vampyresheep

Sunday

We went for breakfast at a hipster cafe called Freims which had a fantastic breakfast menu but as I was suffering somewhat from food the day before (possibly that godawful beer!), I played it safe and ordered a veggie breakfast of poached egg and spinach, which was OK but not as good as Rob’s, or all the wonderful dishes served all around me! This place was so hipster, you couldn’t just order a coffee but had to specify the brewing method, represented by a series of diagrams which looked like chemistry experiments. It was all very lovely but we did slightly feel that we weren’t cool enough to be there.

Called an uber to take us to the Museum of Modern Art in Chapultepec Park. The main avenue, Reforma, was closed to traffic Sunday mornings, so the driver could only take us close enough and we then had to face the gauntlet of 1000’s of cyclists!

Our reason for going to this museum was for the newly opened exhibition on Remedios Varo, a female surrealist artist from Spain who settled in Mexico in the 1930’s. I love her work and it was fantastic to get this rare opportunity to see it in real life. The exhibition consisted mostly of sketches and personal artefacts with a few key artworks for me to squee at the sight of! Rob doesn’t know much about her but he enjoyed the exhibition too.

I was particularly thrilled to see this one in real life. :-)

Rob and I don't as a general rule, prioritise museums and galleries as part of our holiday planning, of the view that we get a better feel for a place by exploring the streets and squares, visiting cafes, people watching etc. However if something is specific to that place - and Remedios Varos, whilst being Spanish, remains incredibly popular in her adopted country of Mexico - and its a once in a lifetime opportunity, then rules are made to be broken and this was one of the highlights of our time in CDMX.

(and architecturally, the building was worth a visit anyway!)
As it was free entry on Sundays, we also visited their Patrimoniales exhibition, which I think was about key Mexican artworks in their collection - featuring Frida Kahlo at the entrance and then individual pieces from Siqueiros, Orozco, Rivera, Varos etc. Wouldn’t have been worth a special journey but it complemented the Varos exhibition pretty well.

Frida Kahlo

Rufino Tamayo

Portrait of Remedios Varo (forgot who the artist was though!)

Diego Rivera

Siqueiros

Chapultepec means cricket, so these little guys were everywhere around the park

My stomach was really playing up now, so unfortunately a fair amount of time was spent in the bathroom (maybe TMI but it was a crucial factor in how our day panned out!) but I manage to gather enough strength for us to trek up the hill to Chapultepec castle, browsing the myriad of vendor stalls on the way up and buying a new necklace.

The castle was free entry to Mexican nationals on Sundays, so it was pretty packed, however it was still an amazing place to visit, with so much to see - stunning views across the park to the city (who knew that CDMX is so green!), a city history museum, various murals including one by Siqueiros on the ceiling, ornately decorated rooms and a stunning corridor lined with art nouveau stained glass.

fairground in the distance, that sadly we didn't have time to visit. But how green is the centre of CDMX!

pretty much impossible to get a decent photo of this elegant staircase because it was so busy!

one of the beautiful baroque rooms

finally managed to get a pic of a near-empty staircase!
The castle houses the national history museum and there were many murals (lots more in the full gallery here)

the gardens had incredible views across Chapultepec Park, and to be honest, probably the main reason why so many people come here to visit

some more beautiful rooms, most of which, bizarrely, were only viewable from the outside via a series of full length windows opened to let a few people peer through at a time - quite a clamour to see something!

another beautiful little courtyard garden

and then, possibly the highlight of the castle for me, this stunning corridor of stained glass windows

another cute grasshopper/cricket, this time in a fountain

the exterior of the castle was quite plain in comparison to the interior

We spent a good few hours exploring the rooms and gardens, before heading back down to the market stalls, desperate for a snack and sit-down. Whilst not as hot as Oaxaca, the weather here was quite muggy and I think combined with pollution and altitude (7000 feet above sea level!) we did find that trying to get anywhere without many sit-down breaks was just exhausting. Still feeling fragile, I couldn’t face all the salty snacks on offer (which is a shame because I was set on trying Dorilocos - a pack of tortilla chips opened up and coated with lemon/lime juice, salads, chili sauce, chamoy, peanuts and sometimes goes a bit crazy with stuff like gummy bear sweets added!), opting in the end for some puffy pancake thing, which was folded in half and filled with caramel sauce.
The park is known for its cheeky squirrels, however this was the only one we spotted - interesting colour combination on its fur, not quite the usual grey squirrel!

We sat near the boating lake for a little while, watching with amusement the 1000’s of locals who take to the water every Sunday, all decked out with life jackets, so the lake just looked like a mass of floating yellow things.

We left the park and headed over towards the Anthropology museum, mainly to see the sculptures outside on the main road Reforma. This angel wing one is particularly infamous on instagram

what you don't see on instagram though ... the queue of polite Mexicans all waiting their turn for their photo moment!

We were feeling slightly guilty that we’d not visited the most renowned museum in CDMX but then found that the Anthropology Museum was free entry on Sunday, so no harm in popping in to at least spend an hour there before it closed. I wanted to see the Aztec calendar but without a map or a plan, we couldn’t find where it was and finally asked a guard, who advised that gallery had closed already. So we were basically just the worst kind of tourists, dashing around to find the “big” artefacts to tick of our list of having seen, before they closed!

It was an impressive museum but confusing to navigate without a map and too much to take in, particularly at the end of a cram-packed holiday.

We went outside in time to catch the Voladores display. 5 guys climb up a pole in elaborate traditional costume, 1 stays at the summit playing the flute, whilst the other four gradually swing back down to the ground on lengths of rope which slowly unravel.

Feeling a bit braver on the snacking front now and not having tried them yet, I was in search of esquites. A popular street food is elotes, a grilled corn cob, slathered in mayonnaise and coated with cheese and chilli; esquites is similar but served in a cup, the kernels cooked in herbs and chilli, then topped with mayonnaise, cheese and chilli. I was devastated that I’d not tried this sooner! It was absolutely divine. The corn kernels unlike anything you could get in the UK, so big, and all the dairy just mixed in with the seasoned corn juice, creating a wonderful sauce. That was a snack which will stay in memory for a long time.

We continued walking up the Reforma for a while, in search of art but this soon fizzled out as we neared the district of Polanco, so we called an Uber to take us back to our accommodation.

(some concert venue in Polanco with a Leonora Carrington sculpture outside)

Spent a couple of hours packing and sitting out on the balcony for our final evening in Mexico, before heading to Cafe Bizarro for dinner and drinks. We had some very tasty burgers, washed down with bizareadas - beer blended with fruit and ice, even Rob liked it! The music was fab, lots of ebm and futurepop and we were reluctant to leave, me ordering a final mezcal to end our amazing Mexican holiday (barring half a day before we got our flight home on Monday evening)