Mexico City A.K.A. El D.F.

I have to admit, I wasn't sure I would want to return home after our week in El D.F. The city is packed with history, museums, culture and amazing sites. From beautiful modern buildings to ancient Aztec pyramids, parks and street fairs to plazas and sporting events, el D. F. is the place to be!

Planning this trip for months, I had my weird little list in tow. With only six days in Mexico, and three of them being the Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration outside of the city, I had to condense my expectations. If the temperature was over 40° Fahrenheit, we could have done everything. Coming from Puerto Rico, I brought all the winter wardrobe I own, which consisted of a long-sleeved T-shirt and a zip-up hoodie. Once the sun started going down, you would think there were vampires the way we ran back to the hotel!

Good friends of ours at Evolution Tattoo were kind enough to bring us around with their friend visiting from Mexican Family Tattoo in Sardinia, Italy. We went with them to a live lucha libre! It was amazing to see the drama unfold live before our eyes in the ring! We were not allowed to take our cameras inside, but we were able to snap some photos of the lucha arena and the street fair outside while we were eating at a small taco stand.


Inside we had a wonderful experience as we watched the most fake wrestling imaginable. I can now honestly say their moves were real and they used a lot of acrobatics, and the wrestlers were very impressive! El Blue Panther (not Pantera Azul for some reason), was celebrating over thirty years in the business, and made a touching speech to his fans. The whole time vendors were walking around with food items of all sorts... pork in a cup, ramen noodles, 6-inch personal pizzas, coffee and doughnuts, popcorn, ice cream, the works. I am pretty sure we could have stayed there for a week alone!

During the "fights" where wrestlers would de-mask each other, then try to cut the other's hair, the best characters to watch were definitely in the audience. The crowd was mostly under 10, or over 40. With the screaming and obscene hand gestures, it looked like the 40+ men were using their children/grandchildren as an excuse to see the matches themselves. The men stole the show running back and forth screaming and throwing things, wearing their favorite wrestler's emblem on their shirts. Meanwhile, the children would be ringside trying to sneak an autograph on the inside of their favorite mask. After watching the men, much more than the players, we didn't feel as old as we thought we might going to these types of events, and we understood crystal clear why they were serving coffee and doughnuts!

The morning after the lucha, we ran around town trying to see as much as possible. We started off at Belles Artes in the Alameda Park section of the city. This gorgeous and interesting building is used mostly for classical music concerts and dance exhibitions. As far as fine art, this museum is best known for the original murals of Diego Rivera they house. One of the murals they display is a replica Rivera created that is a smaller version of his controversial piece for Rockefeller Center, involving the likeness of Lenin. These murals are enormous and beautiful, and are joined by others from Tamayo, Siqueiros, and Orozco. Once we found our way around the murals, I located the bookstore, and spent many an hour there.

After the shopping spree, I decided to stop by the post office and send everything home. The post office building was my favorite by far, and I never thought I would be interested in buildings made of gold. The architecture and details are breathtaking, and the glass and gold elevator took us up to the top floor, where the Mexico Maritime Museum was! No more wondering why the elevator man was dressed like a Naval Officer in the middle of a post office! This museum was very interesting and the staff was very well informed about the history of wars and battles involving the Mexican Navy. I found the models of the ancient ships the most fascinating.

After breaking for a quick all-vegan lunch, we hit the street fairs like a sledgehammer! We even found a little alleyway that was lined with tables of books as far as the eye can see. It was like Christmas for this nerd. I realized earlier down the path that there were no books in english, so it was mostly a browsing trip- but I did pick up some reads for friends in Puerto Rico. In Alameda Park, many vendors were selling toys, gifts, scarfs (brilliant idea), and lots of food. After wandering around for a while, at 5 PM I was faced with a very hard decision.

As it turns out, around the time of Dia De Los Muertos, and Halloween (Jalogüin), interesting sites pop up that we would never have found out about. I stood in the crossroads. To my right was the National Museum of Art's exhibition of death, to my left the Museum of Torture and Antique Torture Devices. Wow. I found out that the art museum had a policy that after 5:25 PM, entrance is free (until closing at 6PM), so I knew where to go first.

I was impressed with the display at the Torture Museum, and amazed to see the actual replica of the devices. The exhibition was set up in a way that there was a detailed (and very well done) written piece about the device, then a photo or drawing about how it was used, and then POW! As I turned the corner, the device would actually be there. This I was not ready for! Seeing these horrible instruments made the written stories and cute little drawings a reality, instead of a twisted storybook on the wall. I was also horrified to see how many of the instruments were made specifically to torture women. I guess between the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Hunts, they needed as much help as possible.

Afterwards, we shot over to the exhibition of death, which I was not sure I could stomach. The arrangement of art was fantastic, and there was art from many different time periods. Mostly political drawings from the early 1900's, the illustrations were beautiful and very powerful. I was in awe of the smaller room that displayed all the oil paintings of dead children (paintings of the children in the coffins). That was powerful enough to make me sit for a while.

By the time we got to the Zócalo area of the city, it was night, and we were only able to see a small part of the plaza. This was fine with me, since I did not want to be in the area where they have bullfighting every weekend anyway. The only site on my list was to see the largest Catholic cathedral in all of Latin America. The huge plaza is beautiful, and I am glad we saw it! The cathedral was all but closed, and the smaller area that was open was having a public mass. We tried to take as many photos (museum style) as possible, but at night with no flash, that was not happening. The only one that came out was of the Jesus on the cross, which was probably the most interesting site there! I tried to ask the church security why they would have an all black (not African, pure BLACK) Jesus on a black cross. No one knew why.

Once we exited the church, the violently cold air hit us likes bricks flying in the night, and we realized it was time to hit the hotel.