Mexico City, Day 1
March 30th, 2007Still here, and still yet to suffer from turista despite eating all kinds of street food and drinking all kinds of iced, juice-based goodness from random street vendors. Clearly, I´m pushing my luck, we´ll see how that turns out soon enough.
I had a fantastic day today, despite not being able to drag myself out of bed before 10.30am, despite having been in bed before midnight, and despite all kinds of noise in the room that morning as various guests moved in and out. The crowd here is really fun and international, which I suppose is normal for a youth hostel, although I´ve never actually experienced the real thing before, i guess. I´m getting by with communicating in a weird hodgepodge of English and pidgin Spanish cobbled together from French, Italian and even Portuguese. The funniest experience was trying to communicate with the German guy in the same 12-bed dorm who speaks passable Spanish and very little English. In the end the Dutch girl who speaks some Spanish and a little more English had to translate.
Today, I made it to the Templo Mayor, the Palacio National, and to the floating gardens at Xochimilco. A very lovely day which ended with another free concert, this time at the zocalo (I say another concert because last night I saw a couple of other free performances). More details and pictures at some point when I get back to campus.
Right now it´s time to head to bed. Tomorrow morning, a long bus ride to Oaxaca City.
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I´m so happy to be here.
PS: Even though Alan (and Ari) will probably be offended, in agreement with Terence I must say that Mexico City really does remind me of New York City. Except there´s a much better subway system here. Cleaner, much more frequent, not stinky, and at 2 pesos (US$0.20) a ride anywhere, much cheaper too (take that MBTA fare hikes!!).
PPS: It´s interesting to be travelling again, the first major trip since the summer travel-ganza. Everywhere is both the same (in shade and texture, if not the exact hue)–particularly in the way I react to them (picking up the vocabulary, forming expectations, mentally settling down) but also so different and wonderfully so. Mexico is just bursting at the seams with culture and history, literally. Witness the Diego Rivera murals (Montezuma, Cortés, Trotsky, and Kahlo all in one massive mural series!) in the national palace next door to the excavated ruins of the central Aztec temple. This is in the same league as Istanbul or Rome in terms of the sheer density and scope of the cultural and historical offerings.