Mexico City!

So, I courteously wrote about Australia Day last week in order to let Jake write about our weekend in Mexico City. But, he is a flojo, so now I am writing about Mexico City.  I promise we will be more punctual in our blog posts from now on.  Anyway, last Friday we woke up bright and early, hopped on a bus, and arrived in Mexico City a few hours later.  Public transportation is magic!

The famous Victoria statue in Mexico City; now a symbol  of the Districto Federal 

We checked into our hostel, which my lovely brother-ish-in-law Eric suggested: Hostel Mundo Joven Catedral.  If anyone needs a cheap, convenient, and decent place to stay in Mexico City, I would suggest this hostel.

View from our room looking down into the reception area.

Probably the most awesome part of this hostel is that it is literally on a corner of the zocalo, or center square.   So, once Jake and I dropped our stuff off in our room, we mosied outside, crossed the street, and entered yet another amazingly beautiful cathedral.  This one is bigger then most, though.

Awesome, enormous organ

Our tummies were starting to rumble, so we headed out to the zocalo to look for some grub.  Another international student had suggested eating at the top of one of the main buildings in the zocalo, so we followed his directions of "walk under these archways and look lost" and sure enough! Guys shoved menus into our faces and we were bustled off to the top floor.  I am a little embarrassed to admit we ate at a restaurant called "Lucky's", but the view was worth it.

Zocalo! There was a health fair going on, hence all the trailers, and it was hot, hence the line of people standing in the flag's shade. The building in the center is the Presidential Palace.

Once we finished our lunch, we crossed the zocalo to go see the Templo Mayor, a ruin of another Aztec temple that Spaniards covered with dirt (this time, the dirt was no longer covering it) which is RIGHT in the middle of the city.  The temple had some cool details like original coloring of Aztec murals (which depicted warriors carrying the tools for sacrifices, lovely), altars (they killed a LOT of people), and remains of a living space.  The museum was pretty cool too-lots of artifacts from the Temple, things found in tombs, and things for killing people.

Prehispanic meets Spanish, the Cathedral is in the background.

NOT REAL SKULLS: these are carvings for a wall of the Temple for the God of the Dead.  They weren't thaaaat grisly.

That night, we wandered around the neighborhood Las Bellas Artes, got some ice cream (yummm), and a bottle of wine (yumm-errr), and tlayudas (YUMMEST) for a nice, chill night. We wandered up to the terrace of our hostel and hung out for a while, because it was beautiful.

Cool building in Las Bellas Artes

I scream for ice cream.

Tlayudas! A Oaxacan dish, which has beef, chorizo, frijoles, avocado, onions, and cheese  folded up in an ENORMOUS tortilla and eaten with gusto.

View from the terrace.

A good first day, right? Now for the second. We headed to Chapultepec Park, which is apparently the largest city park in the Western Hemisphere. It is huge. And gorgeous. 

With lots of street vendors.

We first went to the zoo, and I will restrain myself from posting all of my 50 photos from the zoo because, although I DID see a panda, tiger, jaguar, monkeys, lots of deer thingies, a rhino, hippo, GOATS, and other cool things, they looked like animals in a nice zoo (picture the National Zoo in D.C.).  From there, we got more food. I really can't describe how amazing the food is. We had a litre of horchata, order of tacos dorados, and an alambre (kind of like fajitas, but better), and it all cost 60 pesos--which is about 5 dollars.

We walked through the park to get to the famous Anthropology Museum. Fortunately, I remembered students get in for free! Unfortunately, it had pretty much the same stuff as the museum at Templo Mayor. Oh well, gave us time to do other things. Like climb up to the top of a big hill. 

View!

We were quite tired from all the walking, so it felt good to take the metro back to our hostel and rest up. We made the long trek of walking across the zocalo to a taco place I saw on our way back. I'm not even going to try to describe how good this was, and once again, very cheap. 

TORTAS! Everything a sandwich should be, and better. 

Our last morning there, we walked to a artisan shop, then ate THE BEST TACOS I WILL EVER EAT on the side of the road for 5 pesos each (50 cents).  Then, we visited the Presidential Palace, which was very cool.  It's covered in murals by Diego Rivera, and a few of the rooms have been turned into art galleries.

And so ends our weekend in Mexico City! Sorry for the insanely long blog post, I swear it's mostly pictures!  The trip was a lot of fun, and it just made me want to go back and see more of the city.