Mexico City Meandering

Mexico City Snapshots

Woman policeman in the Metro. Very pretty, dressed “to the nines” in a bullet proof vest, knee pads, big gun on her waist. She entered the platform along with a pair of male colleagues. When the group met another officer, the guys all exchanged fist-butts. The woman officer presented her cheek and then kissed the guy’s cheek in turn.

Zocalo. Can’t understand why this is the most famous plaza in Mexico, given the many beautiful plazas I saw just in Guanajuato and San Miguel. Zocalo looks like some St. Louis planner’s idea of a great public space: no shade, nowhere to sit, just acres of stone and monumental views of the surrounding buildings.  I must be missing something.

We walked for miles along streets whose names I studiously avoided learning. There’s something pleasurable about letting the wife control the day and just being there to bark at the children when they are about to step into one of the many gigantic holes in the sidewalk – threatening to send them down to the lost city of the Aztecs.

Amazing how Eve and Vera, when they are getting along, can just talk and talk and talk, play-acting or just making up scenarios. “I have blonde hair with really long braids. My father died, and then my mother was sick with cholera, and I was the only one there to help her, but then she died, and I went to live with my aunt who was a girly-girl in the fashion business and didn’t have any time for me…..”

“Well, I’m you cousin, and I really don’t like you because you are stuck up and only care about clothes….”

“No! I don’t care about clothes. I’m poor and I love animals. I want to be a scientist. It’s my aunt who only cares about clothes…..”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No……”

Eventually we’re all exhausted and cranky. Where is Nicole leading us? Supposedly, according to the guide book, (which we found in the hotel, and happens to be 10 years old), there’s a really good restaurant which is kinda in this direction. She thinks.

We walk through blocks and blocks of sidewalks chock full of street sellers shouting out for you to buy their products. We zigzag through an area in which everyone is selling backpacks. Then it’s two (or three?) whole blocks of people selling nothing but stationary and other paper products. Then a whole block of pens, pencils, erasers, pencil cases. Every seller within a give area seems to be selling exactly the same thing. Can this possibly be rational? Does anyone care? Is ultimately any more irrational than Chesterfield, MO? We buy a pair of colorful pencil cases at 10 pesos apiece (less than $2.00 total).

Eventually we’re right where the supposedly good restaurant is supposed to be. We haven’t seen any restaurants apart from dives. I ask a dude perched on a stool in front of a toy store (we’re now on the toys block). He’s about 20, sleeveless t-shirt, shades. Not exactly the concierge at Hotel Americano. The restaurant we’re looking for is closed on Sundays. So much for the ten-year old guidebook. Our dude however says there’s a good restaurant called El Alandaluz around the corner that is open and points out where to go more or less.

We walk as he directed, feeling skeptical. There is no sign. Nothing in fact to suggest that there’s a restaurant anywhere among the colorful toy shops. One doorway, however, is open, and it seems to lead….somewhere. We follow that. We peer in through a window, which, it turns out, looks in on a men’s bathroom. A cleaning lady smiles at us and points upstairs. “Is there a restaurant here?” we ask. “Yes.” And it’s called? El Alandaluz. More skeptical than ever, we climb dripping wet, mildly smelly stone stairs, and then suddenly we’re in the middle of an elegant restaurant. A man in a suit and tie sits at one table. Two gentlemen are chatting at another. The Olympics are on. The waiters are all men in impeccable white shirts and black aprons.

The best Arab food I’ve had outside of Dearborn, MI or the Galillee (I’ve never been to an Arab country.) Freshly made pita, stuffed zucchini with kibbeh, stuffed cabbage, hand-cut French fries.

A guy at the table next to us was eating a falafel sandwich with a fork and knife, meticulously slicing his sandwich as if it were a roulade.

Back on the street. The search for selling space is so intense that a guy is selling crocs on the tiny island between the entry ramp and the exit ramp of a parking garage, his wares displayed on the garage’s pillar. We actually want crocs, so we stand there for a couple minutes trying to get the guy’s attention and squeezing ourselves together on the island every time a car pulls in or out of the garage. We give up, just as an SUV turning into the garage seems about to pin us all against the crocs. Can one imagine a more undignified death?

Visit to the Palacio National. At the front door, fierce looking guards in fatigues with M-16 rifles hanging off their shoulders. Metal detectors. More soldiers watching us as we walk up the grand staircase to look at Diego Rivera’s mural depicting violence and protest and more violence in Mexican history. Then back down, across an 18^th century courtyard and then out into a perfectly arranged and peaceful garden with giant ash trees, palms, geraniums, and more grass than we’ve seen arriving in Mexico City. Lovely shaded benches arrayed among the paths. And seemingly on every bench there’s a soldier in fatigues sitting with his arm around a woman, sometimes kissing, sometimes with a child or two present as well. A boy of 8 or 9 is running among the benches and sneaks up on one soldier and his girlfriend, teasing them before racing off.

Eve and Vera find a couple giant leaves from a tree I don’t recognize. It inspires some new scenario, and in no time at all they are sitting in the stone walkway, spinning some new tale of girls in woe somewhere in history.