July 1-7
Hello everyone!
México is known as a cultural hotspot, with its eponymous capital being the beating heart of all things Mexican. There is so much to say about food and drink that I will cover that in a separate post.
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| Lucha Libre: any excuse to dress up! |
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| Ciudad de Mexico: aka Mexico City |
One blog probably wouldn’t be enough for museums, either. Apparently Mexico City has the second highest number of museums in the world. Plenty to see, then. Many of those are dedicated to telling the history of life before and during the time of Spanish rule. I’ve written about some of those already, which you can see in the links above.
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| I've been too busy eating tacos to wrte about food yet! |
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Football is a key part of Mexican culture - it's a shame
their team are terrible at the moment, getting knocked out
of the Copa America early whlst I was here |
So what would be included here? What would be classed as culture? Probably some art…
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| Work by Diego Rivera in the Palacio de Bellas Artes |
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| A bead-studded VW Beetle |
…a bit of architecture…
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| Casa de los Azulejos, a beautiful tiled building in Centro Historico |
…mixed with some literature…
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| The vertical library at Biblioteca Vasconcelos |
…some sights from the movies…
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| No James Bond helicopter in sight, alas... |
…and finished off with a bit of light entertainment…
Being honest, staring at paintings doesn’t really stimulate me. I therefore didn’t invest time or money in visiting the exhibits in art galleries such as Palacio de Bellas Artes. What I did instead was buy a terrible coffee on the eighth floor of a department store across the road. The view wasn’t bad…
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Building this was a challenge as the heavy
marble sank into Mexico City's spongy soil |
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| Alameda Central is the oldest public park in the Americas |
I find physical art more impressive. The best example of this for me was in the Museo de Arte Popular. I only visited the main foyer, as what I wanted to see was parked in the lobby. A Volkswagen Beetle…decorated with over 2 million glass beads.
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8 people worked on the car, totalling over
38,000 working hours between them |
Cars are ubiquitous in this city of 22 million people. What has pleasantly surprised me, considering the amount of pollution that this would create, are the number of cyclists taking to the roads. Dedicated cycle lanes connecting leafy neighbourhoods create a fun cycling culture.
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| EcoBici allow you rent bikes and travel freely across the city |
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| Condesa was a lovely neighbourhood in which to run |
Cycling around the different parts of the city allows you to see some interesting buildings and designs, particularly in lesser-visited places such as Santa María de Libera.
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| This quirky area used to be a no-go zone |
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| Now it is becoming one of CDMX's trendy areas |
One particularly strange architectural sight is a library called Biblioteca Vasconcelos. Entering the building seems fairly normal…until you look up and down the long, narrow main corridor. The shelves seem to hang over the edges.
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| The library took three years to build |
This isn’t the only eccentric book-based building in the city. I visited a lovely bookstore in the upmarket neighbourhood of Polanco. A bright, welcoming bookstore lined with books…and hanging vines. The amount of light which enters the store makes this a very pleasant place. Having ‘fantastic fiction’ in the place of fantasy books surely helps, too…
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| A beautiful bookshop |
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| Is all fantasy fantastic? |
Many of the city’s most famous attractions have been seen on screens, both big and small. If you’re a James Bond fan, you’ll know that the opening sequence of one of the most recent 007 films, Spectre, is set in Mexico City, focusing on its Grand Hotel and the main square, known as the Zócalo.
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| The square is one of the biggest of its kind in the world |
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| The Grand Hotel |
Much further south in the city is its Olympic Stadium. Mexico City hosted the 19th Summer Games in 1968. This stadium is most famous for being the place where two American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, brought global attention to the Black struggle in the US by raising one of their fists high into the Mexican sky.
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| It has a capacity of 83,700 for the Games, now it is 69,000 |
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| The stadium is now used by Pumas UNAM, a top Mexican football team |
There are plenty of other influences on modern Mexico City. Its Chinatown, a mere two blocks of one street, is a different world to its surrounds. You will also find lots of international chains, with Starbucks having an influence in most neighbourhoods.
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| A lot is packed into the two small streets! |
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| Bao buns with different fillings - mine had chocolate cream |
The city does generally retain its national roots, however, and this is most evident if you take yourself to an area to watch people in masks ‘wrestle’ each other, knowing who will win.
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| Lucha Libre roughly translates as 'free fight' |
Welcome to the world of Lucha Libre! This wildly popular sport-cum-show is mostly demonstrated in the capital. I decided to take in the sights and sounds of Mexican wrestling. I was forced to leave my camera in a small cloakroom in the arena, meaning the photos and videos are a bit distant.
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| It has been done since the 1800s in Mexico |
What never seemed distant were the noises: the slaps on skin, the low thuds of bodies hitting the canvas, the ‘oohs’ each time someone hurled themselves out of the ring to land on/be caught by their opponent, the boos for the ‘dark side’ team each time. Locals really get into that element of it.
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| Fighters are split along two lines, which are essentially goodies and baddies |
Star of the show was a character called Mistico. Wearing bleached white, he had an incredible habit of being battered close to death before somehow spinning out of a problem, instantaneously gaining ludicrous strength and then crushing an opponent. Almost as if a script was written for it…
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| Winners are predetermined, meaning that there is no betting |
That may be too cynical - it was a fun evening and one which highlighted just one of many wonderful aspects of life in Ciudad de México. It has struck me as a very liveable city, and one in which you can find whatever you may call ‘culture’ at almost every turn.
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