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Two Reports from Mexico City: Report 2

By Evan Schaeffer

To repeat from the last post, last week, my wife and law partner, Andrea Lamere, and I were in Mexico City for seven days. Follow the continuation below if you're interesting in reading a duplicate of the second report I wrote and posted on the (private) weblog I share with my extended family. (Photos, too. I also took a trip to Mexico City last year with my daughter Lydia; photos and post here).

Andrea and I arrived Monday; today is Saturday. We're leaving tomorrow, Sunday afternoon.

Since my last report, we've done the following--

Thursday We went to Puebla, Mexico, by bus. This entailed (a) walking to the subway station; (b) taking the subway for about twenty minutes to the bus station; and (c) finding our bus to Puebla. All this went off without much of a hitch (except when I incorrectly thought we had tickets for the wrong day, until I tried to exchange them and it was explained to me that it was correct--in Mexico, you write the day first, then the month, 6/5 not 5/6. Not noticing the month, I stupidly thought we were off by one day.)

Anyway, we made it to Puebla on the bus, took a cab to the center of town, stayed there about five hours, then did everything again in reverse. There were some good museums in Puebla, in addition to pottery stores and good outside restaurants on the main plaza.

Now for some photos. Here is the bus station in Mexico City (one of four) (CLICK TO ENLARGE)--

A street in Puebla--

Andrea outside a pottery store--

A man (looked like a grandfather) with two kids. He's reading the newspaper headlines (Mexico is a good newspaper place, by the way; in Mexico City there are about ten daily papers, and most dailies are twice as large as the Sunday St. Louis Post-Dispatch)--

Friday Morning On Friday, we walked to the Castle in Chapultepec Park--very close to our hotel. There is a great museum there called the Museum of Mexican National History. The castle was originally built by the Spanish when Mexico City was the capital of New Spain; it was a military college when America invaded in 1847. The several students who died defending the castle are honored in a number of monuments in and around the castle. (This is the "Halls of Montezuma" that's mentioned in the song "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.) In later years, the castle was used as a home by Emperor Maximilian and his wife Carlota of France when he ruled Mexico for a short time before being executed. At the turn of the century, President Diaz lived in the castle for a longer time before being exiled. Now it's just a museum, but it includes a lot of period pieces in the actual rooms from the time that royalty lived there.

More photos. A man feeding a squirrel in the park (click this or any photo to enlarge)--

Some boys posing for a friend in the castle--

Friday Night Friday night was the Sin Bandera concert. The concert was sold out -- about 20,000 people in the National Auditorium, where last year's Miss Universe pageant was held. Andrea and I were impressed not only by the enthusiasm of the crowd, but the way the whole mass of people was so well-behaved before, during, and after the concert. We took the subway to the concert and returned to the hotel by cab.

Saturday  Today we got coffee at Starbucks and read newspapers--this is the Starbucks in the Torre Mayor, across the street from our hotel, which is the tallest buildings in Latin America. This means that Starbucks was usually pretty crowded, but today, being Saturday, the usual business crowd wasn't to be seen. After Starbucks, we saw Sex and the City at a cinema up the street--the movie started at 10:30 am. The subplot about St. Louis was unexpected and made us think about home. Later we ate lunch at a nice restaurant called Canary's (with lots of trees and live birds inside) and then took the subway to the Chopo Market. This is the area where the punks, goths, and emos of Mexico City gather every weekend. It was quite unusual--like going to a Marilyn Manson concert in which everyone in the audience is dressed like Marilyn Manson. Next we went to the Palace of Fine Arts and then walked the entire way of the Paseo de La Reforma (about two miles?) back to the hotel.

Here is a final set of photos (click to enlarge). Inside the subway station--

Some typical people at Chopo Market--

A wedding party taking pictures at the Angel of Independence (we later learned that given the pink dress, this was more likely a quinceaneras party)--

Tomorrow we'll pack up and head back to the airport by taxi.

Full post as published by Notes from the (Legal) Underground on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).