Day 51: Mexico City

Today was our first taste of Mexico City proper, and it was every bit as bananas as we had been lead to believe. There are people everywhere, and where there aren’t people there are cars, buses and lorries. Crossing a road can take the best part of five minutes, and even then you’re really just legging it in front of something slightly slower moving than the rest.

It is hot, it is noisy and it’s exciting. And it’s big! I’m not sure what the biggest capital city is in terms of area, but it feels like everything is huge and miles apart here. We’re considering a bus tour for another day – I usually prefer to explore with my own methods, but when a place is this size and you can’t get to grips with where anything is in comparison, maybe it’s the solution…

We started out this morning on the metro, which so far hasn’t been the violence-fuelled, over-crowded hell hole that people seem to suggest. We travelled outside rush hour (as any tourist should in any city, if London life is anything to go by) and while it was a bit busy, it was nothing worse than a normal tue ride. I’ve not had to retreat to the women-and-children-only carriage yet, but it’s nice to know it’s there nevertheless.

Our first destination, as ever, was the zocalo where we found student protestors and a giant Mexican flag. On one side was the Catedral Metropolitana, which was vast and gold even by Mexican standards. As with all the cathedrals we’ve been in, I was surprised at how busy it was with worshippers – at 11am on a Thursday it was full-house, and they all looked like people who’d come from work. They were mostly congregated around the Señor del Veneno – Lord of the Poison – which is a dark grey statue of Jesus, who apparently changed colour after miraculously absorbing poison from an inflicted clergyman…

Next stop was supposed to be the Palacio National, home to some amazing Diego Rivera murals. Somehow, however, we couldn’t find an entrance and as it also serves as the offices of the president, there seemed to be no way of sneaking in the one side door which we did find. Better luck next time, hopefully.

Our search did take us into the Museo Nacional de las Culturas though… Not for us, as it was mostly Egyptian pottery and ancient Chinese vases and the like – all very interesting, but not for today. The museum is in the former mint though, which is a nice building with a Rufino Tamayo mural from 1938… We’d spied it from the street and got our hopes up that it was Diego’s work, but no such luck!

We strolled down to the Palacio of Bellas Artes next, which is a magnificent old thing with a fairly spectacular orange dome. The whole area around here and the adjacent Alemeda Central Park (and actually lots of Mexico City) is full of 1930s architecture, and I should probably do some reading as to why that us… Post-earthquake rebuilding, perhaps?

We had lunch at Tortas el Cuadrilatero which an old lucha libre joint owned by former wrestler, Super Astro. Apparently he wanted to create somewhere that served sandwiches big enough to fill the giant appetites of his wrestler friends – and everything was pretty gigantic. We didn’t attempt The Gladiator, a 1.3kg sandwich with six different meats, but our basic sandwiches were still enough to leave us waddling for the rest of the afternoon.

After that we waddled up to the Museo Nacional de Arte for a Jose Guadalupe Posada exhibition which we’d heard about – he’s the man behind a lot of the best-known Day of the Dead skeleton artwork.

On the way we had a look in the Palacio de Correos de Mexico – the post office… Or post palace as it should really be known, because it’s absolutely glorious and hands down one of the finest art nouveau buildings I’ve even seen. Gleaming brass as far as the eye can see!

Over to the Posada exhibition after that little detour, and it was every bit as good as promised. All in Spanish, of course, but it seemed to link other artists who’ve been influenced by Posada in various ways – from those who work in lithograph, to those who do political cartoons for newspapers, to those that just like using skeletons – with plenty of his original works. We thoroughly enjoyed it and I would definitely recommend a visit if you happen to be in the area any time soon- it would be his 100th birthday this year which is why it’s on, and I think it finishes at the end of June. The rest of the gallery looked pretty great too, but we were conscious of getting back and avoiding rush hour so didn’t hang around too long.

Tomorrow – my birthday! – we are heading to the Friday Kahlo museum and to a lucha libre match, which sounds like a pretty great birthday to me.