Back to El D.F.

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

It can be quite confusing whilst in Mexico, that the Mexicans refer to the city as Mexico too. So to avoid confusion, it is also called El D.F - the Distrito Federal. We enjoyed our first lot of time in D.F and decided at the time that there was so much to do that we needed a few days at the end of our trip here to do everything we wanted.
We arrived back from Cancun airport on Saturday and decided to stay in the Zona Rosa area rather than the Zocalo area. We thought it would be good to experience a different part of this vast city. In theory the Zona Rosa is quite an upmarket area with restaurants and night clubs along with nice shops. But we didn´t like it! We tried to find somewhere to eat, and it was quite a mission, plus on the way back to our overpriced hotel we shared the pavement with some rats and some very unpleasant smells. So on Sunday morning we checked ourselves back into the Hotel Canada near to the Zocalo. We are really impressed with that area of the city. It´s reasonably clean, has great architecture and there´s lots to do. There's also a nice atmosphre with all the noise created by the traffic police blowing their whistles all the time, and the organ grinders grinding thier organs.

On Sunday afternoon we took the Metro to the Dolores Olmeda museum which holds the largest number of Diego Rivera paintings in the city, plus some of Frida Kahlo´s work. Unfortunately the line that we needed was closed for refurbishment so we got the train a little way, then got a bus, then got another train. It was worth the long journey though, the house itself was impressive. Dolores Olmeda was a friend of Rivera´s and collected his work, which she left to the city when she died a few years ago. Rivera´s paintings are very good, we really liked his style. Frida´s paintings are very strange, but also cool in their own way. We bought a couple of postcards and then repeated our journey.
Luckily the Metro is very cheap. 2 pesos gets you to anywhere.

On Monday we went up the Torre Latino Americana, which is quite a big building, but not really as bid as the Auckland Skytower, or most other tall buildings built since the 50s. It's ugly from the outside, but gave us great views of the city. Just outside the tower was a display of one artist's sculptures. That´s a great thing about being in a big city, you can just stumble across really cool stuff.

Yesterday we took another mission on the underground to get us to Chapultec Park. The park is huge and houses various museums and a free zoo. We started off with the zoo. We mostly wanted to go there to see their Giant Pandas (they were very snoozy), but they had some other interesting animals including a nice fat hippo. After a long walk back to the entrance where you have to leave your bags, we had some lunch and then went to the Museum of Anthropology.
The museum was good as it contains lots of the artefacts that they have removed from the sites that we´ve visited. Including a very intact Chac Mul and a huge head.

Today we took advantage of the late check out time at our hotel and then went to the Diego Rivera Mural Museum. We really liked his murals at the palace and this one was just as good. It´s a big park scene containing lots of Mexican figures from throughout history, and the ever present image of the skeleton. It took him 3 months to paint in 1947. The rest of today we are using the internet and then going to the airport for our late flight to Lima, when we´ll be close to home at only 4 hours behind you.

We´ve realy liked Mexico. It´s a testament to how cool a country it is tht we´ve been ill for around half our time here and have still had a great time.
The architecture is beautiful and colourful, the history is interesting and it´s cool to be able to visit so many ruins. The food has been good sometimes - mole is nice as are tacos, but it´s nothing like we have at home!
There has been so much stuff that we would have loved to have bought, both for ourselves and as presents, but we just don't have room for colourful blankets, and bottles of chilli suce and tequila would get broken as would little carved animals from Oaxaca.