What can I say, the biggest city in the world seemed less intimidating and safer than I had assumed. It was really nice to come to a city with a subway. Buses are great for fresh air and a view, but nothing beats the tourist-friendly simplicity of a subway. Unlike buses, the subway doesn't require any knowledge of the local grid. Almost universally fool-proof. In my humble opinion, the frequency and speed of those trains easily overshadow the occasional suffocating rush hour and piss stench. They turn a large city into a close-knit space station. The future. With a metro map I am an urban mariner. I love those colorful noodles that intersect and connect and end, taking city-dwellers to their destination and their destiny. I like watching people give up their seat to old women. I like the musicians and clowns who graciously wait their turn to perform for the same commuting audience. I like the girl selling chocolate to sweaty passengers who find in her tired eyes the sudden need to satiate a sweet tooth. I love subways. That of Mexico City was no different.
I got to Mexico City (or D.F. because Ciudad de Mexico sounds so square) a couple days before Annie arrived by plane, which gave me time to take care of some bureaucratic tangles (extending tourist visa, adding pages to passport) and orient myself around the city. Success! I can now stay in Mexico until February (though I only needed 10 more days) and my passport is nice and thick with the ugly new-version pages hastily taped into the inseam of my old-version passport.
When Annie arrived we:
-admired the interior design of Frida Kahlo's house
-discussed the merits of Leninism with Leon Trotsky's ashes in his home a few blocks away
-sacrificed a slave from a menial tribe at the ancient pyramids in Teotihuacan
-pondered the purchase of a grandiose wedding cake
-grew restless at an American football game at UNAM (Mexico's national university)
-devoured cow brain
-got lost in the piles and cases of dusty used books on Donceles street
-danced with a Swedish couple to the 90s music played by a cover band in a bar in Polanco
-cradled our lower abdomens from the repercussions of an over-zealous street tamale purchase
-watched Forrest Gump with Spanish subtitles
-made dinner for our CS host and his mother who are positively delightful
fin.