Mexico City

I had the Wonderful Opportunity to go to Mexico City in November to Visit my friend Roberto from my mission. I had wanted to go for a long time. The great part about this vacation is that I had a readymade tour guide and a free place to stay! As we flew into the City I had the feeling as if we were going to land on the houses. The urban sprawl was something to incredible. I thought Vegas was bad. Anyway just as midway airport in Chicago just when you think that you are going touch the roof tops the sea of buildings part making way for the airport. My friend Roberto met me out front and we started off on our grand adventure. The day was mostly gone but we had a few things to do before we called it a day. We first headed out to Azcapotzalco, the city that is part of Mexico City where he grew up. He then took me to an ice cream shop. He said that Ice cream was a little different here and I had to have some. It was wonderful. The kind that I had was called Chongos Zamoranos, which is a sort of creamed cottage cheese. We don't have it in the states. It was kind of weird and hard because it was frozen but tasted good and really rich. next on the agenda for the evening was off Salsa Dancing. We met Roberto's friend Shasllely and headed off to Mama Rumba's. Her driver dropped us off and some guys opened a gate to let us in. I felt kind of important. Anyway we went in and upstairs in a little area to watch the band play, people dance and we ordered Taquitos, which are more like little soft shell taco's there and virgin Pina Colada's. We soon cleared the chairs and started dancing. I didn't fare so well as they did. But it was a great place to try Salsa dancing in Mexico. On The Drive home that night we were taken home through downtown Mexico City, so I was given a little taste of what I would get to see in the morning, but in the beautiful colors of the lights at night. The next morning we started off early headed downtown Mexico. The first place we went was The LDS Mexico City Temple. It was so beautiful and a lot bigger than I had pictured it in pictures I'd seen. The color was such a brilliant white and the Aztec archetechture made it hard for me to take my eyes off of it. We went into the visitors center and met one of Roberto's friends, who was on a mission there. We even got to sit and listen to a message in German. You can here it in the language you know, so they played it for us in German. We soon went out and walked around the temple and took many pictures. So many people were around. I was amazed it was so busy. Next we parked the car and jumped on a micro bus which is an adventure in itself. These little buses are one of the cities main transport. The buses only have about 5rows of seats that fill up very quickly. Getting on and off is another experiance. The doors of the bus are usually left open, which I think is rather dangerous. If you don't know where they are going you are kind of out of luck. The drivers don't yell out where you are. If you are lucky enough to get to your destination you have to jump off very quickly or the bus will be going again. The same thing about getting on the bus. They were usually moving again as you stepped on. I can see why they only cost about 2 pesos Anyway after that adventure we caught the metro downtown to Casa de los Azulejos or The House of Tiles. It was an amazing building. We of course were there to eat. The inside as well as the outside walls were all tiled and painted. In the center of the building where the restaurant was opened to a big courtyard type area where a little fountain was on one wall and beautiful arches were on all sides. The food was splendid. I had enchiladas and Roberto had Chilaquiles, which is basically chips with some salsa and cheese, but so much better. We also had fruit juice. I could write an entire section on the fruit juices there. They are so much better than in the states. They mix lots of juices together and it is thick and fresh, more like nectar. It spoiled me to fruit juices in the states. Next we walked around downtown and looked at some of the buildings like the Torre Latinoamericana or Latin America Tower, National Post office as well as Palacio de Bellas Artes or Palace of Fine Arts, which was magnificent. The roof is a beautiful orange dome and the inside was eligant. We then went to Zócalo or the Main Square in Mexico city. The square was huge. This was the place to shop for souvenirs. Almost every street vender you could think of was here. They also had very reasonable priced stuff. Pesos are a lot less than Dollars. I was a little nervous at first when they said things were as much as 35 pesos. I had forgotten its only about $3.50 in Dollars. Anyway back to the main square at Zócalo. National buildings surrounded the Plaza de la Constitución and in the center of it all was a gigantic Mexican flag. To the north the Metropolitan Cathedral stands. It is said to be the oldest and biggest Catholic Cathedral in the America's. On the east stands the Grand National Palace or Palacio Nacional. This is where the federal executive is seated. They are a beautiful sight and well worth a visit. The Temple Mayor sits just to the north of the square. The Templo Mayor was the one of the main temples of the Aztecs in their capital city of Tenochtitlan which is now Mexico City. We only looked inside and watched some Aztec dancers perform outside, but instead of roaming the ruins we took a trip over to the National Museum of Anthropology to see all of the artifacts that were found in the ruins, which were not a few. It cost around 50 Peso's to get in and was worth every one. This museum was full of artifacts. It houses the Aztec Calendar, Many giant statues and Sacrificial alters. Tons of quetzalcoatl artifacts, the snake was everywhere as well as head dress figures and tablets of their writing. There was also housed many artifacts from the Mayan and Olmec cultures, Some including giant heads and recreations of pyramids. We were also able to one night of our stay go to the square at Zócalo and Celebrate Día de la Revolución. It is every November 20th. Hundreds of thousands of people crowded the Plaza de la Constitución to watch a light show. It was a little bit of a letdown to me. I thought there should be more fireworks and power and that the people should have been cheering more than they were. The light show was on the actual National Palace itself. This was quite impressive. They transformed the facade of it with lights and colors and optical illusions.
It was quite beautiful and stunning, but lasted a bit too long. It was worth it though. The crowd getting out was a different story. You need to plan on not being in a hurry to leave. The best thing to do is to enjoy the very slow walk through all the people and stop at one of the vendors, for some elote, a type of corn, tamales or some cotton candy. The cotton candy was a sight to see.
it would fly up into the air and catch on street poles or just fly up into the night. We even stopped to watch some street performs where you could draw your Destiny from a box. Kinda creepy, but interesting.