Impressions of Impressive Mexico City

Smog in the City

The owner’s daughter of Teotihuacan RV Park gave us a ride into Mexico City to catch the subway. They had offered that we could keep the bikes there for free, while we were in the city and we felt extremely comfortable with the level of security there, so we gladly took them up on their offer.



I’ve been on subways in several countries and major US cities, and as a person who HATES public transportation, I have to say that I was seriously impressed. The subway in Mexico City is fast, frequent, cheap and CLEAN.


The salespeople in the train cars were rather interesting - they sold everything from CDs (like this guy - he had a sound-system in his backpack) to hammers.

We immediately found a cheap hotel near the Zocalo (center square) and set out to explore.


While we were in Mexico City, there was a holiday that was being celebrated by free tamales being given out on the Zocalo. It was nice to see people gathering for this, but the police presence was astounding. There were 8-16 cops on any given corner around the Zocalo and this spread for a few blocks in all directions.





We met up with Alex, our rider friend who we traveled from Durango to Aguascalientes with, and visited the Diego Rivera Museum.


One of my favorite Diego Rivera murals - Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park - it spans 15.6 meters. I could have spent all afternoon taking in Rivera's messages communicated through this artwork.
He then took us exploring and we wandered through beautifully tranquil city parks, had awesome Gorditas, and eventually stumbled upon what I would describe as a traditional revivalist dance troup that was dancing like mad in one of the squares - it was awesome to watch.



My degree in Anthropology made a visit to the National Museum of Anthropology a must. I felt bad for Roel as most of the placards were not translated into English, but many of the exhibits were obvious enough in their message that they didn’t require a placard  The museum was massive and I would easily rank it with the Smithsonians in Washington, DC. It was extremely well done. So much so, I spent 8 hours exploring, while Roel returned to the city center and watched the Flag ceremony in the Zocalo.


You don't need a placard to tell you that these folks were cannibals, right?


Though there are subtle differences, we are all more or less the same underneath the skin.




Flyers



The following 4 photos are from the impressive end-of-day flag ceremony on the center square:








We finally brought my little crash incident in Guanajuato full circle and met up with Jose Jr.. He toured us around another area of the city, we chatted moto travels (check out his site: KeepTheRiding) and then had an awesome cheap dinner with his lovely girlfriend.





All in all, we were happy not to have ridden into the city only because it was so easy to use the subway, but the traffic was well-organized and if it wasn’t for the opaque rules about license plate numbers and foreign motorcycles entering the city on certain days, we would have been happy to ride in.