It has been a week since I returned to Santa Fe, New Mexico, my home for the past decade. But before I begin writing again about business and relationship matters, I want to share some thoughts and photos from my last days in Mexico City, or D.F. (Distrito Federal, as it’s called).
I thought I would be overwhelmed. After all, some 22 million people reside in the Mexico City area, making it the largest metropolitan area in the Americas and the fifth largest in the world. It is said to be Latin America’s “first city” and, as such, it is a prototype for all the others which look like chaos to me. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the various areas I stayed in and explored to be interesting and easy to navigate.
On my first trip to D.F. in early February, I stayed in the Congreso district, near the upscale Zona Rosa, visited Chapultepec Park, Frida Kahlo’s famous blue house (see my article “Casa Azul“) and the Zocalo, or main square of the City. Each area is highly walkable. And if you need to get longer distances, the Metro system is efficient and immaculate and buses are plentiful, as are taxis which are remarkably inexpensive.
This time, in mid-March, I stayed with my dear friend and visiting professor from New York, Richard, right near the Zocalo at Hotel Gillow. We explored not only that historically-rich area, with its many monumental 19th century buildings and pedestrian streets, but further afield to the Siqueiros Polyforum (an unusual modernist civic pavilion covered inside and out with grand murals by David Alfaro Siqueiros) and to the posh San Angel area for Saturday Bazaar (an artisans and artists fair), a look at Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo’s studios, and a glass of wine at the 5-star San Angel Inn.
Also, we visited Teotihuacan, a huge pre-Columbian city and UNESCO Heritage Site about an hour’s drive northeast of D.F., via a private driver. I found it disconcerting not only for the countless human sacrifices but the scores of generations whose occupation was stacking stones. Human history, ancient as well as contemporary, is filled with both sorrow and magnificence.
Here, then, are some photos:
Thanks for this tour of some highlights of Mexico City, Aysha. It IS an intimidatingly large place–I’m not sure I’d dare negotiate the subway. It looks like quite a hike up the Pyramid of the Sun, huff huff, but you got gorgeously bronzed in the process!