Mexico City Saturday April 26th

 

Visited La Vasconia on Tacuba street for a quick bite.

We stopped off in Coyoacan in one of the more prominent neighbourhoods where Allen, our guide, tells us the "good" people come to buy expensive coffee and tasty insects.  (I tried the crickets.  They were spicy crunchy and almost good) 

We're in the neighbourhood Frida Kahlo grew up in.  If you don't know the history of this famous Mexican artist, watch Hollywood's Frida 2002 if interested.  Her art is very personal and political and even an artistic neophyte like me could appreciate it.  The home is well maintained and quite beautiful.  Frida had polio as a child and experienced a nasty accident that left her bed ridden for much of her life.  She took this opportunity to paint and do many self portraits.  Frida was unable to have children and seemed to have an obsession with fetal images throughout her work.  This was definitely the highlight of the day. 

Frida's childhood home.

Later we go farther south to Xochimilco for colorful boat rides.  I didn't particularly enjoy the second half of the day as much.  This boat trip was a cheesy tourist moment with hundreds of people climbing into colourful Venice style boats and being slowly pushed along a dirty, man made river.  Other boats would pull up and try to sell us food, trinkets or a song.

Apparently Mexicans eat a late breakfast, late lunch around 3pm and an even later dinner at 10pm.  So I was pretty happy when Allen finally directed us towards the roast pig.  We made little tacos and I gobbled up 2.  I was still hungry so I bought some roasted crickets to munch on.  The traffic gets pretty bad once you enter the city near our hotel, but we were home about an hour later. 

We relaxed at the hotel till 6pm, then ventured out for dinner.  We settled on Cafe La Tacuba, which is a an old convent converted into a restaurant on Tacuba street, a few blocks from our hotel.  This is an upper scale restaurant with friendly staff, a mariachi band and great ambiance.  I suppose the food is a little pricey, but you're paying for the experience.   I feel a lot of eye balls on me, but everyone is always friendly and patient with my attempts to hablo espanol.  I enjoyed my pollo mole, which is chicken with a rich savoury chocolate type sauce.