Mission: Impossible
How do you properly see a big, sprawling metropolis like Mexico City in one day? Answer: You don’t even try. Instead, you make up your mind to just take it easy, walk around, soak things in, and not worry about checking tourist sites off a list. And that’s pretty much what we did today.
After a much-needed good night’s sleep last night, I woke up this morning to sunshine streaming through my window. Such a nice contrast to getting up at home when it’s still dark out. I met up with Jelle from Holland, Mirjam from Switzerland, and Anders from Australia (see, I’m learning names, I swear!) as well as Carolina from Australia, who arrived late last night.
The five of us set out to find some breakfast. Lots of places were closed, since it was Sunday morning and I get the sense that Sundays are pretty quiet around here. But we find a restaurant whose scents drew us in, and had a wonderful breakfast with omelettes, fresh pastries, yogurt and honey, and some of the most amazing cake-like waffles I’ve ever seen.
Around Mexico City
After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel to meet up with Milton. He led the five of us, plus Gao from China and another late arrival, Nate from the USA, via the subway into the centre of the city, and left us off after pointing out some of the sights and attractions in the area.
None of us being particularly in the mood for museums, we instead just set out on foot. From the Hidalgo subway stop, we saw some of the giant murals that depict the history of Mexico in colourful tiles. We walked along the streets that are closed off every Sunday to cars and reserved for bicycles (a brilliant idea!) We made our way through Alameda Park, and past the Fine Arts Palace and through some of the main pedestrian shopping streets. We stopped off at a church with lavish, ornate artwork, but it being Sunday we sort of accidentally found ourselves there during the start of services, so we tiptoed out trying not to draw any attention to ourselves.
We window-shopped, meandered through the crush of people and the street buskers and tour buses that let us know we were getting very close to the centre of the tourist part of the city. Sure enough, we had arrived at Zocalo, the main square of Mexico City.
Zocalo is quite something year-round, I’m sure, but right now it’s even more over the top. It looks to be set up for what appears to be a planned giant New Year’s Eve celebration, with barriers and fences and a giant H They’ve added a giant winter entertainment complex in the square, which, amusingly enough, featured tubing and ice skating on artificial refrigerated ice. The lineups were around the block, so I guess when you don’t have real winter, this is what you do.
(Side note on winter: People here keep complaining that it’s cold. I don’t mean to sound like a
smug Canadian, but I honestly have no idea what they’re talking about. It goes up to the mid-20s during the day, and feels hotter in the sun. In the evenings it’s been dropping down to a balmy mid teens. I’ve been hot since I got here, and Mexico City is meant to be the coldest of the stops. I’m very glad that I didn’t come in summer; I probably would’ve melted on the spot. And I’ve got way too much warm clothing taking up space in my bag. Oh well.)
The giant square is surrounded by the National Cathedral on one side — we went in for a peek but it was in the middle of Sunday services and jam-packed full of people, so we left. On a second side, there’s the Presidential Palace, which is closed to tourism but you can see it from the outside. The third side had another palace, brightly decorated for Christmas. There were some enthusiastic costumed street performers dancing with feathered hats to the beat of drums just outside. The fourth side appears to be mostly shops and restaurants, and is the sort of stretch where you don’t want to stand for too long because you’ll be approached by rival touts competing for your attention.
We actually did go upstairs to one of the restaurants near the top for a drink and a panoramic view over the square. It’s so colourful when viewed from above — not just the buildings and decorations, but even the people, all dressed in bright colours and walking around enjoying the day. I love how vivid everything is in Mexico City.
Salsa and Street Food
Once we’d had our fill of tourism and crowds, we started to make our way back. There was live music and a bunch of people salsa dancing outside the Fine Arts Palace, so we stopped for a bit to join them, but then found out it was actually some sort of political protest. Even though it was entirely friendly and peaceful, we decided to leave, just in case. We walked back to Hidalgo station and stopped at the market stalls outside for some of Mexico City’s famed street food. Mirjam and Anders had some tacos and chips.
Returning to our neighbourhood, we headed back to the hotel for a short rest. Carolina and I stopped off at the cute little restaurant next door to the hotel for some late lunch of — believe it or not — bagels, lox and cream cheese. Yep. Not quite Montreal-style, but not far off. The cafe is really neat, too — it’s a board game restaurant similar to the board game pubs we have in Montreal. Really fun.
Wrestling, Mariachi and Tequila
We met back up with the guide and group and set off for our next ‘cultural’ experience: A Mexican wrestling match. Lucha libre wrestling is, well, I don’t quite know how to describe it. Part wrestling, part gymnastics, part comedy show with outrageous costumes, silly personas, scantily-clad dancing women, and lots of kitch. Entirely scripted and choreographed, of course, though probably no more so than the WWE or other wrestling leagues. But the crowd was really into it, and the performers — excuse me, ‘wrestlers’ — were all wearing masks and ridiculous costumes. It was good for a laugh, anyway.
Not content with all the stereotypical tourist stuff we’d done so far today, we decided to get one more cheesy experience in: A visit to Plaza Garibaldi, Mexico City’s home to — you guessed it — mariachi music. Picture a giant square full of musicians all identically dressed in mariachi costumes carrying instruments, milling about waiting for someone to come over with some pesos so they can serenade them. Whenever someone would pony up some dinero, they’d launch into a medley from their repertoire, and the people would sing along and dance.
It was fun for about ten minutes. But we decided to have dinner at the very-tourist-trap restaurant in the square, which had mediocre overpriced food, a giant tequila menu, and mariachi musicians playing at the tables for the entire night. Let’s just say that there’s only so much mariachi music that one person can be expected to take before going completely, totally loco.
After dinner, we decided to check out the tequila museum conveniently located in the plaza. It was closing in about ten minutes, so a few people opted to buy tickets for a mad dash through the museum and the included taster shots. The rest of us waited outside in the parking lot, where more mariachi musicians were hanging out and playing. Every so often a car would pull up, and the musicians would play for whoever was inside. Yep, drive-thru mariachi is apparently a thing here, folks.
First impressions of Mexico City
I’ve been through a lot of places where I felt like I didn’t have enough time to truly see them. But Mexico City probably tops that list. This is a sprawling metropolis of twenty-five million people. It has hundreds of neighbourhoods. What I did see would probably count among the most stereotypically touristy experiences. I didn’t get to any of the city’s hundreds of museums, art galleries, local markets, or any of the other dozen things I had in mind to do.
Having said that, I quite like this city, small glimpse though I may have gotten. It feels… alive. I don’t know how to describe it other than that. Full of life. Like the rest of the world is in shades of grey, and here everything is in technicolor. There are people everywhere out enjoying themselves. Lots of families with kids (it’s Sunday) and couples strolling (and PDAs, oh my). The very touristy parts were kind of kitchy, sure, but they also served as a window into the fact that most of this city really isn’t like that, and that this is a city full of mostly locals who really embrace life.
If only I had more time here. But alas, it’s time to move on already tomorrow. I’ll definitely be back one day, though. Today was a taster. There’s so much more here to explore.