Today was the quietest morning we’ve seen on our street, what with Inauguration Day, protests against the government and busy weekends since we arrived Friday night. The quiet wouldn’t last all day though, as Oct 2 is the remembrance of the Tlatelolco massacre. The hotel said it was likely the protests would start around 3pm.
We finished our breakfast and hurried out to see stuff before the blockades went up.
First up was Templo Mayor, just off the Zócalo. The extent of this UNESCO site was discovered in 1978 by electrical workers digging a hole. It’s now an active archaeological site, with suspended walkways for tourists. It also contains an excellent museum within the grounds. It took us 90 minutes to wander through, and we skipped quite a bit. Templo Mayor is really impressive, a must-see in CDMX.
We then stumbled across Colegio de San Ildefonso, which was on my list, we just weren’t looking for it just then. It’s considered the birthplace of Mexican muralism. Its walls are filled with murals by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and others. We had the place pretty much to ourselves.
Navigated the crowd barricades to get to Museo de la Secretaría de Hacienda, where you get tickets to the National Palace. Unfortunately the National Palace has been closed to tourists for a while with no plans to reopen :(
Later I realized the Museo is also called Antiguo Palacio del Arzobispada, aka the SHCP Museum of Art, and the SH stands for Secretaria de Hacienda. The SHCP is also on my list to see, and we were right there without knowing it :( We’ll go back there tomorrow.
We headed in the direction of Palacio de Bellas Artes, to check out a couple more places. Along the way we grabbed some excellent street food from taco vendors and some fries.
There were riot police all geared up and staging in the side street we were walking down. They just ignored us and other locals carrying on their business. It made for additional detours though.
We had an espresso and a cake in a Sanborns, which supposedly had great tiles. We had the wrong Sanborns though (they’re about as prevalent as Tim Hortons in Toronto), at least the espresso was good :)
The Palacio Postal was behind barricades and not accessible :( we did find the right Sanborns after extensive detouring. They didn’t mind us not eating and instead just looking at the tiles, just like the Moon guide suggested.
The Palacio de Mineria was also barricaded, so that will have to wait until Thursday as well.
Walked back up to the Zócalo and browsed through some side-street local markets. The police activity was increasing in advance of the protests, so we called it a day. On the way back to the hotel, stopped in at the restaurant I’d booked online for dinner, just to make sure they were actually open tonight. The restaurant is in a complex surrounded by boutique shops so we browsed around.
Our street was barricaded at the Zócalo end, which meant it was now effectively a dead-end street with low foot traffic. That made it easy for us to get through to our hotel.
Later we figured the large police presence and strategically placed barricades act as effective deterrents to crowd violence.
We were also impressed with how fast the feel of the Zócalo changes. One moment there’s 50k people protesting in the square; two hours later we looked outside and the square was empty and clean. When we went for dinner the barricades were still up between our street and the Zócalo; 90 minutes later we came back and they had vanished. It’s crazy how fast the scene changes.
We had dinner at Azul Historica, just around the corner from our hotel. It was traditional Mexican dishes, in a nice atmospheric courtyard.
We were quite full after eating so walked into the Zócalo for a few minutes. It’s nicely illuminated at night. Saw the monumental flag being lowered for the night and then getting carried away by soldiers, which was cool.
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