Bosque Chapultepec

Bosque Chapultepec is a massive park inside the DF. It's a popular family destination - the main part is filled with museums and green spaces, and the secondary area is a theme park. I'd been there once before but didn't have time to do more than just wander in and look at one museum (the Anthropology Museum, whose famed Aztec sunstone is this blog's wallpaper). While my husband was here, we spent a day at Chapultepec, doing a lot more exploring - and, in my case, a lot more sun-burning - than on my previous visit.

One of the great things about Chapultepec is that it's relatively easy to access. Either you can take the Metro to the Chapultepec station or, like us, you can just walk down Paseo de la Reforma.

Reforma, by the way, is also where many of the major foreign embassies are. The American Embassy is on that street as well. You can tell it's the American embassy because of the giant flag outside and because the guards - presumably Americans - are glowering at you. For reference, most of the Mexican guards smile and wave.

One of the valuable life lessons I learned from Chapultepec is that Mexican squirrels are aggressive. Really, really aggressive. So the first picture you see on your left is the squirrel that came running up to us when we walked into Chapultepec. My thought process went something like this: "Oh, cute, a squirrel! And look, it's not even running away - it's posing for us! I think I'll take a picture of the brave squirrel." That's picture number 1.

You'll notice the squirrel is visible only as a puff of tail in picture number 2. That's because at that point the squirrel, which had previously been standing still about two feet from me, suddenly

started charging me. Not casually wandering in my direction, but full on, linebacker, "get out of the way or I'll get you out of the way" bowling towards me. And let me tell you something - being charged by a squirrel is far scarier than it sounds. This is because we expect six-inch-long furry creatures to run away from us - so when they run full tilt toward you, you find yourself thinking, "Exactly how much foam has to be visible on a squirrel's mouth before I can be fairly certain it's rabid?" So, yes, the squirrel is not visible in the second picture because I, a full-grown adult female, was running away from it.

Anyway, our first post-squirrel stop upon entering Chapultepec was the Modern Art Museum. This proved frustrating for several reasons: one, despite the fact that the entire museum was actually inside the park, you had to leave the park gates, wander farther down Reforma, and then enter the museum - which is confusing since that is in no way apparent. The other reason it was frustrating was, bluntly, that I think a lot of modern art is silly. What I did not think silly, though, is the picture below, which is housed in the museum:

That is "The Two Fridas," one of Frida Kahlo's most famous works, and familiar to those of us who saw Frida some years ago.

Post-modern art (hah! see what I did there?) museum, we found our way to the Castillo de Chapultepec. Back in the 19th century the Castillo did in fact house royalty; it's located at the top of the park and commands a really stunning view. If you look carefully, in the picture you can see what appears to be a far-off lake, with kayaks, rowboats, and paddle boats in it. After we visited the Castillo, we went over to the lake and Husband rowed us around for a while. As pleasant as it was to stage a real life version of The Owl and The Pussycat, I was somewhat disappointed. I had wanted to go paddle boating in the swan boat - swan boat! Come on! - but alas, I lost the coin toss. Now, to give you an idea of the size of Chapultepec, we were roughly in the middle of the first section, and the park extends all the way to the office buildings you can see in the distance.

The castle itself - at left - was really lovely. It's also an important Mexican landmark. As I mentioned earlier, it functioned as an actual royal castle for a period. However, before that time (that would be in the 1850s and 1860s, primarily), it was a military school. In 1846/7, the U.S. invaded Mexico as part of the Mexican-American War. The commanders of the school ordered all the students to leave; they were either sent home or to join various army divisions. However, six boys ranging in age from 12 to 19 requested and were granted permission to stay behind and defend the school. The U.S. marines took the hill, and the boys - called the Niños Heroes - died fighting. Their deaths have become wrapped into the celebration of Independence Day (of which more in a future entry) as the origin of the traditional Grito de Dolores which the president gives from the balcony of the Presidential Palace on the night before Independence Day.

The inside of the Castillo is mostly open to tourists (a piece of advice: if you should go to Chapultepec, students - even foreign students - get in to many places free with an ID). It is filled with a history museum - you can see many items of clothing from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, as well as several Mexican flags actually carried in the War of Independence, and many stunning murals by Diego Rivera and many many others. The mural you see here is the culmination of a series portraying the Mexican Revolution. The Mexican Revolution is generally seen as the rising up of the common man over the elites, particularly landholders and academics.

The first panel of the mural, then, represents the general citizenry being oppressed by the elites; one of the landowners in the foreground is actually holding a scroll that says something to that effect.

The second panel shows the rise of the revolutionary forces, and their peasant support. You can see a peasant being punished; this is a depiction of what led them to support the revolution.

The final panel is the successful revolution, with the people cheering and I believe either Pancho Villa or Benito Juarez in the foreground.

We also went to check out the Chapultepec zoo, where more squirrel hijinks ensued, but more importantly, here is a picture of a monkey, and also a sloth. Because they are fantastic. The Chapultepec zoo also has a giant panda, but he was unwilling to pose, so you're not getting a picture of him.

Street Food Tour

One of the really interesting things we did while my husband was visiting was take a street food tour. Our tour was with Eat Mexico, which I highly recommend. It was a four-hour tour through typical Chilango street food; our tour guide, Natalya, explained that they chose the tour area - Colonia Juarez and the Zona Rosa - in part because it's where a lot of Chilangos themselves eat. I'm going to go through as much as I can remember; unfortunately, we tried so many things that I've forgotten what many of them were!

We started the tour with a traditional Mexican breakfast: tamales and atole. As many of you know, I am slightly tamale-obsessed, so this part wasn't anything new to me, but I have to say they were absolutely delicious. Atole is a Mexican masa (ground corn flour)-based drink, sold in rice and chocolate flavors. We had the chocolate, and I'm definitely a fan. It tasted like a slightly less sweet, thicker version of hot chocolate. In the picture, you can see the vendor putting a tamale into a loaf of bread. This is how many Mexicans eat their tamales; Natalya explained that this is because many people are so poor that this will be nearly the only meal they get all day, and putting the tamale into bread makes it that much more filling, inexpensively. All tamale vendors have pretty much the same basic set-up: several large metal containers on a pushcart/bike. Despite the mobility of their stands, they're generally fairly stationary, returning to the same corner or area pretty much every day. I should mention, too, that I've really come around on the idea of tamales as breakfast food. At home, I'd typically eaten them for lunch or dinner (and for C., who told me that if she knew I liked tamales so much she would have asked her mother for some for me: please please?), but they make a nice breakfast. They're filling but not overly-so, unlike some of the other traditional morning meals, which we'll get to in a minute.

Our next stop was a tortilleria, which is precisely what it sounds like. Tortillas are both a stable of the Mexican diet and really cheap, so everyone buys them fresh from the local tortilleria each day. Having eaten traditional Mexican tortillas, I'm more than a little disappointed in the ones we get in the states - they're nowhere near as good. As you can see in the picture, there's a sort of assembly line process. The tortilla dough is mixed and the tortillas are shaped by hand or using a machine that kind of looks like an overly-large pasta press (and follows the same basic logic). Then they're dropped onto the conveyor belt over what is essentially a stove, until they're cooked. At the end of the belt you can see the reject tortillas. The owner introduced us to what Natalya called the Mexican equivalent of a pacifier: a warm tortilla, sprinkled with salt, and then rolled into a tube. Apparently Mexican parents give these to their children to keep them quiet prior to meals, among other things. It's delicious - I've now begun doing this with all the tortillas I'm served at restaurants.

Our next stop was for quesadillas. Mexican quesadillas are generally not what we think of as quesadillas in the states. Rather than two tortillas with filling, it's one tortilla in an oval shape (that's actually the definition of a quesadilla here - an oval tortilla), with the same basic filling options as a taco. Ours came with beans, cheese, and nopales - cactus leaves, which I've discovered I like when they come from a can or jar, but not so much fresh. Fresh nopales have a gooey coating, rather like okra, that I don't enjoy. The canned or jarred variety, which is what you get in most taco joints and street stands, doesn't have that coating. And, like everything else in Mexico, quesadillas are improved by salsa. The standard Mexican red salsa - spicy but delicious - seems to be made from the chili de arbol, or tree chili. Green sauces are often, though not always, habaneros, and generally less spicy.

Following the quesadillas, we had tacos de canasta, or basket tacos - so called because they're made in the mornings, partially steamed, and then put in a basket lined with plastic bags to finish steaming. They're sold from the basket, and are generally not good after about 3 p.m., because they're over-steamed by then. Most tacos de canasta are sold by men on bikes, with the basket in the front; ours, somewhat unusually, were from a street stand, La Abuela, which is well-known in the DF. La Abuela has even been featured in a couple of magazines here, and looking at the vendor - that would be El Abuelo ('grandfather'; his wife is the titular Abuela, who makes all the tacos) - can you blame them? This man is the absolute epitome of grandfatherly-ness. Anyway, we had the cochinita pibil taco, which is a type of marinated pork and quite good.

Next up is what might be my very favorite part of the tour - the Mexican take on fruit cups! This is a large plastic cup of cut-up fruit, usually mango and papaya, though most of the vendors have a couple other options as well. They cut the fruit up into bite-size chunks, then sprinkle it with chili powder (there is chili in some form in just about everything I've eaten here, with the exception of smoothies - and I'm certain that's an option if you want it), salt, and fresh-squeezed lime juice. It's amazing; since the tour, I've had this probably four times, because I'm basically obsessed with it now. The liquid that forms in the bottom is also delicious; according to Natalya, many people buy the fruit for that liquid alone.

We also had a squash flower burrito. Burritos are actually relatively rare in Mexico City; they're not really a food from central Mexico. This is still the only burrito stand I've seen here. Squash flowers, however, are quite common here, and very delicious when mixed with cheese and salsa.

Now, I've left out quite a few of the stops on our street food tour - for instance, I don't have pictures from the taco de pastor stand, which is basically a Mexican take on the ubiquitous Arab and/or Turkish kebab joints. Back in about the 1970s, a sizable Lebanese contingent came to Mexico City, fleeing political unrest in Lebanon (fun fact: my landlord is part of that contingent). Among other things, they brought the concept of a bunch of meat shoved on a vertical spit and roasted over the course of the day. In Lebanon, this was served in a pita - I've had a few myself. In Mexico, naturally, it comes in a tortilla. They also put a pineapple on top of the spit, for sweetness. Many taco joints have a de pastor set-up facing the street. Anyway, like I said, I don't have pictures of that, or the orange-carrot juice we had, or what I'm pretty sure were at least three more kinds of tacos. But I'm going to leave you with one more very Mexican consumable, though not from the tour:

This is tequila and sangrita. Tequila in Mexico is a sipping drink, not a shooting drink. I've actually never had straight tequila before - I'm a margarita drinker myself - but I found the alcohol itself decent, but not terribly exciting. What I did find exciting, though, was the sangrita. This is something vaguely akin to Bloody Mary mix but with far less tomato (and possibly using clamato juice instead; I chose not to inquire too closely on that front). It is, naturally, spicy. It's delicious, and cuts the kick of the tequila nicely. As it was explained to me, the proper way to drink sangrita and tequila is to take a sip first of the tequila, then of the sangrita. It's possible I've got that slightly wrong, since it was explained to me by my taxi driver, while driving, and I could have sworn he was describing actually drinking out of a hollowed-out tomato (which would be awesome, by the way), so I experimented with the order. And I'm not sure whether it matters whether the sangrita is first or second, but it's definitely good. I do think (this may be heretical) that it would be better to mix the sangrita and tequila, and may experiment with this once I'm back home. Or, alternately, I might skip the tequila entirely and just drink the sangrita - I'm that kind of person.

Xochimilco

Ok, part one of the long-delayed updates is on Xochimilco. Xochimilco is a canal area on the outskirts of the DF. Many Chilango families go there on the weekends, as do the tourists. The prime attraction are the canals themselves. They actually originate in Aztec times - the Aztecs constructed the canals to grow particular flowers and crops. Although the canals are mostly for pleasure boats now, some remnant of that agricultural use remains in the many flower shops lining the canal paths.

Mexican gondolas are different from (my possibly incorrect understanding of) Venician ones, in that they look like this:

It's a grey day, and my picture isn't the greatest, but all the gondolas are neon. They also have giant headboards painted like Aztec-styled mouths, which are interesting to climb into. You can choose from a variety of gondola trips, ranging from 30 minutes to 6 hours or more. We opted for an hour-long ride (as a sidenote: although it's true that Mexicans don't really engage in bargaining anymore, there are no posted prices for gondola rides, which means that if you repeatedly say the price you've been quoted is too expensive and actually begin to walk away from the embarcation point, you can take a substantial chunk off of the cost. In our case, we started at 450 pesos - about $45 US - and went down to 300).

Your gondola tour will be accompanied by floating mariachi bands as well as vendors selling meals and snacks. These are also priced for tourists and captive audiences, meaning that they are three times as expensive as the same meal would be in the city. However, there is something very satisfying about sharing tacos on the canals, while your husband quacks at the ducks.

Other than the canals, Xochimilco's main attraction is a truly massive market. There are easily hundreds of stands, some out front covered by tarps and others inside a huge building. For those who have been to Israel, this was extremely reminiscent of the shuq in the Old City. Although we wandered the market for a bit, we were completely out of money at that point and so didn't buy anything - which is a shame, because I haven't seen spice stands at a market before, and this one sold a powdered mole which would have been interesting to try.

From my perspective, one of the really nice things about Xochimilco is that it was easy to get there. We took the metro and then the light rail; it was about a 45-minute trip, and then an easy ten minute or so walk to the embarcaderos (the embarkation points).

On our way to the metro in the DF, we stopped at the Monumento a la Revolución:

The Monumento a la Revolución is actually the cupola of what was originally intended to be the presidential palace. It was started in the early 1900s,

but construction was halted by the revolution of 1917. Eventually the presidential palace was moved to a different area, but the cupola was left in place and has become a major rallying point for Mexican political events. At least twice since I've been here, political rallies have been held at the monument, and it's not unusual to see a large crowd there. During our trip, a few days before Independence Day, it was actually very quiet. By the way, those pillars out front have the names of Mexican towns and states carved into them.

When we went to check out the monument, we discovered that you could actually take a glass elevator all the way up to near the top of the cupola and wander around. The view was quite impressive:

You could see all the way to the mountains in the distance, something that is relatively rare in the central part of the DF both because it's very built up and because of the pollution. Sadly not shown in this picture are the buildings dressed up for Independence Day. Although Independence Day is September 16, the decorations are broken out starting September 1. All political and governmental buildings, as well as many hotels and businesses, are draped with huge red/white/green banners, and even little corner stores put up mock-ups of the Mexican seal. Cars and bikes also mount Mexican flags - some small, some full-size - wherever they can.
More on Independence Day in coming posts, but for now it's enough to say that Xochimilco and the Monumento de la Revolución were great fun!

Lots of good stuff coming, I promise!

Oh, I didn't mean to get this far behind on the blog, and I'm too busy with dissertation stuff right now to do a real update - but I haven't forgotten it! There's lots to tell. My husband came to visit for a week, so I have many stories, including:

- A trip to Xochimilco, which is a canal town on the edge of the D.F., where we rode in a Mexican gondola (What's the difference between Mexican and Italian gondolas? Hint: it's in the color scheme).

- A day at Chapultepec, the huge park, with a visit to a modern art museum, a castle, a zoo, and a lake where I'm pretty sure I spotted a crane.

- Independence Day! Complete with the traditional Grito de Dolores, fireworks, and a military parade. The military brought eagles, which was probably the high point of the event for me.

- A street food tour

- Me running away from a squirrel

- And much, much more! All that coming as soon as I get a handle on my dissertation work.