Our whole group (13 students, 2 profs, 1 assistant) took our tourbus to Mexico City this weekend. The city is about a 2 hour drive from Puebla, and we left around 8:30am on Wednesday morning. And we had a RIGOROUS schedule from there on out…
Wed:
Arrive in Mexico City. We visited the pyramids at the city of Teotihuac�n, one of which is the third tallest pyramid in the world. It was hot and sunny, but I CLIMBED THE WHOLE PYRAMID. Photographic evidence to follow. 🙂
After that, we went to the church of “The Virgin of Guadalupe,” which our tourguide claimed was the second most important Catholic site after the Vatican. According to legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to a farmer (sometime in the 1800s?) and demanded that he build a cathedral to honor her. When the farmer went to the local bishop, the bishop didn’t believe that the farmer had actually seen the Virgin, and building cathedrals is expensive, so he asked for proof. Frustrated, the farmer went back into the hills where he had seen the Virgin. She reappeared to him, and he explained to her that the Bishop wanted proof that she was real. Despite the fact that it was wintertime, she told the farmer to go over the hill and pick some roses for the bishop. The humble farmer did as she asked, and to his amazement, a breed of rosebush very difficult to grow in the dry Mexican soil had sprung out of that hillside. So, he picked some roses, put them in his cloak, and returned to the bishop a second time. The Bishop was unimpressed with the petals that fell from the farmers cloak, and refused to build the church a second time. But then, the farmer opened his cloak up wider, and on the inside of the coat was revealed a perfect portrait of the Virgin herself, in brilliant colors. This last convinced the Bishop, as the colors that appeared on the coat were of no natural substance that could be found. In fact, our guide claimed that to this day the substances on the cloak have not been properly identified and will never lose their color.
The cloak itself is still able to be seen in the new cathedral (the 3rd one since the original chapel), but (in my opinion) even more impressive than the cloak itself are the numbers of people who flock to see it. Though I am not Catholic, it was a pretty remarkable and faith inspiring experience.
That’s the last thing we did on Wednesday. After it, we drove around the city for a bit before going to our hotel and settling in for the evening. OH! I almost forgot. And we got to have dinner on the roof of a hotel overlooking the main square of the city. It was a delicious meal, and the view was pretty amazing too. J Then, we went to bed.
Thursday:
Thursday we did a pretty fantastic walking tour of a lot of the downtown of M�xico City starting around 9am. We got to see the main square (called a zocalo, I think I mentioned that somewhere before) again in the morning. It was full of a kind of market – little tents where people set out their wares – as well as a political demonstration of some kind. After trotting through the square, we got to visit the Palacio Nacional, which is kind of a combination of the Mexican Congress, Government Offices, and Presidential Offices. It’s pretty much everything except a Presidential Residence (that’s someplace else.) After the Palacio Nacional, we went to a set of ruins that’s located right in the center of the city called the Templo Mayor. Because Mexico City was built right on top of the ancient (and HUGE) Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, pretty much anytime someone digs around, ruins or artifacts are discovered. Apparently in the 1970s they were digging for electricity and hit upon the foundations of one of the largest ceremonial buildings from the city.
So we walked through those and through that museum for an hour or two and got in our ancient history lesson for the day before crossing the street to see the Cathedral that is also located in the center of town. Unfortunately, we only got to see bits of it because of a celebration and service that were happening when we arrived. Sooooo – then it was off to lunch! J
After lunch, we hiked around to see a bunch of different Diego Rivera murals throughout the city (they’re everywhere). We visited a huge theatre called the Bellas Artes, one museum dedicated just to Diego, and another museum with just one of his works. It was a busy afternoon. I don’t know how much you know about Rivera murals (admittedly, I’d only vaguely heard of him before this trip), but the man had OPINIONS. And he put them into his art. He also tells huge stories of social and economic and historical change in many of his murals. I think they’re kind of incredible, and that he must’ve been a pretty fascinating person.
After all of that we headed back to the hotel. I was filled with good intentions of starting my homework (due Monday, as I write this it’s Sunday evening and I’ve not yet begun…hurm.) Instead, I went out with a few people to walk around our part of Mexico City, visit a bookstore (in which I bought a few things), and found a lovely bar/restaurant where we had dinner with the locals. It was a GREAT evening in M�xico. J
The next day, Friday, was even busier:
We headed out at 9am again on our trusty little tourbus to travel across town to see the Castle and grounds of Chapultapec. (For you folks interested in history, Chapultapec was the last Aztec emperor to be defeated by the Spaniards when Tenochtitlan and the Aztec Empire was finally defeated. In contrast to Montezuma (called Moctezuma here), Chapultapec is considered a national hero and symbol of resistance to the Spanish Conquest. Moctezuma is thought of as a weakling who was traitorous in submitting to the Spanish and for appeasing Hern�n Cort�s. History lesson done.)
The castle is also the place where previous dictators and even (briefly) the king and queen sent over from France lived. It’s a gorgeous location on top of a huge hill overlooking the city. The interiors are amazing, the gardens are green and perfect, and the view is spectacular. Frankly, if I were in the market for a castle, Chapultapec’s pretty much fits anything I might need. J
After that, we spent the entire rest of the day at the National Anthropology Museum. This is a HUGE HUGE HUGE museum dedicated to pretty much the entire history, geography, ethnography etc etc etc of M�xico. It’s kind of like their capital city’s version of the Smithsonian, only it’s mainly focused on (you guessed it) Anthropology. I loved it. Our guide spent close to three hours explaining the main exhibits and the parts of history that we’ve already studied in class to us, and then we had a little bit of time to go out and wander on our own. Out of 24 main halls, we maybe covered 10. And then buzzed through 10 more. But it was a wonderful glimpse into the history and people of this country. I’d love to go back someday and wander about properly.
Saturday:
Whew! Despite starting to be a little tired out from all of our excursions, we were downstairs and ready to switch hotels at 9:30am on Saturday morning. We were moving across the city (a 2-hour drive from end to end, though we were more in the middle). After leaving our luggage at our new hotel, we spent the day going through the museums of Frida Kahlo and Dolores Olmedo. The Kahlo museum is basically the house, called Casa Azul, where she and her husband/lover/ex-husband/lover Diego Rivera lived. The other place, the Olmedo Museum, was pretty much the home of one of the very wealthy friends of Kahlo and Rivera and housed all kinds of art, carvings, a small art museum and a weird assortment of animals from peacocks to a kind of hairless dog that is in danger of extinction. It was an eclectic sort of day. After that, we got to go on a boat ride in a canal similar to those that might have been used by the Aztecs. It was a great relaxing end to the day, and I even have video (which will probably be posted to Facebook rather than my blog.)
Saturday night was group dinner again, after which I almost fell asleep in my soup from all the exciting stuff we’ve been doing!
Today, Sunday:
Ok. Todaaaaay! We left our hotel at around 10am to go to a market in one of the neighborhoods nearby. A “market” here is like a fancier, bigger, higher quality fleamarket. There are food, clothes, crafts of every size, color, shape and description, supplies…pretty much anything you can think of is available at a market here. Our group spent about 3 hours checking out this one.
Around 3pm, then, we headed back to our home city of Puebla, and we got here around 5:15.
All in all, I have to say that Mexico City was an amazing “fieldtrip” and is a gorgeous city filled with more activities than one can possible do in 5 short days. It was absolutely part of this experience that I’ll never forget.
Location: Calzada de Tlalpan, 2043 | Colonia Parque de San Andrés, Mexico City 04040, Mexico