a Review from the Top: Walking to Alemeda Park

We got a particularly late start Saturday morning. No real reason, but we just didn't feel the need to break ground trying to get anywhere, since we didn't really have anywhere to be.

I mentioned that the hotel was on the Zocalo, but I don't think I mentioned that its facing street was 16th of September street. The reason that is important is that it is a pedestrian street. And if you know how people drive in Mexico City, you can understand why that is important.

The mayor of this part of Mexico City is a young (38 or so) man who really believes in making the city easier to live in. One of the ways to do this is to make it more pedestrian friendly. One way to do that is to boot the cars off of several of the streets. It really works.

It works even on the cross streets, as you can see above.

This part of Mexico City still has many buildings that were built a very long time ago. Some from the 17th century, maybe even some from the 16th century. (but I don't think we saw any of those)

And old churches:

The street below is 16th of September street:

It is starting to get filled with pedestrians.

This building below was built in about 1630. It is now a bank (I believe) that hosts an exhibit space. The show in place was Mexico City architecture in the 20th century. No photos allowed.

The less said about this building, the better.

A really old church. Nuns were selling refrescos out front.

This is the house of tiles. We ate lunch there on Sunday (to come!)

This is the Palace of Fine Arts. As it says in the brochure, it was started in 1900, the revolution interrupted in 1910, and was finished 34 years later.

We spent a good amount of time in Alameda Park. They have many, many fountains. Doreen said that they have all been reworked. Most of them now have very fancy spray patterns.

Another old church.

We also stopped by the Diego Rivera Mural Museum.

It was wonderful, built around a mural that would have been destroyed when a bank was torn down. You can look it up - I needed permission to take photos, and didn't want to go down that path.

But here is a great photo of Frieda Kahlo and Diego, I think it was taken at her studio. Look at her reflection in the half opened door:

This is a bench:

Throughout this part of Mexico City, we saw tens of organ grinders. They did not have monkeys. We gave this one some coins, and took her photo with her stuffed monkey. I am sure it is better for the monkeys this way. This was the only woman organ grinder we saw.

We bought some cool baseball caps at the Palace of Fine Arts for our bike ride on sunday:

We also saw some Aztec Dancers:

Then we made our way to the Cafe Tacuba for some typical Mexico City Mexican food.

Chicken tacos, "special" tacos with ham and potatoes, and some chalupas.