Our flight from Toronto to Ciudad de Mexico (CDMX) yesterday evening was really smooth, considering we flew over the hurricane. Immigration was fully automated - scanned our passports, took a pic and we were in Mexico! Customs just waved tourists through the Nothing to Declare line.
We were a bit rusty with our travel and took a taxi not from the official taxi line up. Oh well. The price was similar to what I read it should be. Our driver was friendly, apologizing when he hit a pothole.
Our hotel was just off the Zócalo (the main square in the historical centre), accessible via a pedestrian-only road. There were police checkpoints due to the recent protests against the government, and we had to show our hotel reservation to enter the street. Normally we won’t be getting back to the hotel at midnight so probably won’t need to again.
This morning, we were feeling the effects of being at an altitude. CDMX is at an elevation of 2,240m, enough to wind us after climbing the stairs to our room on the 3rd floor.
The hotel manager gave us a warm greeting when we went down for breakfast. (I’d been corresponding a bit with Emanuel while planning the trip.) Breakfast was excellent, Heather was able to practice her Spanish.
We had reservations at the Frida Kahlo museum for timed entry at 1:30pm. Took an Uber and had about an hour to kill so wandered up to Jardín del Arte Allende. There was some really good quality art, we ended up buying a print. The artist, Enrique Mañón, doesn’t title his art but instead asks the buyer to name them. We called ours Mujer Pensada, which was our maybe incorrect translation of Woman Thinking.
Across the street was Coyoacán Market so we checked it out. Bought a couple items on my list for the key stand - a molinillo (used to whisk hot chocolate) and a couple Otomi dolls (dolls made from fabric ends).
We still had some time before our entry to Frida Kahlo so tried the squeeze in a quick bite at a coffee shop. Their coffee was quite good (so were our cappuccinos at breakfast) but we had to eat our food quickly, and if you know how slow we eat, you can guess it didn’t end well. Had about half a sandwich each and then rushed over to Frida Kahlo’s.
The museum was excellent. My favourite was where they showed pieces from around her house and how they were inspiration in some of her art.
There were some very dark clouds in the distance but my iPhone said it wouldn’t rain until 6pm so we walked over to Díaz de Cossio Experimental Ceramics Workshop but it closed at 2pm so we just caught another Uber back to the centro.
Walked in the last 20 minutes cause the traffic was really bad. There’s lots of street food, I tried a popular taco stand which was amazing. We passed by another hole in the wall (literally, it was sandwiched between two buildings and about the size of a broom closet) which smelled amazing and was super popular. Anyways looks like we’ll have no shortage of food options on this trip.
Walked through the Zócalo to get to our hotel. Some access points were blockaded in case of protests and so we took a circuitous route back. It had just started to rain so we pulled out our umbrellas. We were lucky with the weather today - we got to do everything we wanted under beautiful sunny skies. A pretty successful start to our little vacation!
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