Mexico City

 

The Angel of Reforma

I just spent a few days in Mexico City over Easter and I enjoy it more each time I visit. It is such a large city--around twenty-three million people--that it takes a while to get comfortable with it. I guess I am slightly comfortable with a few colonias in the centre: Polanco, Condesa, Roma and Chapultepec. With Uber it is dead easy to get around. A car will pick you up in three or four minutes and take you anywhere in the central part in fifteen minutes for about 120 pesos.

Mexico City has some fine, world-class museums like the National Museum of Anthropology which has important artifacts from all the important civilizations of Mexico: Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Toltec, and Aztec. Alas, apart from a few codices from late in pre-Columbian times, we have no written records, no Herodotus, so the innumerable stone sculptures and temples remain mute. The Museum of Anthropology is huge with an enormous fountain in the forecourt:

Here is a particularly famous item, the so-called Aztec calendar stone which is actually a sacrificial altar.

But there are many other museums like the Frida Kahlo residence, the Soumaya museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and so-on, something like a hundred in total. In recent years Mexico has become more and more well-known for its gastronomy and there are several Michelin star restaurants in the city. But since there are roughly fifteen thousand restaurants all together, there is something for everyone. And no, that doesn't count the street-food a favorite of Anthony Bourdain. I had a lovely lunch in a Chinese restaurant on Presidente Masaryk, surrounded by flowers:

A very famous shopping Mecca is the Palacio de Hierro which has nearly every luxury item you can imagine from Hermés scarfs to Russian food:

Yes, they have an entire floor devoted to gourmet food, not quite as good as the KDW in Berlin, but pretty good. An entire floor devoted to men's fashion--I was there to buy some Florsheim shoes:

And many floors devoted to women's fashion. I stayed in a modest hotel in Roma Norte, venturing out of Polanco where I usually stay. Roma Norte has become a destination for many American digital nomads who can be found clustering in lovely little coffee shops where you can sit for hours with a single latte.

That was I think the best iced latte I have ever had. It even came with tasting notes. Right in front of my hotel was a lovely small park, frequented by dog-walkers at all hours. It had an interesting fountain with hundreds of jets of water that acted like an outdoor air-conditioner.

The hotel offered a pretty good breakfast, though not to be compared to the huge buffet one finds at the Hyatt Regency in Polanco:

This is about the sixth or seventh time I have visited Mexico City and it is a favorite destination. It doesn't have the incredible art museums of Madrid or Paris, or the wealth of music performances of Vienna or Berlin, or the architectural beauty of Florence. But it has a bit of all those things in its own unique way--and at a fraction of the cost!

Visiting Campeche

Instead of jetting off to Europe to hear some wonderful concerts, last year and this coming year I am focussing on visiting various places in Mexico. I was in Puebla at Easter, Oaxaca in October and I just got back from Campeche. This last is not a tourist spot, which I usually avoid, but it is a charming place and has a number of attractions. The place to stay is the Holiday Inn, though it is an hour's walk to the historic Centro. The walk is a pleasant one, though, along the Malecón or seawall. 

Along that seawall can be found a lot of pelicans:

The historic district features two large fortresses, each with a museum and well worth a visit. They were built to defend the port against pirates and the English back in the 17th and 18th centuries. Calle 59 has a lot of coffee places and souvenir shops. And the occasional pirate.

Not to be missed is a fine seafood restaurant named Marganzo where all the waitresses wear traditional dress. I had a lovely meal of shrimp risotto (accompanied by sangria)

Followed by grilled sea bass:

And flan with capuchino:

But the real highlight of the trip was the ancient Mayan city of Edzna. Only the central area of about two square kilometers of large buildings have been excavated and are open to visitors. The whole city occupies some 22 square kilometers. That central area includes some apartments, a combination amphitheater and strip mall, a ball court and a large temple sitting on a very large base. The sheer cost in terms of slave labor must have been staggering--no heavy equipment or power tools. Not even a wheelbarrow. 

This is a bedroom:

This is the amphitheater and at the top are spaces for little shops or tiendas.

This is the ball court where the ball was sometimes made of rubber and sometimes was a human head covered in rubber.

And here is the main temple pyramid:

Finally a sunset over the Gulf of Mexico:

Off to Campeche

 I'm off to Campeche for several days to escape the brutal San Miguel de Allende winter. This morning a crisp 11°. In Campeche it is a balmy 24°. Why the difference? San Miguel is in the central highlands at over 2,000 meters altitude while Campeche is on the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, we still call it that down here. Mind you, San Miguel doesn't actually have a winter as such. I took these photos yesterday:

Campeche is interesting in itself--it is one of only two walled cities in North America, the other being Quebec City. Campeche, an important port in the 17th and 18th centuries, was plagued by pirates. It is not a popular tourist destination which is one reason I'm visiting. I disliked Cancun rather intensely because it has obviously been over-run with tourists.

An hour's drive from Campeche is the ancient Mayan city of Edzna which looks well worth visiting and again, not frequented by many tourists.

It vaguely resembles Monte Alban, outside Oaxaca, which I visited a number of years ago, though of course an entirely different civilization. Monte Alban was the center of the Zapotec civilization in southern Mexico.

I'll leave you with another haiku:

It's true: sorrow is

Source of creativity

Joy is just joyful