Mexico City

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Sunday morning we were up at 4:00 am to catch our flight to Mexico City, so to see Erin’s smiling face outside of Customs around 4:00 pm was a relief and a delight.   She welcomed her weary parents with warm, loving hugs and her “Mexican Dad”, Rosalio, drove us from the airport to her apartment.

She lives in a lovely apartment in a beautiful neighborhood. Mexico City is a city of neighborhoods as we learned in a long “TuriBus” tour yesterday.  Erin’s is Polanco,  very prosperous looking with lots of trees, parks, gated homes or apartment buildings (with very serious looking guards standing outside),  high-end stores and chi-chi restaurants. Streets and even sidewalks are filled with cars, often being washed by hand on the spot.

Strolling in Erin's neighborhood--shops and restaurants are abundant.

 First impressions of Mexico City—it is huge (duh !), very modern, not polluted as we expected and very clean.  It is a city with a love affair with the automobile.  High volume traffic seems to be a constant.  It is very difficult to cross a street, even in a residential neighborhood, and crossing the major streets and avenues is always a nerve-racking challenge.  Seems pedestrians are equal objects with cars, buses, motorcycles…anything that moves and everything seems to move really fast.

There are lots of parks, often filled with people strolling and bicyclists.

 During the tour, we saw many of the historical and important sites, including the Zocalo—the center of the town, very close to the heart of the original Aztec city, Tenochtitlan.  Today city center contains a cathedral, several government buildings and a huge plaza with a gigantic Mexican flag.  Demonstrations seem to be held there—currently firemen are staging a hunger strike—and police in riot gear were quite visible.  But hordes of people (and we do mean hordes—never saw so many people, even in New York) were walking everywhere.

Mexicans, like Americans, are very proud of their country & their flag.

Cathedral at one side of the Zocalo--it's truly monumental.

 Alongside the cathedral were native people dressed in medicine man or woman looking garb (leather short pants fringed, long skirts and head wraps, feathers, beads, colorful ribbons, ankle jewelry) with pots of burning something surrounded by herbs, fruits, flowers, various icons, etc.  People clearly were paying to be cleansed, blessed, absolved or whatever.   A bongo drummer kept up a rhythmic beat which made the whole scene intriguing.

One of the indigenous healers at work.

Probably the most impressive part of the city that we have seen so far is the Paseo de la Reforma, a huge boulevard first created by Emperor Maximillian to make an easy route from his palace to the Zocalo (which by the way means basement;  apparently that is all there was on the spot for many years as construction on proposed buildings was halted for a very long time).  Paseo de la Reforma was later widened to mimic  the Champs Elysees with side park-like walking areas complete with trees, shrubbery, fountains, benches and statues honoring various historical figures.  It is a beautiful avenue and just filled with moving vehicles, like everywhere else you go.

Polanco is modeled on the Californian style.

 Many of the Mexico City neighborhoods were “built in the European style” (as the guide kept repeating) at some point in history.  We had to laugh when we came to Erin’s neighborhood which she described as being “built in the California style” (which we took to mean Hollywood).  Guess so, with Hermes, Bulgari, YSL, Cartier, and other fancy stores lining the commercial streets.

Palacio de Bellas Artes

We spend a lot of time walking around Erin’s neighborhood.  We have found the grocery store, fruit and vegetable sellers, flower sellers, nice sidewalk cafes, global ubiquitous Starbucks, and the all-important ATM.  Costs of everything here are high; certainly comparable to the U.S. First impressions--Mexico City is certainly a modern, bustling first world city; we are anxious to see more of the country to see at how much variance it is to the city.  The city is also an object lesson--as people get more prosperous, they want and get more consumer goods, most especially cars & cars and traffic are certainly the bane of this wonderful & intriguing city.

 This weekend we plan to visit Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, getting there by bus, so we should have some more adventures to report.  Meanwhile, thanks for keeping up with us; it makes us feel happy to know that you’re “with us”.