teotihuacan, but I made a little baby brand-new-to-Uber mistake and punched in our destination as the town of Teotihuacan and not the pyramids. Oops. Nice thing is it was a problem that could just be solved with a little more money and the whole hour-ish long, 30-something mile drive cost us less than $25. Guys: You have to Uber in Mexico. Let's look at the town a little before we see the pyramid stuff.

When you get to the pyramids you'll find that there are at least three entrances you can be dropped off at and people at every turn trying to get you to pay them for a tour and they can sometimes seem very official but you don't need a tour and you should get dropped off at entrance three, down by the citadel. Also: There's a good number of dogs roaming around the pyramid complex, this first one the workers called Blacky. But in Spanish. Blacky and his friend seemed to be on the payroll in a way, though. You'll see. One of the first things I saw at the pyramids was a sign explaining that, despite what you've heard, it wasn't built by Martians. 

So the first place we went was called the Citadel and it was a good beginner's area with one little mini temple to just give us a tiny introductory taste of the stair climbing we'd be doing that morning.

Stop Two: The Pyramid of the Sun. 216 feet tall, 248 steps to the top. At the time, we thought it was steep and demanding climb.

Stop Three: Pyramid of the Moon. Like I said, 70 feet shorter than the Pyramid of the Sun and they don't even let you climb all the way up to the top. BUT it is an incredibly steep hike up the thing and the steps are must be all be more than a foot tall each. My leg was sore for the rest of the trip. It hurt to sit down it was so sore. And I ride my bike every day and thought my legs were strong and well-exercised!

Stop Four: These nice, small buildings. Where the priests and kings lived, or something.

Having seen all that it seemed there was to see we went over to where you catch the bus back to the city but first wound up having a lunch of huaraches and quesadillas under a tent that we went through a hole in a fence to get to. Mexico! And also we met another ambivalent dog.

Bus ride back into the city before jumping off at the Deportivo 18 de Marzo subway stop. A thing you might not know about Mexico is you can catch a bus at the side of the freeway there. Or get off a bus on the side of the freeway there.

We took the subway one stop to the Basilica. It would probably have been quicker to walk, but I think it was really important for us to get to see the subway and for me to get a little reminder taste of the Mexico City subway life. It's about 25 cents a ride, too. Just worth noting. Suddenly Mexico City Ubers seem super expensive. Also: the Rosario stop was just about my #1 stop during my time in Mexico City. We were going in the opposite direction, but it felt good to be on the same old rails.

Although we were headed to the Basilica I got distracted, briefly, by a railroad museum. 

And then finally we walk up the street to the Basilica.  Maybe you are asking "Why do you keep saying "basilica", what do you mean?" What I mean is "Basilica de Guadalupe" and what I mean by that is "the large complex of churches, statues, memorials and basilica dedicated to the Virgen de Guadalupe and her apparitions to the indigenous Juan Diego in 1531. While an appearance of Mary to anyone is pretty noteworthy, the Guadalupe event stands as a divine cosign on the place of the indigenous peoples of Mexico in the Church and the point where it began to stop just being a European thing and began to be a Mexican thing (in Mexico). This is a short and misshapen summary of the story and its historical impact. 

The Virgin's appearance to Juan Diego left his robe imprinted with her image and that very artifact is on display inside the basilica. It hangs up high in the back behind the uh, podium? Rostrum? Stage? What do you call the part of the church where the priests are when they do their talking? Suddenly I can't think of a word for it. Anyway, it's back up there behind probably feet of bulletproof glass, hanging above a big beautiful Mexican flag BUT the cool thing is there's a set of moving walkways down below it and behind the stage for viewing it. The moving walkways keep a crowd from forming in that space, although if it's not too busy you can keep riding back and forth and looking at her.

Note in this first photo the man who entered the basilica en rodillas. There is a tradition of people coming on their knees to plead with the Virgin, and sometimes not just upon entering the basilica but for long distances of approach. Do a youtube search! 

As a missionary I liked to imagine myself as some sort of holy terror and I had a pretty cavalier attitude towards Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe but since then I've mellowed or my mind expanded or whatever and on this trip it was rather impressive to look at her and think that this artifact is probably the most important thing in all of Mexico to the extreme majority of Mexicans, the keystone to a whole culture. Like in America what's the closest thing we have? The Declaration of Independence? But people don't come to Washington DC en masse to venerate it and if it were destroyed we would still have it. So this makes me wonder if there's an artifact, an actual physical single artifact, in the world, that's more important to more people than the Virgin's image at the Basilica. Help me out, is there? SO, by running the numbers, does that make Juan Diego's cloak imprinted with the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe THE most important/valued object in the world? Help me out! I'm open to counter-arguments! Someone explain Mecca to me, again.

Yeah, Mecca is probably more "important." Only 6 million people came to the Basilica in 2002 for the Dia de la Virgen.

Anyway, more Basilica sights. The Basilica complex is made up of a lot of old churches, some with very impressive cases of sinking into the ground (because, if you forgot, Mexico City is built on a lake and sinking down into that lake) all venerating some aspect of the Guadalupe Event and its figures, all noted for whatever portion of time they may have housed the image of the Virgin. But at the end of the plaza (or I should say the first plaza, because they've built an annex plaza for when the crowds are too gigantic) there is a giant solar clock containing and animatronic retelling of the Guadalupe Event. And when you look back from the clock you can really get a good perspective on the sinking.

The Basilica complex is at the base of Tepeyac hill, where Juan Diego encountered the Virgin. After conquering the pyramids a few hours earlier the prospect of another ascent was a little daunting, but the view was worth it and the hill not so bad. Oh and here I realize that I didn't get a photo of the view from the top. Oh well. Gotta go back.

Coming down from the hill, still plenty more Basilica stuff to see. We really went for it an left nothing unvisited.

Next, another Uber ride and my first return sighting of traffic jugglers...

Mom like Teotihuacan so much it seemed like she was going to convert to Aztec*, and then she liked the Basilica so much it seemed she was going to convert Catholic, so I had to rush her over to the Mexico City (LDS) Temple and try to keep her Mormon.

*The builders of Teotihuacan weren't Aztecs. I was just being simple.

The Mexico City temple has a visitor's center and the nice thing about a visitor's center is it doesn't matter who you are, member of the church, visitor, former Mexico City missionary yourself, the missionaries will latch on to you and you aren't getting out of there without a "short" thirty minute message (or two) even if you're just "looking" around at how much it has changed in twenty years.

Forgive the PM establishing shot, seems no one took a picture of the temple while the sun was still up.

Then we walked the grounds a little. The temple complex has lodging for visitors and missionaries, a cafeteria, a distribution center, TWO chapels, and a vending machine.

And another thing I don't have a picture of is how lively the temple grounds were. So many families, so many youth going in and out of the baptistry, so many kids rolling around on the grass in their nice clothes, so many happy people coming in and out of the temple. It was electric with small bits of life.

Our three destinations of the day visited, we headed back to the hotel to have our dinners. On our way to our first destination, a world famous, world class taco stand just a block from our hotel, we discovered an outpost of the world famous Pasteleria Ideal and popped in for a little evening look at the day's pastries. 

He had our first dinner of the night at the above mentioned world famous, world class taqueria, Los Cocuyos. The menu is a pretty intimidating What's What of off cuts, so I ordered us a couple suadero (brisket) tacos and one campechano (suadero and longaniza [a sausage that is not chorizo]) for myself. Probably very easily the best tacos of the trip, these guys were just so delicious from sitting in fat all day. That's really the secret: all the greatest tacos have that bit of extra fat dripping off the end of the tortilla when you pick them up.

Next we kept heading down the street for a couple blocks and turned the corner and had our next dinner at Churreria El Moro, a famous 70 year old churro restaurant that does brisk fried dough business 24hrs a day. There was a line when we got there but we were seated in just a few minutes and fed only a few minutes after that. We ordered an order of churros, a strawberry milkshake, a churro ice cream sandwich, and a hot chocolate each. Excellent, excellent, excellent, and a very good place to be if you like the smell of sugar and hustle and bustle of people enjoying it.

One last dinner for me: El Moro had a little taco stand outside so I was like "don't mind if I do" and had my first taco al pastor of the trip.

After dinners we finished the day off with a little bit of a walk through our neighborhood

And that was day two, also known as "the first full day." Coming up: Day Three! Can you even guess what we might have gotten up to next?

Visitantes. Dia Uno.

I'm always thinking about Mexico City, all the time. It's always buzzing around in my head, I'm always thinking of a way or reason to get down there except for just going, which seems too easy. Earlier this year I had thought I'd go there to celebrate my birthday, but I didn't get around to it. But a month-ish ago I realized the 20th anniversary of the end of my mission was coming right up and thought to ask Mom if she wanted to go down to celebrate the milestone. I thought I had a good chance of getting her on board because I had seen Southwest now flies to Mexico City. 

Flash forward to two Wednesdays ago, and here we are on our way to catch an early morning flight from Chicago to Houston.

Here's Houston. A thing about Mexico City is it's not very far away. (Geographically.) It was a two something hour flight to Houston and then just an hour and a half down to Mexico City. And there's direct flights! Southwest is still working on that.

As we approached Mexico City it was covered in clouds, but as they parted, I saw this hill covered in antennas that I had forgotten about seeing every day down in Mexico and it was like a bolt of lightning striking me. It was unbelievable, but rather believable, to finally be back and to get a great look at the city as we were coming in.

And here we are, at the airport. By following something I glimpsed up an escalator out of the corner of my eye I found (after a false start) the customs area I arrived through 21 years ago when I first arrived in Mexico. We looked down on it from the terrace that I remembered looking up at people on while my suitcases were being searched through.

Here's a tip for Mexico City: Just Uber. Uber all around. Uber everywhere. Uber is the way to do it. And I say this as a person who had only hired two Ubers before this trip (as practice to make sure I could do it). It would've been cool if I had taken a portrait of each driver we had, they were a varied but consistently professional bunch. I bet Mom can remember each one to you if you wanted. Our first driver needed to stop for gas, there was only one more hiccup after that, I'll tell you about it in the Day Two post. Here are views of heading from the airport to the Historic Center of the city.

Mom found us a great Hampton Inn to stay at. The service and facilities were top notch and the ceiling was beautiful. We stayed on the sixth floor ABOVE the beautiful ceiling. It turns out you really can have it all in this world!

Settled into our room we wasted no time getting right down to the adventures and headed straight for Polanco, one of Mexico City's fanciest neighborhoods. Because adventures don't always have to be dangerous, they can be nice, too. 

Two pictures from our drive over. Our driver for this drive wore a tie and had classic music playing on his radio. Mom thought he was great. And he really helped me break in my Spanish, which I had been keeping in a guilty dusty box off to the side, but not quite hidden, in my brain.

Our first destination in Polanco was Museo Somaya, which shares a plaza with, among other things, the Jumex Museum, a mall, and a Costco.

Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, built the Soumaya Museum to house his 60,000 piece art collection. And as shiny and modern as it is on the outside of this building (designed by his son in law), it's mostly old stuff on the inside. We took an elevator to the top and worked our way down.

Then we dipped into the Jumex Museum. All the exhibits were being installed or uninstalled that day, but they did have a video installation playing in the basement and very impressive bathrooms.

Then we walked down the street and across the street and through another mall and then down another street. See that curved apartment building? It has a helipad on top!

We passed a Chinese buffet that was handing out samples. These samples would be the first food I ate back in Mexico City. Not bad!

Our next destination was Parque Lincoln, a nice, nice-sized park running through Polanco with beautiful old manor buildings around its perimeter. And a statue of Abraham Lincoln. And a statue of Martin Luther King (with very big hands). 

A little more Polanco walking passing, among other things, an Aston Martin dealership and a MAGNOLIA BAKERY. Wow. That one did me a surprise.

And then, our keynote Polanco activity: Dinner at Pujol, Enrique Olvera's first restaurant. It's been sitting in the Top 50 for a long time and, being a big Cosme fan and a mixed-feelings Atla fan, I was very very pleased to have snagged reservations for the trip. Although there is no menu-overlap, the food is very similar to Cosme's but the restaurant itself is worlds beyond anything you could hope to build in New York and the clientele made for extremely good people watching. It's a five course dinner where you have a selection of selections to choose from for each course, Mom and I did a good job of not ordering the same thing ever, so we were able to sample a wide-range of Pujol food. 

Now, the food. 
To begin, a pair of street snacks. A tiny little wagyu beef gordita and little elotes serves in a gourd full of smoking corn husks.

Next course: Mom had the sea bass with cacahuatzintle juice and celery, I had octobus with habanero ink, ayocote, and veracruzana sauce.

Next: Mom had the cauliflower with almond salsa macha and chile de arbol, I had the lobster sope.

Next: Mom had the pork chop with red chichilo and nixtamalized butternut squash. I had lamb with mint mole, lime and baby potato.

The next course: Pujol's famed Mole Madre, which at this date had been stewing for 1400 days, served with a dollop of one day old mole in the center. The new mole tasted fresh and bright, the nearly four year old mole tasted impossibly deep and ashen, primeval, almost. And I don't mean to be too dramatic, it was only 1400 days old, which for most things isn't very old. But I have not eaten many things that have been cooking for that long. Please allow me the hyperbolic moment!

Finally, dessert. Mom had the avocado, coconut, lime and macadamia dessert. I had the chocolate, pennyroyal, pinole and caramalized banana. Oh! And we were both served a charred orange ice cream with guajillo pepper palate cleanser. And a little pinwheel of churro showed up just as we were finishing up.

All in all: Excellent meal, exceptional service, extremely beautiful space. Highly recommend, worth the trouble.

Back out into Polanco we went with one last destination in mind, Taqueria Turix, renowned for its cochinita pibil. Also: check out the synagogue across the street from Pujol. And other Polanco night street sights.

On this trip we mostly ate at places that were on lists, and Turix was on all the lists. I found it to be quite list-worthy and tasty, a great way to finish up the night. Cochinita pibil is a slow-cooked pork dish from the Yucitan, Turix serves it with a spicy onion/habañero mix and, for an American, it was absolutely thrilling to watch the taquero fish my serving out of the tray of wet pork with his bare hands that had just been roasting and chopping peppers and plop it onto my tortilla. Bare hands!

Late night taco eating at the side of the street, that's the life for me.
Then one more Uber took us back to the hotel, safe and satisfied, our first half day in Mexico City a tremendous success.