Mexico – Day 1: CDMX

First day, and we were awake relatively early, though not abnormally early. The journey was probably exhausting enough to override the jet lag.

My watch raised a brief alarm because the altitude did make itself felt overnight. But we actually felt fine.

We had roughly sketched out the day and had a plan for where we wanted to go for breakfast. On the way there, a small shock: noticeably cooler than I had expected. It was still overcast, too, and looked like it could start pouring at any moment.

The 15 minute walk through our neighbourhood turned out to be surprisingly lovely. A bizarre mix of a gentrified European inner-city district and Rome, is how I would describe it. That was also the first moment where I thought, "we are on holiday now." 🙂

First coffee in hand and the sun slowly coming through, it felt pretty close to perfection. So close that even my partner was tempted into a coffee. Though I think the night had been worse for them than for me.

The menu advice from my ChatGPT trip-planning project then produced one clear suggestion, which I simply followed. Fantastic recommendation. It was genuinely sensational, and I am not otherwise a savoury-breakfast person.

Suitably fortified, we headed into the Centro Histórico, where the Templo Mayor was first on the programme. Afterwards we tried our luck at getting onto a special tour into normally closed excavation areas, but no success. Fair enough, it would have been in Spanish, so perhaps not a huge loss.

After the temple, or rather its ruins, we went into the big cathedral opposite.

Inside it was impressively opulent. But the really interesting contrast was outside: cathedral on one side, Templo Mayor on the other. Two religious world orders right next to each other, except that one militarily overwrote the other.

The church really does stand directly beside the Templo Mayor, so practically on the rubble of the old religious and political centre of Tenochtitlán. Stones from the temple and other buildings were used for the construction, too. Subtlety was evidently not part of the colonial toolkit.

After that we walked from the Zócalo (the main square) towards the Palacio de Bellas Artes. On the way we stopped at the Casa de los Azulejos, a historic city palace whose facade is almost completely clad in blue and white tiles. Amid all that stone and traffic it looked absurdly decorative. We had a quick look inside for the courtyard with its ridiculously beautiful staircase, and simply for the contrast between a colonial palace and the bustle outside (and inside, since there is a restaurant and some shops in there).

Then we were already at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. It is opera house, concert hall, cultural palace and art museum all at once. Art Nouveau and neoclassical outside, Art Deco inside, because construction dragged on from 1904 to 1934 and apparently switched aesthetic era completely along the way. Very CDMX: monumental, slightly megalomaniac, and slowly sinking into soft lake bed (so are we, incidentally, and so is the big church, which was completely crooked inside).

We were actually getting tired, but went in anyway and looked at the big murals. They had looked so interesting from the foyer that we thought, "we are hungry, but okay, we are looking at THAT first." 😄

ChatGPT's brief was tailored to exactly that:

"Inside, the main attraction is the large murals, among others by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. So not an endless painting gallery, but fairly political, dramatic Mexican monumental art.

3rd floor: Diego Rivera's El hombre controlador del universo, the enormous, extremely busy piece with machines, cosmos, Lenin and political end-of-the-world detail.

2nd and 3rd floor: Orozco, Siqueiros, Tamayo and the other big murals.

So don't get lost in some special exhibition first. Up the stairs, look at the huge pictures, read the labels, out for food."

Rivera's painting really is completely megalomaniac: technology, biology, cosmos, class struggle, capitalism, socialism, Lenin, all at once, as if someone had said, "please do the entire history of humanity, but on one wall."

Fun fact: Rivera had originally painted a version of this motif for the Rockefeller Center in New York. When he painted Lenin into it and refused to remove him, Rockefeller had the work destroyed. Rivera then repainted it in Mexico. With Lenin still very much visible.

After that, a quick round of tacos, and then we really did head home and took a siesta.

In the late afternoon we went out again, wandered around, had an aperitif during a thunderstorm, and in the evening ate really well at Meroma. We had not had that in a long time, including really good advice. I had picked a wine, and the waiter brought me a taste of it plus another one, an Italian that wasn't on the list (and wasn't more expensive, mind you), because he thought I might like it too. I did. ^^ Sadly it was the last glass, and when I wanted more he advised me again. Bullseye again. Nice. And then at some point we walked home in the dark and fell into bed. Tomorrow we continue to Oaxaca.