Trip Report: Mexico City(Part 1)…
I have been out of town for the last week, I took a little trip to Mexico City to kind of alleviate the Playa Del Carmen blah before high season kicks into full swing. I had a great time, got to see a lot of stuff, and took a ton of pictures. I am pretty backed up with work after being gone for a week, but I will try to put this trip report together in lots of small parts.
I arrived in Mexico City at 2pm and went to the hotel in the “Reforma” district. It was a nice enough hotel and really close to everything. After taking a few minutes to relax and get comfortable after my trip I decided to go to see the Zocolo, the main plaza where all the federal government buildings are located.
I made my way to the Zocolo and when I arrived I found it full of people and television cameras and general chaos. It was possible to walk around in there but quite crowded so I decided to just look around at the federal buildings instead. Apparently, there was some fundraiser going on that involved the stars of some popular Telenovelas, but I didn’t find this out until later that night watching the news.
I made my way around to various historical buildings and saw the pyramid that is right there in the middle of the city, but didn’t go in because it looked a little bit cramped. It was starting to get dark, so I walked back towards my hotel.
After wandering around for a while trying to pinpoint my hotel I started getting hungry, so I stopped for tacos and a juice at a little taco place that was pretty busy. The specialty of the place seemed to be their juices, so I tried the one they recommended, “Lettuce-Cucumber-Lemon”, which was actually really good.
The next day, I went to the “Bosque de Chapultapec”, which is sort of the central park of Mexico City. The park has been part of Mexican history dating back to the Aztecs, but more recently is the location of the presidential residence and the national history museum. Chapultapec is about 3 square miles and has an amusement park, a zoo, miles of trails where vendors set up to sell everything imaginable, and some little waterways where you can rent paddle boats.
Chapultapec means “Grasshopper Hill” in one of the native languages, the hill they are talking about is the 
home to the national art museum. After a 20 minute walk up the hill, you come to the amazing castle that has been used for everything from the Viceroy’s residence to the Military College and then later the home of Emperor Maximilian. The castle is now a museum housing thousands of different articles are Mexican history. Everything from Pancho Villa’s wooden leg to clothing worn by Benito Juarez.
One of the exhibits in the museum is the memorial to the “Niños Heroes” or Child Heroes, military cadets that were killed during the American invasion of Mexico city in the 1830′s. I felt a little uncomfortable as the only American in the room as we watched the video explaining how the American Military surrounded the school and was shooting kids as they tried to jump out a third story window.
The view from the top of the museum is really amazing, it gives you a great perspective of exactly how huge Mexico City really is. I tried to take lots of pictures, but the smog was doing funny things with lighting so not a lot of them turned out how I wanted them to. (After that comment I am going to get comments about how to adjust the settings on my camera to deal with smog.) The city goes on and on as far as you can see, and being in a valley even the horizon is covered with houses.
After the museum I went to the Chapultapec zoo. The zoo had a lot of variety of animals and birds and was pretty busy. The aviary of the zoo is probably the most impressive part, they had huge enclosures with hundreds of different types of raptors. Zoos always have the same feeling about zoos, caged animals are just that, caged animals; once you have seen one elephant you have seen them all. I did, however, get a kick out of the Panda bears, all of which were sleeping or trying to find a comfortable place to sleep.
The last thing I did while in the Bosque de Chapultapec was rent a little pedal boat and ride around in the dayglow green lake for a little while. It was a nice experience, though I was a little concerned about the signs posted up around the place asking that you not get any water on the life jackets.
That is about if for the first part of my trip report, stay tuned for Six Flags Mexico, Tepotzlan, and the Botanical Gardens in Toluca.
