A NEW adventure so soon?

Chapter One of Nancy & Chris’ trip to the Galápagos Islands!

Buenos Dias from CDMX (Mexico City). Nancy & I have been here for four nights after leaving a cold and beautiful Seattle day on our way to sunny and warm Mexico. Nancy snapped Mount Rainier out the plane’s window. We cannot remember flying closer to this icon in all our travels.

When we started to plan this adventure, we found the best air routing was from Seattle – CDMX – Quito. We could have made the trip in one day but since neither of us have visited CDMX before – believe it or not, we decided to stay here a few days. Boy, are we glad we did. The time here has been educational, foodcational and fun….in a city of 9 million in city and another 12 million residents in the outskirts. In keeping with our new practice, we chose a centrally located hotel (Hilton Reforma) in the Historic District so we could walk to many attractions. The first of these attractions was the view from our hotel window.

And we were able to take advantage of the exec floor fringes:

We thought the hotel had come up with a great idea but everywhere we went, the staff would bring one of these purse holders when we sat down.

To acquaint ourselves to this humongous city (the largest in the Americas) we took a food walking tour on Saturday (after flying in Friday evening). It was a hoot! We had a great guide – Paulina, a 21 year old student in the university’s hospitality program, 3 other couples – from Vancouver BC, South Korea and Austin, TX. We spent almost five hours wandering the streets, taking in the sites and visiting five restaurants and the local market (those of you who read the France blog will recall how much we love these markets), and a candy store for dessert. Lots of different food was served including pig’s tongue salami, crickets and of course tacos. Tequila and mezcal were featured too – and why not – they even have a museum for those treats.

Here are some of the food tour and market photos:

Our gang at the mariscos (seafood) place and a shot of the very crowded pedestrian street – with autos on cross streets!

While at one of our stops, Nancy wandered the restaurant and came up with house redecorating ideas (I can’t wait to get home):

Do you remember from the France trip blog how whatever a business sold was highlighted in their name after adding ‘eria’ as suffix? They do that here too….

While on food, we saw these during a Lunar New Year street party on Saturday night.

After the Food Tour, we were too full for dinner so we had the Felize Hora at the hotel.

The next morning we walked the 3+ miles to the Museo Nacional de Anthropologia. It was a wonderful day for it as the two main roads we traversed were closed to vehicular traffic. This is something that happens every sunday of the year! From about 6am – 6pm just feet and bikes are allowed on these very wide boulevards. And it seemed the entire population took advantage of it.

On the walk, Nancy (of course) found her favorite summer beverage and while the weather was summery to us at least, it was a bit early to imbibe.

The museo was quite crowded as on Sundays all the Nacional museos are free to Mexicans and residents. We did not qualify (por que no?) so had to pay the entrance fee of about $8 each. Your money sure goes a long way here – what a great museo! Lots of different galleries following the history of this great nation.

For the longest time, this Sun Stone was thought to be an Aztec calendar. Nope, this 12ft diameter (3.6m), 54,210 lbs (24,590 kg) is not a calendar but a tribute to Sol.

A terrific upside down fountain greets the visitors in the forecourt (I need a forecourt – and an upside down fountain!).

After several hours there, I found some street food while waiting for only our 2nd Uber ever. This treat reminded me of Thailand and my Mexicana sister in law tells me the world learned from Mexico to add chile, lime and salt to everything! Great way to eat a mango.

We headed over to Casa Azul, the birth and death place of artist Frida Kahlo. We had to pre-purchase the tickets to this immensely popular attraction. We spent time taking in the lively neighborhood before our appointed entrance hour.

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We were able to shop with the street vendors but did not buy anything – this time.

The Frida museum (Casa Azul) was worth the visit – if you have never read her life story, we recommend you do. We were able to see her studio and everything in there was hers. Even the mirror she used for selfies and Nancy found the cocina (of course!).

Sunday night, my 6th generation San Franciscan wife thought it would be a good idea to watch her 49ers smack around those dern cowboys. We found a bar that was showing the game on MANY sets and we were about the only people in the SF camp – made the victory even better. We will be on the high seas for the next game so we will have to keep our fingers crossed.

Monday morning was as glorious as the other mornings and we were up early to go on a tour of Teotihuacan (teo-tee-waakan) – this Toltec city that goes back 2000 years. We had a car and driver (Arturo & Martín) who took us about 25 miles (an hour) to this ancient city. And city it was with a population of 250,000 at one time.

My first sight of the largest pyramid (the Sun Pyramid) was startling – I had to do a triple take as I though it was a mountain!

The one below is the Pyramid of the Moon – ruled by the Queen – the King had the Sun.

We ran into Arturo’s favorite vendor and managed to buy only two items! He was a nice guy and dug up a lot of the ancient jade carvings on his own land a couple miles away.

We also toured a nearby ‘townhouse’ that still had frescos on the wall – like in Pompeii. Including what our guide referred to as an ancient scuba diver.

After lunch we hit our last stop – the Temple of Quetzalcoatl – this one was climbable.

That’s Arturo cheering one of us on for the 52 very steep steps!

Check out our altitude. I think stopping in CDMX was a great idea for another reason. We have not had any altitude issues but Quito is t 9,350 feet – second highest capital city in the world. Maybe being here will help in acclimatizing.

Here are some more pyramid shots:

One last day in the city and what better way to explore than by foot…..

CDMX is known for – of all things- organ grinders! Not one of the couple dozen we saw had a minkey though.

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Apparently, they still have some ice houses here.

Well, everyone, I think I am out of words and photos, so you will hear from us on our way back from the Galápagos Islands – about February 5th. Possibly a short post may come your way at the end of this week so we can report in on Quito.

Until then…Via con Dios

Nancy & Chris