The weekend of June 7-10 we went to Mexico City. It had been almost two years since we'd been there, and we had found a cheap airfare on Volaris, a Mexican low-cost carrier. The plane was full and Adam and I couldn't be seated together. I took Isaac and he was a handful, as any almost-one-year-old would be on a plane. Thank God for the kindness of strangers! The lady next to me spent half the two-hour flight holding him and singing him songs.
We got in very late on Friday night to the Melia Mexico Reforma, where we'd been upgraded to a suite. Isaac, who had been very cranky and sleepy as it was WAY past his bedtime, suddenly perked up when he realized he had a whole suite to explore. We converted the dry bar into a changing table. Ike loves to carry things around and the garbage can soon became his favorite item in the room, apart from the mirror.
The next morning we got up to the familiar sounds of a "manifestacion," or protest march, down the main street of Reforma. Filled with nostalgia, I got up and pulled back the curtain of our 15th floor room to reveal a line of bikes riding down the street. Cars going by honked in solidarity. Then I noticed that one of the bike riders was naked! Then another, and another. Looking it up later, it was the Mexico City edition of the World Naked Bike Ride. Still not sure what they were protesting, I was too distracted by the nudity.
We headed a few doors down to the new Le Meridien, where we met Lupita, a friend and former co-worker of mine, for a quick chat and a ride to Polanco. In Polanco we met Adam's old Spanish teacher Hugo, and had lunch at Como, an Argentinean restaurant. There was an odd selection of late 80's and early 90's music playing. Hugo gave Isaac a book of numbers in Spanish. Afterwards we strolled around leafy Polanco, stopping for an Argentinean alfajor from Havana and eventually came back to the hotel.
On Sunday, we toured the entire downtown, from La Ciudadela to buy some silver to the Zocalo, stopping along the way for a $28 peso torta (sandwich). We walked around taking pictures of the beautiful architecture in the Historic City Center. For example, the Metro adminstration building has windows that are the same as the windows on the subway cars. There is a lot of Art Deco architecture as well as colonial, modern, and even the "Barrio Chino" (Chinatown). Isaac saw it all from the comfort of his new umbrella stroller. There have been a lot of changes since we left three years ago, most notably that the entire Historic City Center has been cleared of street vendors. There has been, however, a corresponding increase of street performers, clowns, and people dressed up as cartoon characters and action heros for photo opps.
That night we took a taxi back to Polanco where we had dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, 50 Friends.
On Monday we checked out and took one of my co-workers Angelica, who works in the hotel in Mexico City, to lunch at Los Camineros, a taco place around the corner, where Adam indulged his craving for tacos al pastor (seasoned chopped pork with raw onion, cilantro, and pineapple). Then we headed back to Cancun. It was a great trip, although quick. It was good to get our fix of the big city.