Birds and Church Bells

We made it into Mexico City after a long airplane journey. The first leg we flew to Cancun and I was sitting next to a hyper active eight year old who was switching between games on her Iphone, her portable Nintendo, furiously coloring in some sort of special Sponge Bob notebook and fishing in her Tink bag to get Fruit by the Foot and mini Ritz crackers. My bag did not make it into the DF (Districo Federale), the Mexico City name equivalent of DC. So we waited at the airport for two and a half hours until it came on another plane from Cancun.

Taking off from Cancun on the way to Mexico City


We took a taxi to our apartment off the of the Plaza Santo Domingo, where we met the owners Arturo and Sarah. We settled in last exploring all of the rooms and doors that open out to multiple courtyards with birds, plants, the back of the Catedral Santo Domingo and lots of sunshine. It got dark quickly and we went out to have dinner. We went to a traditional place near our apartment called the Hosteria Del Santo Domingo. I enjoyed a Caldo de Rez - a delicious beef soup with squash, awesomely flavorful carrots, hominy, and avocado. We split a nopal cactus salad and each had a Mexican beer. Off in the corner of the place there was a key board player and a female singer that serenaded diners with vaguely familiar tunes that we couldn't quite place.

Living room of our apartment.


Master bedroom in our apartment. There are two more plus a fold out bed in the living room. We could have a vertiable Mexican adventure if someone else wants to go with us in the future!


View out a bedroom window down to courtyard behind Santo Domingo.


Man watering the ecological garden exhibit in the courtyard. Bamboo plants and grass were planted in old truck tires turned inside out.


We walked over to the Zocalo, a huge central square bordered by the La Catedral Metropolitana and the Palacio National. There was a huge evangelical festival happening with contemporary Christian music in Spanish and people throwing glowing bouncy balls into the air. We walked through several circles of Aztec dancers wearing traditional dress and noise makers on their shoes that jingled every time they jumped up to do a new move. There were also Mexican hipsters in the mix wearing the noise makers over their Chuck Taylor All-Start high tops. The smell of incense was thick, delicious but an almost too-much mix of cedar, cypress, eucalyptus and other unidentifiable scents. We also checked out various vendors selling their wares on the street, awesome colorful trinkets and clothes as we walked around. We stopped in the large cathedral during mass to hear some of the most beautiful mass music I've ever experienced. It almost always makes me cry and this drew tears immediately.

We came home to find that the apartment owners had to enter our apartment and run an extension cord through another courtyard window to get electricity since theirs had cut out. We also played around with the shower in our continental style bathrooms, with almost no luck getting consistent hot water. It was sort of funny, the water would vascilate between ice cold and so hot it filled the little room up with steam completely.

This morning we were woken by the sound of the cathedral's church bells and the birds in cages from a neighbor on the other side of an inner courtyard. I went to bed with wet hair, but we were unable to take showers this morning due to our lack of hot water, then lack of running water at all. As Ryan says, this is Mexico. We're leaving a note for the owners but have used the big jug of bottled water to brush our teeth and wash our faces. I pinned up my crazy curly bedtime hair into something that looks sort of classy.

We walked down the the cathedral to find that we missed the first Easter mass. We walked around the Santo Domingo cathedral, smelled the glorious Easter lillies and checked out all of the little side chapels, some of them a lot more gold and gory than you'd ever see in the U.S. Now it's off to find breakfast and meet a former student of Ryan's in Coyoacan for lunch.

View of the 3rd floor level of the inner courtyard on Easter morning.


Our coffee in the morning.


My reflection in the armoire in Easter Sunday dress.

I'll try to do periodic updates to share what we're doing with the world, also to keep a record for myself. I'm taking lots of photos and hope to add them upon my return.