Mexico City: Eating & Seeing

DINING OUT
The breakfast menu at our hotel is a straightforward one built around eggs. Eggs Mexican style, scrambled eggs with various add-ones, a variety of omelet choices, and chilaquiles, pieces of fried tortilla cooked in red sauce and topped with cheese and often eggs or chicken. All the egg dishes come with a side of black beans. Besides a medley of cut up melon and pineapple, the only totally non-egg dish is hot cakes made with mascarpone and lemon.

Chilaquiles with chicken and a side of beans

Last night we dined at Limosneros, an attractive and innovative restaurant serving a wide variety of tacos and appetizers plus entrees. We were told that fashionable dining in Mexico happens after 7:30 pm and often later, but we’ve discovered that the two restaurants we’ve gone to for dinner could take us as early as 6:30, and we weren’t the only diners, by long shot. Probably because these two establishments open for lunch at 1:30 and stay open through dinner.

Table at Limosneros

At Limosneros we shared the crispy hibiscus tacos (wrapped up tight taquito style) stuck in a mound of guacamole and salsa; burnt chilies, a board of red, green and yellow sweet peppers blistered and served with pineapple and wedges of Brie; Oaxaca croquettes with a spicy dipping sauce; and a pork-stuffed pasilla pepper glued to a mini purple tortilla with a thin layer of peanut sauce. The Chief Penguin tried a featured cocktail made with a corn liquor while I sipped a glass of Albariño. Lots of different tastes and textures in these dishes!

SIGHTSEEING
Before dinner last evening, we took an Uber (in plentiful supply) to Alameda Central, a lovely oasis in the heart of the business district and home to the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The park itself has lots of ornate wrought iron benches and formally laid out paths along with tall stately trees and several fountains and sculptures. It’s a fine place to sit and observe the world.

Palacio de Bellas Artes

The Palacio de Bellas Artes was started in 1894 and completed about 1930 and is stunning with a beautiful golden cupola. We saw it in the soft evening light before sunset and then hurried down to view the Catedral Metropolitana in the same yellow light.

This cathedral is the one of, if not the largest, in North America. With its twin bell towers, it faces and looms over the Zocalo or public square.

We wandered a bit more and made our way to Limosneros; our total step count for the day was nearly 19,000 or seven miles!

Today’s activity was a guided tour of some of the sights of historic Mexico City. Guide Mercedes is a warm and enthusiastic older woman full of knowledge of the history of her country. A former teacher who came from wealth, she wanted to be and do more than she was doing as a wife and mother. She was adamant that I hear about the various ethnic groups that lived and flourished in Mexico over the centuries and gave a very thorough overview. She said I needed the context before seeing the Diego Rivera murals in the Palacio Nacional, the seat of the government.
This Palacio is striking on the outside, but the murals lining the stairwell walls between the main floor and the second floor are truly amazing.

Detail from the Rivera history murals

So much history conveyed visually and so fresh looking even though they were created more than 50 years ago! Also on the second floor are more Rivera paintings of other aspects of Mexican life.

The central post office building was a surprising gem with inside an impressive double staircase and very lavish detailing. With its church-like aura, hard to believe its business was the mundane one of selling stamps! On this outing, we also went inside the cathedral and admired the altar of the kings and then went on to the archaeological site called Templo Mayor. This is an excavation of a portion of a pyramid that existed under and near the current cathedral. Its location was only re-discovered in 1978 when electric workers uncovered a monolith. The site keeps getting developed and there is a lot of information posted about what this settlement probably looked like.

Mercedes chatted up these two police officers while nearby I got out my good camera.

Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Mexico City: First Explorations

ARRIVING IN MEXICO

On Thursday we were up at 4:15 to get to SRQ for our 7:30 am Atlanta flight and then on to Mexico City. Relatively smooth flights with no delays, even arrived early. The immigration line was quite long, but kept moving and after half an hour we had been admitted to Mexico. We claimed our bags which were already unloaded and then connected with our driver and his compatriot for the 40 minute drive to our hotel. Along the way, many jacaranda trees in bloom, such a lovely shade of purple, and plenty of concrete buildings with plain fronts painted in one solid color—everything from mustard yellow to midnight blue to bright turquoise and even some pinks and magentas.

The Wild Oscar is a small boutique hotel with a slightly funky vibe and so discreetly located, across the street from an elementary school, that you don’t know it’s there until you go down the half hidden steps and see the sign just at the entrance. Furnishings are mostly contemporary in dark woods and black trim and black stone.

Lobby and dining area at the Wild Oscar

We have a smallish room with a balcony and all the usual accoutrements, but only one desk chair inside and one outside chair on the balcony. The hotel is named for Oscar Wilde and I need to inquire why. Each elevator has a quote from Wilde done in cursive in bright paint on the floor, one yellow and one blue. One quote is “Life is too important to be taken seriously,” and the other something like, be yourself because everyone else is taken.

We took a short walk around the neighborhood, Polanco, admiring the upscale shops, the many restaurants and cafes, a small park, and the numerous banks. Traffic is lively and even in a crosswalk you need to exercise great care! There are no stop signs or lights at most intersections . Reminds me a bit of taking your life in your hands crossing the main streets in Hanoi.

We walked to our dinner restaurant, Comedar Jacinta, for a bit of Mexican comfort food. It’s 2 hours earlier here so by 6:30 pm, we were hungry and tired. We ate outside and were a prime target for the rose peddlers, the man with kids’ toys and other street vendors, but being seated there meant we could watch the street scene. After sunset, a gusty wind led to the unfurling of plastic sheets and we were cozy. The beef barbecue and the mixture of beef strips, cubes of cheese and guacamole with cactus served with tortillas were delicious and our two waiters most helpful.

FRIDAY ROAMING

This morning we left the hotel before 9:00 and walked a few blocks and through a small park to the Museo Nacional de Anthropologie. It’s a large and gorgeous modern building with an expansive plaza off of which there are a series of galleries covering the history of Mexico through its various cultures and customs. You could easily spend an entire day here so we were pleased when the woman at the Information Desk pointed out which galleries were the ones not to miss.

We learned about Teotihuacan (AD 100-700) and its influence far beyond its own region. (On Sunday we will visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan). And spent time in the Mexica Hall (or more familiarly known to us as the Aztec empire, AD1200-1521) and then the Maya Hall where we re-appreciated how sophisticated the Mayans were in their development of writing and their use of mathematics. Lastly, we checked out one of the Ethnography Halls on the upper floor. It is an impressive and very well laid out museum. Introductory and some explanatory panels are in English and Spanish, while individual item labels are only in Spanish.

Umbrella shower outside the museum galleries

Our feet were tired and our bodies said it was later than it was so we relaxed on the café terrace with tea and pastry. Our next foray was to walk farther on in the Bosque de Chapultepec, a quiet, pleasant woodland park with winding paths, to locate the Museo de Arte Moderne.

It was a bit farther than we realized and this museum somewhat disappointing. Several small galleries in the main building plus a number of outdoor sculptures seemed to be the bulk of the collection on display.

Having covered a fair bit of ground, we then meandered back through Chapultepec to a main thoroughfare and then to the street with our hotel. We paused on the corner for a relaxing lunch at Saks.

This restaurant has seating inside and on a semicircular terrace which is raised above the traffic. Knowing we would eat Mexican at dinner time, we opted for a bowl of corn chowder, guacamole and chips, and country style chicken cubes over linguini. The box of breads and chips with three saucers of dips was a welcome bonus.

We took an afternoon break at our hotel before going out again. Those activities will be in my next blog post.

Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).