We arrived in Mexico City just before the festival of the Virgin de Guadalupe. Pilgrims flock to the city to a hill where a young indigenous man (Juan Diego) claimed to have had a vision of the Virgen de Guadalupe on 12th December 1531, it was a key moment for converting indigenous people to Catholicism. Today millions of people arrive in Mexico city many running or cycling for days to get there. Lots of people were walking though the city with large framed pictures on their backs and children were dressed up as little Juan Diegos.
Cyclists on the outskirts of Mexico city
Chilling at the bus station. Ralph was nervous about going to Mexico city after reading too many scary taxi hijack stories on the internet but it was completely fine with a sophisticated safe taxi system in place.
This taxi had a very elaborate nativty scene on the dashboard
The beetle taxis were really cool
Our hotel was very grand, but it was the only one we could find at late notice. When the earthquake happened we were in the hotel and Ralph commented on the shoddy building thinking it was people upstairs making the room wobble! It was 6.8 on the Richter scale at the epicentre 100 miles away. It just felt very wobbly for one minute with the lights and other hanging things and plants swaying. Very exciting.
The hotel had a roof terrace that no-one else seemed to know about
Full moon from the roof, shame we hadn't been there the night before to see the eclipse!
View from the roof, the lights went on and on into the distance, its a big place!
The centre of the city with the cathedral, Templo Mayor and palace is designated a Unesco world heritage site. The Zocalo or main plaza was decorated for Christmas and full of market stalls.
The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary Mexico city. In pre-hispanic times the city was built among a series of lakes. The city as it is now was built by spanish conquistadors on the ruins of the temples they knocked down on arrival and lakes have since been filled in which leaves the foundations really spongy and prone to movement which can be see inside the cathedral where a huge plumb line hangs to show the tilting of the building over the years. The pope ordered concrete to be injected under the cathedral which has levelled it up a bit!
Difficult to see here but the altar was crammed with little animal ornaments.
A statue of christ with a cocoa plant, cocoa beans were given as alms by indigenous people.
We had a guided tour of the cathedral with Mario, Ralph was very well behaved and didn't say anything blasphemous for the whole tour.
Health and safety gone mad......an artificial snow snowball fight tent in the main plaza for Christmas festivities and the children had to wear helmets and visors!
Main plaza or Zocalo at night with a huge artificial Christmas tree
Templo Mayor is the original site of Mexico City, generations of Aztecs built temples over the top of former ones building upwards, taller and grander structures, a common practice as it takes less resources to add to existing rather than starting from scratch. The Spanish conquistadors knocked it all down when they arrived but they didn't know about all the previous temples beneath the ground level so everyone got a huge surprise when they cut a swathe througt the ground to make a subway line past the cathedral and found a mass of ruins in the 1970's. So today the excavated Aztec ruins are slap bang in the middle of all the main plaza with the palace, cathedral and other buildings.
Templo Mayor was the site of many ritual human sacrifices as archaeologists have analysed samples of scrapings from around altars and other structures and found evidence of blood and other human deposits.
A wall of stucco skulls
A bat god excavated from Templo Mayor now in the museum on site.
These wind up accordian players were all over the city and the music always sounded really sad. They all wore this uniform and were collecting money either for themselves or a charity we never asked!
Noone knows what it would look like but these guys have come up with their own interpretation of Aztec ceremonial dancing, the guide book described it as like pre-hispanic aerobics!
Pistachio soup and Tamarind drink, Ralph looks disappointed as we had gone specially to the Girasoles restaurant to try grasshoppers, Maguey Worms and other barbecued beasties but they were out of season, it was very nice anyway.
Girasoles Restaurant, one of many lovely buildings in the city.
Surely the worlds most fancy post office
Inside the post office!
Sunday and the parks are full of people, bands, market stalls and men on horses
Lucho libre - mexican wrestling masks
Pleased with my straw pig purchase
Amazingly fancy blue tiled building
Xoloitzcuintle a pre-hispanic Mexican hairless dog, yes that makes him very old! No the breed is 3000 years old. Nice basketball vest!
Mobile grocers
Ralph amok in the worlds most complicated cake shop where you go round a huge shop full of cakes and buns with a huge tray and pair of tongs, then hand in your choices for packaging and take a slip to another queue for paying then come back and queue again to collect your cakes.
The Aztecs were said to have walked from further north in Mexico until they saw an eagle eating a snake on top of a cactus which they saw as a sign for them to stop travelling and build a city, this was the formation of Mexico city and the eagle on a a cactus eating a snake is now in the middle of the Mexican flag.
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