On Tuesday morning, I boarded a flight to Mexico City. I ended up taking a different flight from Dave and Rachel (saved $100 that way...). The flight was delayed and I didn´t get to the hotel till around 3. This place is GINORMOUS! I was told that in Mexico D.F. (the city) there are approximately 10 million people, add in another 10 million for the suburbs and another 8 (plus or minus a million) for the entire state and you are talking about 30 Million people!
After about a 30 plus minute drive (and quite a few near misses with other cars), I arrived at the Hotel W in the Polanco district of the city. Let me say this....THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU Rachel! She works at the W in San Francisco and was able to get me the employee rate! I LOVE the W hotel! I was living large during my time in Mexico City! That night, we walked around the local neighborhood and went to a wine bar/restaurant for dinner. If you ever meet Rachel or Dave, you´ll have to ask them about Vedrica! The Polanco district is one of money. I don´t mean a little money, I mean big money! Examples of the local stores/businesses: Bentley, Hummer, Hermes, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton (yes i was tempted...but resisted!), etc., etc.! Personal drivers, nannies, household staff walking dogs are a usual site in this area.
The next day, we took the usual tourist bus of the city! You know the one that´s red and open on the top and takes you around big cities so you can get an overview of the area...yeah the nerdy tourist one! It was a really good way to get oriented in this huge place. We ended up at the main Zocolo in the city via the historic route. Statues, parks, churches were all on hand for sure! We went to the ruins of the pyramids of the templo mayor. Mexico City is basically built on ancient land that that was the home of many indiginous people. They discovered ruins of pyramids of the Aztec people under the city near the main Zocolo. I don´t want to pretend that I know the history of the different indiginous people of the area (different timelines and different tribes, etc.) but I believe that this area was primarily Aztec (and relatives) and the areas of Chiapas, Yucatan and further south into central america was primarily Mayan (and relatives) and then you get to the Incas in South America. We took a tour of the Museo de Modern Art. We were expecting to see work my Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo - but no go. We went to dinner at restaurant that had live mariachi music and went to a salsa club after (the club was dead...I guess Wednesdays are not happening there), so we listened to muic for while and called it a night!
Our favorite bus awaited us the next day. We took a different city tour route to the south part of the city. We wanted to go this way primarily to go to the Frida Kahlo museum. On the way, we saw the Universidad National de Mexico, the Estadio Olimpico Universitario where the olympics were held in 1968, Bullfighting Ring, Futbol Estadio, Walmart (yes...Walmart...a superstore even) and finally we made it to the Frida Kahlo museo. The museo is in the home where she lived growing up and later with Diego. If you´ve seen the movie, it´s the bright blue house. There weren´t a lot of paintings but a lot of sketches, letters she had written, pictures of her family, letters famous people wrote to her and Diego, etc.
Then...Dave and Rachel left me!!!! They had to catch a cab from the museo to the hotel and then to the airport. The 1st time that I am really on my own...and so the adventure continues...
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