Doing nothing is hard work

Since I have no photos from this lazy day please enjoy this pic of a typical front page of a Mexican newspaper. As you can tell, Adrian enjoyed it.

Just as we promised ourselves, we spent the day in the hostal doing nothing, well nothing that involved leaving the hostal. Instead, Adrian caught up on his favourite tv programs and I spent the entire day uploading photos and a little bit of time updating the blog. Sure there’s wireless everywhere but it’s slow especially when there are ten people with laptops using it. Yup, that’s the new backpacker fully equipped with laptop, digital camera, psp, skype headgear spending more time looped in with people back home than the person next to them at the hostal. And we're just as guilty although trying not to be.

But all the peace and quiet meant we could make plans for the next leg of our journey to Oaxaca about 6 hours south east of Mexico City. Good thing because checking the bus company websites revealed a limited number of buses contrary to everything we’d read. Panicked I reached out to the Lonely Planet Bulletin Board where a couple of fellow travelers told me the websites were on the fritz. We could indeed show up the next morning without a ticket and get on the next bus.

After a cheap dinner around the corner from the hotel, we repacked our bags a feat that is still just as hard as when we did it back and Toronto and went to sleep. Well I tried to get to sleep. An hour later I woke up scratching furiously at my arm. I turned on the light to discover it covered in welts, some two inches across. I immediately assumed the worst. Bedbugs! But no when I heard buzzing and saw something flying through the air, I was actually relieved to discover it was a mosquito or three that had been feasting on the one part of my body not under the covers while Adrian slept shirtless, snoring and untouched right next to me. My pasty glow-in-the-dark skin was irresistible to not just the sun but all bloodsuckers too.

I went back to bed pulling the sheets around everything but my nose, half expecting to wake up with 50 bites on the tip of it. But alas, at 7am it was only the usual sirens, horns and car alarms that woke us up. The noise is one thing we were definitely not going to miss. Loaded up we headed into the Metro for the last time getting off at TAPO – the eastern bust station which was tiny compared to the Terminal Norte and got on the next bus to Oaxaca.

T.G.I.Frida-Day

According to Adrian, one of Mexico’s greatest exports is Salma Hayek. So it was easy to convince him to watch Frida when he discovered she was in it. It was even easier to keep him watching it when he discovered she was in it naked. But after watching the movie, he had a new interest in Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and some of the Mexico City locations featured in movie. And that’s what we decided to do this day.

After another breakfast at ViPS (a local chain where Adrian was able to get a proper breakfast), we headed out to the San Angel area of the city to visit the conjoined homes of Rivera and Kahlo that is now home to a museum. Getting there was another easy trip on the Metro (our feet were thankful) and once we were out of the station, we felt like we were in a completely different city. It was greener, cleaner and decidedly richer. Most of the streets were cobblestoned and lined with ivy covered walls behind which old colonial mansions stood. There were crafts markets and it being a weekend there were lots of people about but still without the frenetic pace of downtown.

As we explored the streets, our pyramid climbing muscles began to express their displeasure with us. But we ignored them and soon got to the conjoined houses. Why conjoined houses? Well, Frida and Diego each wanted their own space after they got married. This of course gave both of them many opportunities to cheat on each other leading to their divorce. But they remarried however, Frida never moved back into the conjoined houses, instead continuing to live in the her childhood home over in the next neighbourhood of Coyoacan.

It didn’t look too far on the map so we walked over to Frida’s house to check out the Museo de Frida Kahlo. Our legs were really not happy with this decision but it gave us the opportunity to take in Coyoacan. While slightly less polished than San Angel, it is another shady peaceful neighbourhood that used to be a satellite town outside of Mexico City until urban sprawl swallowed it up.

Unlike the Museo Diego Rivera, the Museo Frida Kahlo wasn’t free on Sunday (most museums in Mexico City are free on Sunday). But it was definitely more extensive, covering both her and Diego’s influences and containing many of their sketches and works, including some of the numerous body casts Frida had to wear and that she painted. Having just seen the movie it was great to see so many things with context. It made another day at the museums not just tolerable but enjoyable.

Finally, Mexico City had grown on us. But rather than push our luck we decided to take a break from sightseeing to counter some of the tourism fatigue we were feeling. It also meant we could catch up on all things blog (ed: hah, I’m still a week behind) and make plans for the next leg of our trip.

When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with mars

March 21st. The first day of spring and time for new beginnings. So when we woke up, there was no more crankiness about Mexico City because we weren’t spending the day in the city. Instead we were joining what Lonely Planey calls the throngs of new-age hippie types at Teotihuacan for the celebration of the vernal equinox. Today was a big thing at Teotihuacan almost as big as the site itself. Its 83 square kilometers where once home to over 100,000 Aztecs over 2,000 years ago.

But to get there we first had to navigate the gigantic Terminal Norte Bus Terminal. And when I say gigantic it was easily the size of any airport terminal if not bigger. With the help of a friendly counterperson we finally found the tiny Teotihuacan Bus Line and purchased our tickets ($3.30 each) for the hour long bus ride. I entertained myself by playing that international game peek-a-boo with a young girl in an adjacent seat while Adrian snored away beside me.

Traffic was stop and go with the bus occasionally going rather than stopping. Eventually it stopped going completely and I noticed many people getting off. I asked the mother of the young girl if this was Los Piramides and she replied yes and told me that they were to the right and then straight ahead. But her instructions weren’t needed as once we got off of the bus we were swallowed up by a sea of people and pulled in that direction along the highway. Both sides were lined with vendors selling everything from whistles to batteries to hubcabs to all sorts of food. And of course, water. We’d brought our own tap water filtered using our handy UV steri-pen (another awesome purchase that will help us cut down on the number of water bottles we're using in our travels) but ice cold water sure was tempting as we walked 1 kilometre down the scorching tarmac to the ticket booth.

The long walk gave me time to check out the crowd. I’d expected a bunch of international dreadlocked Burning Man escapees and while there were one or two of those, the crowd was mostly locals dressed almost exclusively in white with red sashes. Some were wearing ankle booties covered in shells that jingled when they walked and a few others had feathered headdresses. It felt more like a traditional gathering than a new-age hippie thing. In fact I’ve seen more dreadlocks in Trinty Bellwoods than I did this day.

By the time we reached the entrance, we had already been walking for an hour and both needed to pee and eat – not at the same time of course. I joined the queue at the ladies’ while Adrian unsympathetically declared his gratitude at being a male. But I got my revenge when he couldn’t find the men’s until we walked another 500 metres. Evacuation complete, we began to take in the sites.

While we couldn’t see the pyramids yet we did see a giant stripped tree trunk with 6 guys at the top hanging on to it for dear life. Wait, that would have been me. These 5 guys were hanging off of it nonchalantly before leaning back and allowing themselves to be suspended by rope tied around their ankles. While the man in the middle played a tune on a whistle and stamped the bells on his feet, the others swung around recreating the old Aztec activity that I’d seen painted on museum murals in Mexico City. It was pretty darn cool.

Just beyond that was a giant sunken square called The Citadel. Down below traditional dances were being done in large circles. The first was the largest and also the least formal – any one could join and many did, seeming to know all the steps. But beyond them were a bunch of smaller more formal circles. Everyone in these was fully decked out and performing salutations to the four directions and then finally the sun. Around the perimeter, spectators kept a respectful distance but likewise raised their arms in each direction. And when each group was done a new troupe? tribe? replaced them and started the ritual all over again.

It was now time to make our way down the Avenue of the Dead to the Temple of the Sun. But when we saw the 2 kilometre stretch in front of us we made a small detour into the overpriced restaurant back at the gates. The menu was… interesting – pasta with ant eggs, fried grasshoppers, and corn fungus. Having skipped breakfast our stomachs weren’t up for the challenge so we stuck with the tourist menu of soup, chicken and cake. A wise decision I think.

Now fuelled we began the long trek to the Temple of the Sun. It’s the biggest of the two temples at Teotihuacan, in fact it’s the third largest temple in the world, standing a whopping 250 feet tall and just about as wide. And all of it seemed covered with people. Not only were there they looped all the way up temple but it also looped around three sides of the base. And the line wasn’t moving. A quick guesstimation was that it would be at least 2 hours to get to the top, 2 hours of standing in the blazing sun. “Sod that” was Adrian’s response.

Instead we continued walking to the Temple of the Moon. It’s smaller but there were no line ups. Good thing because climbing that sucker was scary. Each step, (actually they were more like ledges because they were at least two steps tall) was an effort and the incline was incredibly steep. But we made it to the top which oddly was the one place we hadn’t encountered any water sellers, but the place we needed them the most. We snapped a few picks, took in the amazing view and then began the more treacherous trip down. Thankfully, there was a plastic-covered cable to hold on to. I lined up behind a white haired lady which I thought would give me a good excuse for going slow. No dice, as she was one of the fastest ones going down, leaving most of us in her dust. And I think the climb down was worse than the climb up – or at least that’s what the muscles in my thighs told me.

It was now 4pm and to beat the crowds vying for the last buses we decided to head back into the city. Rather than retrace our steps we took a different exit and walked down a road that skirted the outside of the park. It was actually shorter and had a bit of shade and used by as many horses as people. But it was also lined with folks selling delicious ice cold water (no water was ever more delicious), but also more of those stupid whistles (no sound was ever more annoying). Note to self: never ever buy a child a whistle. Ever.

Exhausted we easily found and caught the bus back to the city. Once at the hostal we collapsed on the bed and treated to ourselves to a traditional Aztec meal, that’s right McDonalds. Then watched Frida on the computer before falling into our deepest sleep to date.

(p.s. sorry for the back log in these posts - the slow internet connection meant uploading photos was taking forever. I'm trying to catch up now. Also I noticed that google reader just dumped the last 8 updates on there so cross your fingers that the rss feed is working now.)

I’m, cough, cough ,through, achoo, with you.

There’s a group of squeegie men outside of our hotel. They’re not like the squeegie guys we’ve come to know in Toronto, they’re true professionals with amazing technique. Within in three flicks of their wrist they can scrub down and dry a window in about 10 seconds flat. What is equally amazing is that they’re not considered nuisances here. People encourage them to wipe the grime off their windows - daily. That's when you realize just how crappy the air is in this city. Then you wish they could work the same magic on your lungs.

It was our fourth day in Mexico City and by now our throats were burning, our noses perpetually running and mouths perpetually dry. All thanks to the smog. And thanks to our crappy transportation experience the day before our mental state kinda matched our physical state. We weren’t completely run down but we were a little annoyed. So we thought we’d take it easy and explore a couple of neighbourhoods close to our hotel. And when I say close, I mean we didn’t need to take another crappy bus.

The first stop was a Scotiabank so that we could replenish our wallets. Then breakfast. Then to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a beautiful art nouveau building that was a bit confusing. Despite it’s exterior inside was an art deco explosion complete with more awesome murals by Diego Rivera, including a copy of the Crossroads of Man that he painted when Rockefeller destroyed the original. It would appear that the capitalist Rockefeller wasn’t happy with the anti-capitalist themes of the mural (the portraits of Lenin and Marx may have been the last straw). But the other confusing thing about this art gallery was that it wasn’t an art gallery. So after checking out the rest of the murals we left.

Thwarted by our attempt at culture, we sat outside and did some people watching. There was an interesting mixture of organ grinders, punk kids, tourists, and shoe shine men. Adrian decided to get his sneakers cleaned and thankfully the one nearest to us spoke English so Adrian could do his own negotiating.

“How much?”
“For you, 15 just like the Mexicans.”
“15?”
“Yes, 15.”
“Sure go ahead”

Notice the repetition of the number 15 – it’s the equivalent of $1.50. Seems like a reasonable price for the 5-10 minutes it took him to finish the job. And when he finished that’s when the trouble started.

“Finished. 50 pesos”
“50?!? You said 15”
“No, I said 50 – it’s normally 60 pesos for Mexicans.”
“No you said 15”
“50 pesos”

We knew he was lying and getting ripped off was not helping with our mental state but arguing with him would have made us even more cranky so we paid him the 50 pesos and considered the $3.50 an investment in our mood. I do have to give the rip off artist props for knowing that fifteen would get us to agree but sounded enough like fifty to pull off a bait and switch. Lesson learned– always say the prices in Spanish or write them down.

We walked across a big crazy park to a shady sunken square between two churches. One of the churches was leaning scarily to the left. While the other one was now a small museum. Noticing the two current exhibits Barbie and Italian design, I convinced Adrian to go check them out. The museum was home to a bunch of old furniture and other household goods as well as some 200+ year old paintings by artists from around the Spanish world. Just as Adrian was yawning, we found the Barbie exhibit full of screaming and giggling little girls. I have to admit it was more entertaining than the old household stuff. They had 500 Barbie dolls from over the last 50 years, including a bunch dressed as representatives of various countries. You’ll be pleased to know that Canada was included but not so impressed when I tell you she was dressed as a Mountie. In contrast the UK Barbie was dressed in a custom-made designer Burberry outfit. Doesn’t quite seem fair does it.

Now to find the Italian Design retrospective. We wandered through the entire museum multiple times but finally I had to ask in my atrocious spoken Spanish (yes, my lessons were great for reading but when it comes to speaking I suck) only to be told that it wasn’t open yet. Hmm… you’d think they’d tell you that before you paid admission. Or at the very least adjust the sign out front that claims it opened two days earlier. Time to move on.

We walked over to the Plaza de la Revolucion which was being restored, past a deserted art deco arena called the Fronton Mexico (picture above) where jai alai was played (you know, that sport that they showed at the beginning of Miami Vice involving men dressed like jockeys and whipping balls at a wall with a scoop). We were close to a restaurant mentioned by Lonely Planet that is owned by an ex Lucha Libre wrestler and known for it’s giant tortas – the delicious Mexico City sloppy joes we discovered on our first day. And decided the combination of kitch and yum would be perfect. However after walking over there, we discovered that it was shuttered tight with giant public health violation notices pasted up on the windows. Yet another thing that didn’t go as planned. But better than actually eating there and getting sick I suppose.

We tried to make up for the day by going back to our old torta stand but even those didn’t taste as good as they had the first day. The shine was beginning to wear off of Mexico City just like it had on the old Fronton building so the next day we decided to get out of the city.

Saved by the bus. Or not.

The only thing I really wanted to do in Mexico City was visit the Isla de las Muñecas. You won’t find it on the official tourist map. It’s a small island in the canals of Xochimilco – the old Aztec floating gardens now home to a Unesco biosphere protected area and favourite weekend destination for the locals. In this idyllic little place there’s one thing that’s a little off. And that’s the Isla de las Muñecas.

Years ago, a young girl drowned in one of the canals. Locals said that her spirit was haunting the area so to appease her, they threw dolls into the water. But that didn’t work so a man named Don Julian created a permanent memorial. He fished the dolls and toys out of the water and strung them up over his small plot. Some of these dolls had been in the water for years and now exposed to the elements they were in various states of decay. The result is a perfect photographic subject for photography. And thanks to an episode of Lonely Planet/Pilot Guides/Globetrekker though, it’s now easy to get there, supposedly.

And indeed getting there was easy. We took the subway, found the correct microbus and walked past the sewage treatment facility to the embarcadero where we saw lots of boats but no skippers. Eventually a teenage boy approached us and we began the negotiating. He named his first price 200 pesos/hour for the four hour trip. Ouch, that’s $80 and considering our daily budget is only $100 that was way over. But he easily accepted my counter offer of 150/hour or $60 total, perhaps too easily. Despite the price being super expensive it was the one must do for me in Mexico City so I was willing to splurge (I don’t think Adrian was thrilled with this decision). I assumed this guy was just the salesman for his dad so when he returned with the pole to power the gondola I was a little surprised. How was this skinny little guy going to punt the 40 foot, 16 seat gondola around the canals for four hours? My concern and interest disappeared when I remembered the money we paid him.

But he earned his money as he took us through the canals, past tiny islands each home to one farmers livelihood. We saw numerous big white cranes, cows grazing, altars to the virgin mary and fishermen hauling in their catch - although I’d be scared to eat anything that swam in those water (perhaps that’s why they put the altars up). However after an hour of this slow boat I was beginning to get, dare I say, a little bored. Thankfully, just about then I saw the creepy island up ahead.

It didn’t look as ominous in the bright sun as I thought it would, but with thousands of dolls hanging from every branch and every object it was still plenty creepy. We disembarked and were greeted by an old man, not Don Julian who died about 5 years ago, but a "friend" of his who was continuing to keep up the Isla de las Muñecas, in other words now making a buck off of it by charging admission – only 20 pesos including us of the baños. He attempted to give us a history of the island – in Spanish – but when he asked me if I understood mas o menos I eventually had to let him know more menos than mas. He set us free and let us roam around the island.

We spent about 30 minutes taking snaps of the decaying dolls, including our own version of American Gothic. Adrian got right into it, finally forgetting about the high cost of getting here. However, I think the highlight of the trip for him were the outhouses which oddly enough had no dolls. But they did have crude instructions on how to make your specific deposit drawn on the walls with a sharpie.

Happy to have seen something truly unique, we enjoyed the long ride back being serenaded by the panting of our out-of-breath gondalier as he piloted with the boat. I realized that the trip had not actually been 4 hours but only 3 but Adrian refused to let me get our money back - he must have been happy with the trip.

But now it was time for the trip back. We retraced our steps to the collection of bus stops. Not wanting to get the wrong one, I asked a man which one went to Periferico. He let me know that they all did but not before sticking his hand out and asking for a donation for the information. Thankfully, a bus pulled up and saved us from the awkward situation. Or so I thought.

Remember that hour that was missing from the boat trip? Well, it was added to what was supposed to be our ten minute bus ride to the train station.

I had to tell the driver our destination when we got on so he could tell us the fare so I thought he knew where we wanted to go. But when it came time to get off at what looked like our stop, I asked him to confirm if this was Periferico. In lightening fast Spanish, he replied and pointed to the road ahead away from what look at the station. The only words I caught were turn and road. So I thought he was telling us no the station was after the turn in the road. We sat back down and after another 15 minutes of driving I knew that that was the wrong decision. Nothing looked familiar. After 30 minutes, I pulled out the compass to see if we were at least heading towards the town and Adrian attempted to ask the driver for the Metro Station. After 2 minutes of Adrian repetedly asking “Metro? Metro?”, the driver finally acknowledged him by once again pointing ahead. No one else on the packed bus offered any insight and I could swear they were laughing at us so we sat down in our seats watching the sun set and the rain begin as the bus continued to travel along the expressway.

After an hour, we went from annoyed to panic to resigned to angry to frightened. And considered getting off and hiring a taxi but not only did the neighbourhood look a little sketchy but we had about 20 pesos on us, more than enough for the subway but hardly enough to get us downtown. Plus, getting off the bus would require us to communicate with the bus driver who didn’t want to communicate with us.

Finally, 90 minutes later, we pulled into a parking lot full of buses and the driver kicked everyone off. I was convinced we were now miles from downtown, perhaps in another city so we merely followed the crowd hoping they would lead us somewhere. At that moment, a kind gentleman motioned for us to follow him. I pulled out my Metro map and asked him to show me which Metro. I expected him to point to a stop way on the edge of the map. Instead, he pointed to a stop only 6 away from ours (that’s when I realized just how big the city is). He then led us through the crowded stalls to the unmarked entrance to the Metro stop. We thanked him profusely and parted ways.

While the bus had saved our feet from another day of walking, it was the old man who saved us from being hopelessly lost.

These shoes aren’t made for walking

Since giving up our mattress almost a month ago, I’ve not been having the best of luck with sleep. Combined with the time difference in Mexico City, I woke up just after 5am local time. I took advantage of the quiet to try and figure out computer and internet stuff – the key word being tried. Looks like I’ve forgotten a camera cable (just means an extra annoying step in uploading photos) and google reader isn’t updating the rss feed. I’ll try to clear up the rss feed issue but until then may I suggest the email subscription which is working just fine.

Adrian eventually woke and dragged me downstairs for breakfast which was being served in the hotel. It wasn’t bacon and eggs or cereal or even coffee and a donut. Instead it was plate of fruit, a toasted bun topped with refried beans, cheese and salsa and huge sugar cookie shortbread thing that we saved for later. I had to tell Adrian that it was merely beans on toast but he wasn’t totally sold until he realized it was quite tasty.

After breakfast, I tried again to upload photos and frustrated by flickr I gave up and we headed out to really explore the city. The first thing we noticed was that sidewalks don’t appear to be for walking, instead they are chockablock with stalls where you can buy anything. The second thing was that each street appeared to sell one type of thing. So we walked down Musical Instrument Boulevard to Hardware Street and then took a right onto Optician Avenue to get back to the City Museum which was free today. It was small and had a handful of exhibits – one full of maps of the city, another on some architect and finally one with award-winning photojournalism which much like the local papers featured a lot of dead people (oh yeah, in Mexico, the front page of most newspapers make Faces of Death look like Disney. I’ll try to get some photos to show you).

So we left and headed towards the Zocalo via Nail File Street. That’s when we made observation number three about street life in Mexico City: the traffic lights are merely a suggestion. Pedestrians have the right of way on green but that doesn’t stop drivers from running reds.

We arrived at the Palacio Nacional, the home of the Mexican president and government ready to check out the huge grounds. But compared to getting into the Palacio, traffic was a piece of cake. Unfortunately, you need picture ID to go in through the metal detectors and dutiful tourists that we are, we had left it all locked up in the hotel. So Adrian tried the time tested method, he pouted and whined to the security guard. And it worked.

The first thing we saw inside were the Diego Rivera murals that covered the walls and the history of Mexico from the Aztecs to Cortez to Trotsky. Our personal favourite was the Cortez mural, in which Rivera painted him as the love child of Shrek and Sloth from the Goonies: sloping forehead, green skin, bad teeth, bulbous knees and cross-eyed – be still my beating heart.

The rest of the complex contained the original legislature, a museum dedicated to beloved president Benito Juarez, a garden full of indigenous plants and just all around pretty stuff that kept us occupied for at least an hour. And that’s when I realized that my new sandals, really sucked – the sweaty plastic soles had created the perfect environment for blisters. But I limped on as we explored the area northeast of the Zocalo, stopping for lunch in the Teatro Pueblo, before continuing on to see the home of the Spanish Inquisition (now home to the museum of medicine) and even more churches which Adrian and I stopped looking at after number 50. But we did go into one which had barely survived the 1985 earthquake. It was now the leaning church of Mexico City and walking through it was like that funhouse at the CNE where you can’t keep your balance. Sadly the inside was in poor shape thanks to looters. But that kinda made it interesting, or at least photogenic.

As we turned the corner we were back at the Catedral where we saw yesterday’s cranky man standing at the door. I had to stop Adrian from giving him two fingers. So I distracted him with the Templo Mayor – the ruins of the original site of the Aztec Temple which marked the centre of the universe. It was truly amazing – and not just because so much of the ruins involved skulls, human sacrifice and other fun stuff (although that’s really cool). You see, every new ruler had to outdo the last one. So he would build up the existing temple until it was huge. Which meant more walking with sore feet.

By the time we got to the Temple Museum we were running out of time, but stupidly rented audio guides (that cost more than our admission). Unfortunately, we had to run through the three floors of stuff they dug up when they discovered the ruins 30 years ago. Although Adrian made me stop and take a picture of him in front of the model because it reminded him of Raiders of the Lost Ark. How my poor feet managed to get through that all I’m not sure. But it was almost like they held on until we were done before throwing up the white flag. And once we were done so were they, I sat down and took off the offending sandals to give my feet a break. It was then that I noticed that despite the overcast skies and cooler (21ºC) temp that Adrian were both a little sunkissed. Well, Adrian was kissed. The sun had definitely gotten to second base with me. Yes, blisters and a sun burn. I was feeling as good looking as Cortez.

Soon Adrian’s stomach dictated when I had to put the evil sandals back on to hobble through the streets in search of dinner. This time we went to a sit down café and paid considerably more than our street food the night before. Oh well, lesson learned. Tomorrow is another day. And thankfully for my feet, that day won’t involve the evil sandals.

Getting the hell out of dodge x2

It was still dark when we got up and left for the airport, once again made much easier by the awesome Sarah who drove us there. Check in was easy but finding a bank machine to get some breakfast proved impossible. So we spent our last few Canadian dollars on Tim Hortons coffee and bagels. I’d like to think it was a final homage to the home country before we took off and not desperation.

Thanks to the wonders of Air Canada’s upgraded entertainment system there was no fighting over the remotes as Adrian watched Max Payne and I watched Defiance. And 5 hours, 2 breakfast sandwiches, and 4 coffees later, we felt the plane begin to make its descent.

Looking out the window I could see the dusty mountains that surround the city, before the plane went low, really, low over the city. Since I couldn’t see the airport, I did panic just a little bit and with the addition of some turbulence, the woman behind me made use of 2 vomit bags. Didn't help calm my nerves. You see, in Toronto, the airport is way out in the middle of almost nowhere, surrounded by acres of fields, highway and other buffer. But here the airport was looked like it was in the middle of a bustling neighbourhood. And being so low and bumpy made us – okay, just me – sweat a tiny bit. Or maybe it was the lack of sleep.

But that was nothing compared to the next leg of our our journey. After finding a Scotiabank machine in the terminal (yay, no service charges), we decided to skip a $20 taxi ride in favour of a 20¢ subway ride. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Little did we know that there are no escalators in the metro stations but there are a lot of stairs, even more when you take the wrong train and have to double back. Not a welcome site with 40 lb packs on your back. Oh well, it was all part of the adventure. And it did save us a whack of cash.

We arrived at Hotel Virreyes and had to wait 20 minutes while they finished cleaning our room. The hotel is a relic from the 40s and 50s but the bathrooms are immaculate and the bed is comfy so we’re happy.

Once unpacked, we headed out to explore the Centro Historico area our hotel is located in. We saw a dog walker struggling with at least 6 big dogs and cats walking outside windows 6 floors up but that was less stressful than navigating the sidewalks (uneven and dangerous) and street crossings (chaotic and deadly). But within 10 minutes we arrived at the Zocalo, the big square that’s synonymous with Mexico City. And it’s as big as it looks in photos. And the flag flying in the middle is even bigger. It was memorizing to watch it flapping in the wind.

We snapped out of it and headed into the Catedral Metropolitan to sit down for a moment and read our map (there’s no place to sit in the Zocalo). According to wiki, it’s the largest cathedral in the American continent. Designed by Claudio de Arcinieaga, construction started in 1573 and lasted for more than 300 years (sounds like they needed a producer and a better workback). Just as we were about to take a quick look around, an old man approached me.

He asked in Spanish if we wanted a tour.
I replied with a smile, "No gracias"
And then he got snarky and in English asked.
“Did you say no because you didn’t understand or because you don’t want one?”
“I understood. But we’re coming back tomorrow.” I still said with a smile.
That angered him further.
“Tomorrow!?! Sure you are. Why don’t you just say no if you don’t want it? Tomorrow! Maybe I won’t be here tomorrow maybe you won’t be here tomorrow!!!”

Wow, I think someone needs to make a confession because that was definitely wrath we experienced. And thanks to him, we decided not to go back to the church again. So for the second time that day, we got the hell out of dodge.

But when we stepped outside, we were surrounded by truckloads of soldiers. For a moment I wondered if we were about to witness a riot but when the soldiers pulled out musical instruments instead of guns (although I saw some of those too) I figured we were safe.

We’d stumbled upon the daily flag ceremony. So we stuck around to watch the marching band and the 12 soldiers required to gather up the flag and take it in for the night.

We walked back to the hotel now starving and exhausted thanks to the early morning and time difference, stopping for tortas (buns, filled with delicious yummy meat, cilantro, tomatoes and onions) at a street vendor. With full tummies we collapsed in bed this time escaping sore feet, and exhaustion.

*******

p.s. let me know if the rss feed is working for you - it's not working for me and I don't know how to fix it.