Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 20

We woke up (lateish again). Ant was up before I was (shock) - and we headed down to the hotel breakfast for our traditional 10 minutes before closure breakfast.

After we got back to the room - it was a bit "downhill" for Ant who was suffering a bit from a late night out last night con alcohol. I really wanted to do more sightseeing so I was sin Ant today...

I headed out of the hotel after midday and walked down the Reforma Ave down to "Bosque de Chapultepec" aka Chapultepec Park by myself to visit both the Castillo de Chapultepec (aka Chapultepec Castle) and the Museo de Arte Moderno (aka Modern Art Museum).

Ant had assured me that I wouldn't get lost finding these places as they were signposted - but alas I found the back of the Modern Art Museum (which looked like a closed down ride at Disneyland's Tomorrowland from the 60s) - only to realise that the entrance to the museum was on a major road next to the park - not in the park (thanks Don't Know for nuthin). The entrance fee was pretty cheapish (35 pesos aka $3.50 AUD) and the permanent collection was a rather impressive but small collection of modern Mexican art including a couple of Rivera's and Frida Kahlo's famous "The Two Fridas" (or is that "De la Does Fridas"?? - My spanish suxs). It had lots of blood and guts and stuff which was kewlll... There were a couple of other exhibits including this interesting glass/surrealist/art nouveau exhibit all rolled into one, a exhibit on the art of the 1968 Mexican Olympics (which according to the exhibit was the first cultural olympics) - it had lots of inflatable Mexico 68 balls and woman dressed as if they were extras out of an Austin Powers movie, and a somewhat freakish exhibit on human interactions with animals (my favourite was the video art of some guy tap dancing with chunks of meat whilst getting attacked by rabid dogs. Neecyce!). As I mentioned before - the building felt like it belonged at Tommorrowland - an almost lil' sister to the archeology museum that we visited yesterday.

I then got lost again trying to decipher Don't Know and the signs of the park in order to find the Castillo de Chapultepec - but I managed to find the locker area - and subsequently the road leading up to the Castillo. There was a Disneyland-esque train for fat Mexicans/Gringos - but I chose to walk instead. The Castillo sits on top of a hill in the middle of the park and has excellent views of the City. The castle itself is an 18th century castle (with fantastic gardens or "jardins" and great mexican murals (including one featuring a man falling to the pits of hell... rock n roll...!)) and it housed the National History Museum - which like a lot of things here in Mexico - was en Espanol only - so not much made sense (maybe they don't want outsiders to understand the history here??!).

I saw from the top of the castle what looked like to be "6 Flags Mexico" - a themepark where we had seen a brochure for in the hotel lobby which we were toying with the idea of spending a day there - but I was mistaken... it was another themepark (Mexico City has two).

I headed back to the hotel to see how Ant was doing and I surcummed to my first dodgy 7-11 microwave junk food experience. I had bought a coke and microwave burrito for about 15 pesos ($1.50 AUD) and had this big fight with the cashier when I tried to get a Coca Light instead of a Coke. He refused and took the can off me, walked around to the back of the shop and gave me a full-strength Coke. It was yet another international diplomatic incident - but I think I sought of made an "honest mistake" - the price of Coca Light (aka Diet Coke) is marginally higher here in Mexico than the price of Coke (only by about a peso usually)... So I swallowed my pride (and swallowed the full strength coke and attempted to digest the somewhat dodgy microwave carne burrito) and headed back to the hotel - where Ant had already left and was booking additional flights for our holiday. We had plane tickets leaving Cancun for Cuba - and had to get there - but that would involve a 24 hour plus bus ride (which didn't sound all that palatable).... So Ant headed down to the Mexciana (best. airline. name. apart. from. Cubana.) office and got some cheapish tickets from Oaxaca to Mexico City to Cancun for a couple of hundred dollars each.

I went back to the gyme (needed to exercise as most of the food on this trip is high in carb/fat/sugar/bad stuff except for the diet coke which is high in carcinogens). Don't you hate it when you go to a new gyme and there is all new equipment that doesn't do the "hill thing" program that you like on your regular cardio machine. I couldn't get used to the crazy programs the other day so I just set it to el manuale and controlled the strength myself.

Ant and I had a bit of a chill at the hotel - Ant was really getting into the "Drawn Together" DVDs that I had bought in the States. There were some funny references to Speedy Gonzales - who would be up there in terms of the most racist cartoons of all time (think of those slow and lazy Mexican mice sitting around everywhere in those cartoons). I like the Drawn Together take on Speedy - who seems like he has just taken a bit too much "Speedy" and "Coca Light" if you know what I mean... He ends up threatening a character with a switch blade if he "touches his stuff" and then has a blood nose and retreats to the bathroom... Klassy...

We headed out on the Metro to the stop where there are a tonne of Mariachi play. If you don't know what Mariachi are - they are Mexican guitar players (now with brass) who have big guns in their guitar cases and blow s$$$ up.... Well maybe not the last part... When we arrived - it felt a little bit early as most were just sitting around instead of playing. We decided to head into the middle of town to check out the "Latino Americano" Tower - which was about 40 or 50 pesos (cheapest. tower. lift. prices. ever). The Latino Americano Tower is the tallest tower in Latin America - which isn't all that tall (44 floors). We had to line up for about 10 minutes for our quick ride up to the top. Once there - we were greeted with a cafeteria with the same ambient lighting as a 7-11 - which made it really hard to see outside (due to outside being dark). We quickly passed through a pretty lame museum about the building - the only interesting part was some photos on the structural damage done via earthquakes...

We headed up a second lift (where I kept getting off on wrong floors embarrassingly) and headed outside to the "observation deck". The pollution wasn't too bad today - maybe it was something about it being almost a public holiday and less traffic on the roads... and the view was prwuddy...

There were a couple of annoying mexican couples who kept hogging all of the "situational signage" along the deck - Ant and I thought we might throw a couple of them off the ledge - but it might have been a more serious international incident than the "burritos and diet coke" incident.

We headed back to the main plaza (where the ice skating rink was) but we were in serious danger of getting impaled by children throwing 6 ft spear-like balloons with pointy ends. In order to avoid injury (which wasn't probably covered by our insurance) we headed back in the direction of the main Sanborns which was in an neecye old colonial building for dinner. We were seated on the second floor and had some neccye mexican food. Alas - we had to wait about 20 minutes to receive our bill and thus ruining our neeccye dinner. They had some over-complicated system where the waitress didn't actually deal with any money - rather there was a single cashier who would occasionally come out with bills and provide change... Mexican efficiency...!

We headed back to the Mariachi district (past a sleazy area which LP suggested not to go after dark) where the Mariachis were in full swing. You pay them $10US and they play you a serenade or two. There were even people getting "drive through" serenades with the Mariachis playing to couples or families in their big pick up trucks. Ant really wanted a song (La Cocaracha to be exact) but I thought that sounded a bit racist and we were too shy to request a Mariachi band to play with us - so we headed back to Zona Rosa via the metro...

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this but the Mexico City Metro system is a fabulous opportunity to shop! Crazy random people will board onto a train at a station and play a mexican CD cranked up to eleven (with big f##k off mobile speakers in their backpacks) and were selling them for about 10 pesos. You could buy all sorts of crazy crap on the train including oversized novelty pens, bad 80s disco CDs, karaoke DVDs, pocket torches, chewing gum... and a lot of the time - you could catch a train and get about 6 touts in a row... I think our record was about 12 on one trip. Until next time...