CDMX = La Ciudad de México
We spent five weeks in this gigantic city, 10 million people in the city proper and 22 million in Greater Mexico City. It's the sixth largest metropolitan area in the world, after Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Dhaka and São Paulo: it's the second largest in the Western Hemisphere after São Paulo, and the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world. Something like 600,000 Americans - Estadounidenses, actually, since everyone who lives in Latin America is an "American" - live here. It's the oldest city in the Americas.
A brief historic outline of CDMX I saw somewhere: "2,500 years ago, Olmecs and Toltecs; 700 years ago, the Aztec world; 500 years ago, a colonial regime; 200 years ago, a war for independence, then 50 years of foreign invasions; 150 years ago, establishing a federal government; 125 years ago, a dictatorship; 100 years ago, a revolution. And now, the contemporary Mexican world."
More:
We didn't visit the Teotihuacan Pyramids, about 25 miles out of the city. We visited the site when we were here 40 years ago. Very impressive! From Wikipedia: "Although close to Mexico City, Teotihuacan was not a Mexica (i.e. Aztec) city, and it predates the Mexica Empire by many centuries. At its zenith, perhaps in the first half of the first millennium (1 CE to 500 CE), Teotihuacan was the largest city in the Americas, with a population estimated at 125,000 or more, making it the sixth-largest city in the world during its epoch."
CDMX has grown tremendously in the past 125 years, from about 500,000 in the early 20th century to over 22,000,000 today (in Greater CDMX).
Here's a random selection of photos taken around town:
I got a surprise view of a tiny residential street, hidden behind an iron gate on a big avenue. A resident had come up to the gate to get his Uber Eats delivery, so I had the chance to glimpse this tucked-away street. I wonder how many more there are in CDMX?
We got to see the jacaranda trees in Buenos Aires in their spring last November, and now in March in Mexico City.
Ladies with fans! It's time to bring back fans.
A young punky hipster 20-something on the bus next to me had a white fan in her bag and used it when the bus got too warm. No photo :(
Thirty years ago CDMX had the very dubious distinction of having the most polluted air in the world. As of 3 years ago it had dropped to the 917th most polluted city in the word, according to this article:
The air is still not what you'd describe as clean - too many cars in this valley - but it's certainly better than it was.
Speaking of cars, traffic and transportation are big issues here in this BIG city (LA covers 469 square miles, CDMX 571). There's an extensive, if somewhat chaotic public transportation system: the city has 8 public transportation services — Metro, Metrobús, Cablebús, Sistema de Transportes Eléctricos (STE), Red de Transporte de Pasajeros (RTP), Autobuses, EcoBici y Centros de Transferencia Modal (CETRAM) - and they're all crowded most of the time. Even though public transportation is very well used, and people do ride bikes and scooters, the traffic is still insane! It's a big big city with a big big population.
Every station has its own symbol, an icon that represents something about that particular area of the city. The icons date from over 50 years ago, when literacy was low.
The MetroBus mostly has its own lane, which helps to move it along in the terrible traffic, unless of course protesters have shut down the streets.
The buses and metro have women-only sections, which I've been very happy to use.
The cable car system was started almost 10 years ago; similar to the system in Medellin, it links some of the poorest neighborhoods with the main parts of the city. (Not my photo)
The Cablebús:
Much of Mexico City has flat-top buildings and giant murals have been painted on many of them since the
Cablebús started operation (not my photo):
Along with transportation, water is another BIG issue - its cleanliness and its availability. In CDMX nobody - except the very poor, as always - drinks the tap water. Chemicals, bacteria and heavy metals abound. Plastic bottles are everywhere. A law was passed in 2014 requiring restaurants to serve filtered water if you ask for a glass of tap water, but many/most people don't trust it and order bottled water anyway. In our apartment there was a two-step system for purifying tap water - first the water is ozonized and then it's filtered.
In addition to the purity issues, there have been quite a few news articles in the past weeks about a looming water shortage in CDMX. This sign has been posted in the elevator in our apartment building, asking residents to conserve water:
Water shortage is a serious issue all around the country and a big topic in the upcoming presidential election:
This article is from almost a year ago, on World Water Day, March 22, 2023:
Despite all the issues, people in CDMX are very friendly and surprisingly mellow for a crowded city with so much (chaotic) energy. As a young Uber driver cheerfully said, after we battled our way across town, "it takes patience to drive here". He was quite calm and resigned to what seemed to me to be quite insane traffic.
Another good thing: CDMX is in the top five cities worldwide for the number of museums it has. I've been doing my best to see as many as I can. Also lots of cinemas!
Here's a week-by-week report on our five weeks in the BIG city. With our slow travel mode, quite a few days we did basically nothing - buy some groceries, sit in the park across the street, read, binge watch some TV series, do laundry - just live life.
WEEK ONE, FEB 8-14
We arrived from Costa Rica on February 8th. We'd booked a small apartment in Colonia Roma Norte (they use the word colonia, not barrio, for neighborhood) for the first 5 nights so we could look around and decide where we wanted to stay for the following weeks. The first night we had a great meal - posole! tacos! watercress and beet salad! - and a nice conversation with the owner of the restaurant who lived in SF for a year and worked in an Italian restaurant on Chestnut near Scott. He really enjoyed his time in the Bay Area.
The rest of the week we wandered the streets, looked at several ideas for where to move to, and mostly just relaxed after 2 months of being on the road. Also needed some time to adjust to the altitude; it's not Cuzco or La Paz but it's definitely noticeable.
By a great coincidence we arrived during annual Art Week. Mexico City has a well-deserved and growing reputation as an international art center. Art Week attracts thousands of people from all over the world. It would be impossible to see it all:
I went to Féria Material, in a huge repurposed industrial building with 4 stories of art from all over the world, and also hit a few galleries in the nearby Zona Rosa.
Here are a few images of work I liked, and some attendees wearing fun outfits:
A few fun outfits:
The top floor of the building was divided into two big installations: a retro airplane/airport (you could put on a life vest and inflate it!)...
...and a super great installation by a cohort of artists from Belgium who made trippy furniture and sculpture. The Belgians' work had been held up in customs so they made life-size models of all their work to display for the first 5 days of the Fair. The real work finally got released from customs on Saturday afternoon, the day before closing day; they were installing when I was there. The upside is they got a lot of buzz about their plight and their cool replicas; people (and media) came back to see the real thing.
My favorite piece in the art fair was a Belgian woman's work - part of the cohort mentioned above - this hanging, slowly rotating humanoid figure. Absolutely gorgeous and intriguing. The artist told me it was constructed around a boxing bag. I watched them install it. Cardboard replica below, then installation, then the piece itself. I told the young woman artist that it was my favorite piece. The images of course don't do it justice.
After leaving the Material art fair I wandered the neighborhood a bit. Saw a couple of galleries, a homeless encampment, and some salsa dancing in the park on a late Saturday afternoon.
On Super Bowl Sunday we had an unexpected treat: a friend from Petaluma was in CDMX and staying at the gorgeous Gran Hotel downtown right on La Plaza de la Constitución, better known as el Zócalo. There was a lounge up on the second floor with a few TV screens, and a great view out over the plaza where a huge concert was taking place. Throngs of people, music, and dancing in the streets!
I couldn't get a good picture of the famous Tiffany glass ceiling in the lobby but did get shots of one of the gorgeous elevators and the roof of one of the large birdcages.
The hotel was originally built between 1895 and 1899, on the site of a 16th century palace. It was first a large department store; in 1968 the building was converted into a hotel for the celebration of the Mexico City Olympic Games. It was a kick to watch the Super Bowl in the lounge, sipping champagne (gracias, Hamish!), and watching the festivities outside on the plaza at the same time. Bummer that the wrong team won.
At the end of Week One we
moved across the park - the Bosque Chapultepec - to Colonia Polanco. Airbnb occasionally has some real treasures - also some real dives but that's another story. This particular treasure was a gigantic gorgeous apartment with a nice view over Parque Lincoln. We booked it for 4 weeks, just before the owner rented it for a year.
The view from our living room window over Parque Lincoln:
And the camote man, whose whistle we hear every few minutes every evening from about 5:30-7:30:
"If you're walking the streets and suddenly hear a long, loud, high-pitched whistle, you're probably very close to a camote cart. One of the oldest Mexican street food traditions, a camote cart sells plantains and sweet potato — served with strawberry jam and condensed milk — cooked on a bed of charcoal, inside an oven built into the cart. The characteristic whistle happens when the vendor releases steam from the oven through the cart's little pipe."
Good article on the amazing array of street food in Mexico City:
It's fun to have our windows open and take in the lively sights and sounds 5 stories below.
WEEK TWO FEB 15-21
Only one museum this week, but it's big enough to qualify as several - El Museo Nacional de Antropología, about a half hour walk from the apartment, in the Chapultepec Park. It will definitely require at least one return visit!
They had a thought-provoking temporary exhibition:
A very interesting display of ideas from many civilizations about what the end of time or the end of the world as we know it might mean. Alien invasion? Climate catastrophe? The wrath of God? A pandemic?
I like this image of a cave made of salvaged books:
A couple more:
After this exhibition I needed a drink before plunging into the 23 rooms of the main part of the anthropology museum. There's way too much to even begin to show here, but I was pleased to see Chacmool represented. The Richman family discovered Chacmool many years ago on a visit to the Yucatan, probably at Chichen Itza. We called him the couch potato/pizza god because he's so obviously lying on the couch, head turned to watch TV, waiting for his pizza to be delivered, nice flat place on his stomach to put the pizza. Hail to Chacmool!
Over the weekend we had the great pleasure of seeing our niece Lily! She was in CDMX for the long weekend celebrating her best friend's birthday; it was a treat to welcome seven marvelous young women for a couple of hours and to use this fab apartment for a little party.
Here's a photo I stole from Lily's Instagram page showing her busting a move at a salsa club in CDMX. The ladies on the left were part of a group celebrating the one in white's 73rd birthday yeah! Lily and her pals were doing their best with salsa but when a Pitbull song came on they hit the floor Nueva York style.
One of my goals for this trip has been to improve my Spanish, which I studied in high school and college, but which has languished at the back of my brain for years. It's been interesting to hear the different accents and vocabulary as we've moved from country to country. I've been waiting to be in Mexico to take actual lessons, and I registered for some one-on-one lessons to start. I was lucky to be assigned to a very interesting young woman who speaks 5 languages and loves her home town Mexico City. We usually met at an ultra-modern WeWork building in the Reforma neighborhood but this week she suggested we meet on the UNAM campus. La Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is considered one of the best universities in the world and is the largest in Latin America. All Mexican Nobel Prize winners attended it. It's also known for many murals around campus and the surrounding neighborhoods. The link below describes the campus and gives some history about education and government and protests:
We met at the library, which is famous for the stone mosaics covering the entire building, created in 1956 by artist John O'Gorman. From Wikipedia: "And the decorations get even more incredible up close, as they aren’t simply painted onto the walls, but composed of designs illustrated with a variety of types of local stone, each chosen for its natural color. Amazingly, all of the reds, greens, blues, yellows, and other colors are created with naturally colored stones obtained from all over Mexico. O’Gorman chose this method because as opposed to paint and other mediums because he knew the stones wouldn’t fade." One of the best parts of the day was getting to ask multiple times, ¿donde está la biblioteca?.
On Tuesday this happened, 45 miles away. (Not my pic)
This is the volcano Popocatépetl, known locally as El Popo. It’s North America’s second-highest volcano; the highest is also in Mexico. (FYI the highest active volcano in the world is located in the Andes, on the Chilean-Argentinian border.) From an NPR article: “Like Mount Vesuvius in Italy and Mount St. Helens in Washington state, Popocatépetl is a stratovolcano capable of catastrophic, explosive eruptions, the last of which came around the year 800". Here's a painting from 1879, a much less developed time - Vista de la Ciudad de México y los volcanes Iztaccihuatl y Popocatépetl - and a photograph from an architecture exhibition with the same view 120 years later:
The air in CDMX got a bit worse for a few days, and a few flights were canceled during the first couple of days. Life in a volcano zone.
Abram went up to Plaza Garibaldi, the world center of mariachi music - any time of the day or night there are mariachi bands playing; people hang out in cafes and on the plaza to watch them and also to hire bands for fiestas. His sister-in-law was celebrating a milestone birthday and everyone in the family was asked to make a short birthday video. Abram got these guys to serenade her:
The city of Guadalajara, where we are going next, claims that it's the home of mariachi music - also of tequila, mezcal and pulque.
Later in the week Abram went to get a couple of our knives sharpened and ended up in the bustling Mercado San Juan. A San Francisco note: years ago there was an old guy in North Beach who sharpened knives in a little storefront alcove - he wore a hat made out of newspaper. In this mercado there was an old couple sharpening knives in their "afiladuria" - sharpening shop - and the man was the spitting image of the North Beach guy. All he needed was the newspaper hat.
https://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/Master-of-the-Blade/ North Beach guy mentioned in this article.
Here's Abram's pic of the afiladuria - it didn't seem cool to take a pic of the couple:
In that particular market a lot of the stalls have signs asking that people not take photos - I think they're tired of all the tourists gawking while the market vendors are trying to do business.
WEEK THREE, FEB 22-28
Two notable things in our new neighborhood of Polanco are the Soumaya Museum and Costco! You can see them both in this photo, the Costco logo off to the left:
I couldn't resist going to the food court for a hot dog and soda - very weird to be doing this in Mexico!
The Soumaya features the private collection of Mexican multi-billionaire Carlos Slim. His son-in-law designed the striking building, which opened as a museum - with free entry - in 2011. Over 6,000 pieces of art are on display, including a top floor gallery crowded with 140 Rodins!
Here's just a small sample - a return visit is definitely needed!
In the lobby there's a cool two-sided Diego Rivera mosaic tile mural; it's on two freestanding walls set up back to back with a little indoor stream running between them. You see the scene from the front on one wall and from the back on the other one. This is just a small section of the mural:
Parque Lincoln, across the street from us, is a well-used city park. All the usual activities - dog-walkers, kids on skates, exercise classes, bench-sitters, walkers/joggers - even nappers...
... and on Saturdays there's a produce market and what Abram dubbed "the taco tunnel", a four-block long series of street food vendors with pop-up shade coverings. The best tacos I've had thus far!
Notice the skinny fries that come with the tacos, so good!
On Tuesday I took the MetroBus downtown to Alameda Central. It's a public park, the oldest in Mexico - actually, in the Americas - created in 1592 and modeled on a park in Seville, Spain. It's a beautiful manicured tree-filled space with fountains, shady benches and a big playground. Around the park are at least seven museums! That day I went to the Museo Franz Meyer, the Diego Rivera Mural Museum and the Palacio Bellas Artes.
There was a huge used book and record sale on the edge of the park - the tent with the Palacio de Bellas Artes in the background:
They had a movie projector, screen, and about 50 chairs set up and were showing old black and white Mexican movie for free - and with free popcorn.
Interior of the Palacio de Bellas Artes.
And the exterior:
The Diego Rivera Mural Museum has one mural - I could hear people whispering "only one??" - but it's a famous and significant one. It's titled "Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central" or "I dream of a Sunday afternoon in the Alameda Central". (Very cool that they located the museum on the edge of the Alameda Central.) The mural was created in 1947 and installed in the Versailles Lounge of the Hotel del Prado, also located on the Alameda Central. Over the years the weight of mural caused it to begin to crack, and the 1985 earthquake almost destroyed it. It was rescued, restored and kept safe until a new building was constructed around the corner from the Hotel del Prado, on the site of the Hotel Regis which was leveled in the earthquake. The new building opened in 1988 as the Diego Rivera Mural Museum. From Wikipedia: "The mural depicts the artist, who portrayed himself as a child, walking in the Alameda Central accompanied by more than 100 emblematic characters from 400 years of the history of Mexico." He's holding the hand of La Catrina.
There was a legend that identified all the figures in the mural:
The Museo Franz Meyer, named for the man who collected the artwork and donated it to the city, is located in a beautiful building with a lovely interior courtyard. The day I was there a large school group was visiting and making art:
The museum featured a huge collection of fine artworks, books, furniture, ceramics, textiles and many other types of decorative items that he collected from all around Mexico for over 50 years.
It also has excellent temporary exhibitions; the day I was there I saw the Vivian Maier photography show that's been traveling the world for a few years, and a super cool interactive exhibition on the Notre Dame fire and rebuilding the tower.
After the museums I walked around the beautiful park and saw this guy as I was on my way to the bus:
WEEK FOUR, FEB 29-MAR 6
Week Four started with a trip to the Frida Kahlo house and a day in the
Coyoacán neighborhood. I'd always appreciated her work but reading the Barbara Kingsolver novel 'The Lacuna' made her come alive. (Read it or listen to Kingsolver read it in the audible version. Highly recommended by me!) The Casa Azul, where she lived 36 of her 47 years, was as colorful and full of life and art as you'd imagine. Due to the terrible bus/streetcar accident she suffered when she was just 18, she spent a lot of time in bed. She had two beds, the daytime bed and the nighttime bed. A mirror was above the daytime one, and a collection of butterflies sent to her by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi was above the nighttime one.
Here are a few photos of the house and courtyard, and some of the artwork she collected and had given to her:
When Leon Trotsky went into exile in 1929 he and his wife spent 8 years on the move; they came to Mexico City in 1937 through the efforts of Diego Rivera, who was a member of the Mexican Communist Party. Trotsky and his wife stayed with Diego and Frida until they moved into their own house a few blocks away. Trotsky was assassinated there, while he was working in his study.
Coyoacán is the oldest neighborhood in CDMX; it used to be a separate town to the south of Mexico City and was incorporated into the city proper in the late 1800's. Urban sprawl didn't affect it until the 1960's and it retains many of its original small streets, plazas and parks, and a nice small town feel. After visiting the Casa Azul and Trotsky's house I spent the rest of the day and early evening walking around it, having lunch at the mercado - 3 chicken enchiladas, each with a different mole sauce - a visit to the National Museum of Popular Culture, park-sitting, people-watching, enjoying the vibe and architecture. Here are some pics of all of that:
At the northern end of the neighborhood is the ultra-modern Cineteca Nacional which shows an amazing selection of movies from many countries and many eras, and also offers classes, workshops, lectures etc all about film. My timing was bad for seeing a movie but the building was cool:
The next day I spent walking the beautiful tree-filled avenues of the Hippodrome in Colonia La Condesa. (not my photo)
The Hipódromo used to be a racetrack and is now a series of tree-filled avenues around several parks. It's really a beautiful area to stroll, with cool buildings, a wide variety of places to eat and drink, and less traffic than most places in the city.
While I was exploring Coyoacán and La Condesa, Abram took a trip out of town for a couple of days.
He went to enjoy some hot springs outside of a town called Tecozautla.
It's a Pueblo Mágico - the Programa Pueblos Mágicos is an initiative led by Mexico's Secretariat of Tourism to promote a series of towns around the country that offer visitors "cultural richness, historical relevance, cuisine, art crafts, and great hospitality". This one has a geyser and some hot springs a few miles away.
Lots of families come here to enjoy the water.
On the way home Abram encountered a huge demonstration in city center, where he'd intended to transfer to the MetroBus that comes to our neighborhood. Over 350,000 people crowded into the Zócalo, Morena supporters and militants attending a rally which marked the beginning of the presidential campaign of Claudia Sheinbaum. All traffic, including public transportation, was halted. So... you either wait it out or walk until you get far enough away to find a bus or get an Uber. There have been at least four big protests since we've been here.
A few days later I spent a day in Chapultepec Park, which is twice as big as Central Park. Chapultepec Castle, which houses the National Historic Museum, sits on a hill that presumably looks like a cricket; in the Aztec language chapul means cricket and tepec means hill. The museum and castle were very interesting - lots of tourists and school groups visiting.
WEEK FIVE - MAR 7-12
During this last week Abram and I wrapped up seeing all the Best Picture nominees, at the cinema and streaming. It's always interesting to go to the movies in other countries.
Thursday I went back into huge Chapultepec Park to visit the Museum of Modern Art and the Rufino Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum, located across the street from each other. Lots of marvelous works, some intriguing temporary exhibitions. Very well-attended by visitors who appeared to be Mexican and also many out-of-towners. Quite a few families visiting together, discussing the art. It's spring break, so many people on vacation. A few images:
Sunday I went downtown to see the Templo Mayor and see a couple more museums around the Alameda Central. I started in the Plaza de la Constitución where almost 200,000 women gathered two days prior, on International Women's Day. This banner was still up:
Abortion was decriminalized in 2021 and last September the Mexican Supreme Court had it removed from the federal penal code. However, 20 Mexican states still treat it as a crime, and this heavily Catholic country is struggling with it.
The Plaza is enormous; on one side is the absolutely astounding Metropolitan Cathedral. Built on the remains of an Aztec temple in what was the center of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the colonizing Spaniards built the most grandiose church in all of the Americas. Photos can't do it justice!
The Templo Mayor is a few blocks behind the cathedral. There's a nice small museum and some good viewpoints to see what remains of the temple itself.
It was the main temple of the Mexica people. https://lugares.inah.gob.mx/es/zonas-arqueologicas/zonas/1699-templo-mayor.html
A quick subway ride from the Plaza de la Constitución to the Alameda Central, the lovely and lively park that I'd visited a couple of weeks ago to see the first set of museums surrounding it, and to enjoy the park. This time I visited the Museo Kaluz and Laboratorio Arte Alameda. A few images from the Kaluz:
The entire ground floor was filled with raised platforms that had dance steps on them. The screen showed dancers and there was music playing - really fun to watch different people dance.
The Laboratorio had a collection of contemporary works and interactive pieces, and is housed inside the former Monastery of San Diego, making a nice juxtaposition of old and new.
It was GREAT to go back to Alameda Central on a Sunday afternoon when everyone was out enjoying the nice weather and doing all sorts of fun things. I couldn't help but be struck by the similarities and differences relating to the 1947 Diego Rivera mural "Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central" that I saw on my first visit. Here are a bunch of photos and videos of a "tarde dominical", a Sunday afternoon 2024-style:
During our time here we didn't delve into the many creative high-end gourmet restaurants that make up Mexico City's thriving and famous culinary scene. Perhaps it's restaurant fatigue after so much traveling. Street tacos have been my favorite food.
As we wrap up our 5 weeks in CDMX it's clear that Mexico has many problems. Narcos. Organized crime. Violence. Water. Infrastructure. Corruption. It also has a growing middle class, friendly people, and many economic opportunities. Very likely a woman President will be elected in June. More on all this in upcoming blogs as we leave Mexico City and spend the next 8 weeks traveling around the country.
Tomorrow we leave our art-filled apartment and board buses, Abram to Guadalajara and me to San Miguel de Allende to see the city and visit a Petaluma friend. I will meet Abram later in Guadalajara where we will stay for a week or two. Then onward around Mexico as we begin to count down the weeks until the wedding in the Yucatan in early May... and home!
Amazing! Love reading about your adventures
WOW!!! Where's the like'button? I LOVE EVERYTHING!! Viajes felices!!
Quel beau voyage vous faites!
So much you teach us. Breathtaking.
I’ve had a wonderful time on your trip! Looking forward to savoring the final chapters 😃