I went back to Mexico City!
At the end of February I went back to Mexico City for work. Since I struggled with the altitude last time I decided to go a day early and take advantage of my time to do an organized tour of two nearby towns. I checked into my hotel, the Camino Real Polanco, which was designed by a well-known Mexican architect, Ricardo Legorreta.
When I arrived I saw the tell-tale sign that some important meetings were about to take place at the hotel.
At 9am on Saturday my tour guide, Citlali, met me in the lobby of my hotel. We grabbed four more people then headed off to Cuernavaca. Our first stop was an old church.
Our second stop was an old church.
And our third stop was, you guessed it, an old church. Apparently the Franciscan monks were very busy in this area. My tour guide told us that the churches in this area have large gardens because when they were built, the indigenous people weren’t allowed to be in the church with the missionaries. So the indigenous people built gardens where they would wait outside and receive mass outdoors.
After the churches we wandered down to the market area and toured around the stalls.
And I bought this beautiful vase!
Then we left Cuernavaca and headed to Taxco. On our way we stopped at a replica silver mine where they told us about the history of silver mining in the area and then gave us time to shop for jewelry.
There was a tonne of silver jewelry, and in hindsight I should have bought more than I did, but a lot of it wasn’t really my style. After a little shopping we drove into Taxco.
Taxco was beautiful. A lot of old world charm and meandering cobblestone streets.
Of course at the centre of town was a big ol’ beautiful church.
My favourite part was that all of the taxis were old VW beetles.
After an hour or so we got back in the van and made the two hour drive back to Mexico City.
The next 5 days I was busy with meetings. Here I am with some of my colleagues from Canada.
On Thursday we ended up with a 5 hour window of free time so a colleague and I went for a walk through the park to the Chapultepec Castle. Although I wasn’t staying in the same hotel as last time, I was on a street bordering this park again so it was really nice to wander through a familiar place while being so far from home.
We wandered through the park over to the National Museum of Anthropology. This place is amazing. My favourite parts were the outdoor exhibits.
What an amazing experience.
And inside they have the actual Aztec Sun Stone (or Calendar Stone). This doesn’t give you a good sense of the size of it, but it was very impressive.
I was on a flight home the next day and very happy to be going home, but also very grateful that I was able to visit and see even more of Mexico City.
Before I finish this post however, I want to share with you a final picture. For the most part, the food in Mexico City is delicious. However, on one special evening I tagged along with some colleagues to a fancy restaurant where they ate fancy things like grilled octopus and wagyu beef. So I decided to play it safe and order soft shell crab tacos. Sounds amazing, right? Well, turns out they just deep fried entire crabs, shell and all, and plucked them into blue corn taco shells.
Needless to say, I was very happy to see the bag of doritos I had stashed back in my room that night.
gabandkirby 