December 18th
We had great connections and flights from Pensacola to Mexico City where we had planned to meet Lea and Max at the airport, all of us scheduled to arrive around 3pm. But things didn’t work out as planned. Their flight didn’t arrive until 11:30pm. We hung around in the quiet lobby of the Hilton Airport hotel until about 9:30 when we decided to get a room. Too bad I hadn’t read the text at 4:30pm from Lea telling me how to get to the house we were staying in where the housekeeper would let us in and brought us dinner. Oh well.
I started a book called A Traveler’s History of Mexico on the plane. It took me all week to finish but was very enlightening to understand the ancient and modern history of this neighboring country.
December 19th
First thing in the morning on the 19th, we took a cab from the airport to the house in Coyoacan. There is a tax kiosk inside the airport where you pay for your cab in advance. It was around $15 for a 45 minute ride. The views on that ride were not a good first impression of the city – it seemed rundown, with haphazard construction, graffiti, and lots of construction. However, the neighborhood where we stayed in Coyoacan was lovely. It is a historical town built in colonial times with lots of local color and history.
Coyoacán was formerly a village and is now part of Mexico City. The Aztec name means “place of coyotes” – Max says it means “skinny coyotes”. Hernán Cortés and the Spanish used the area as a headquarters during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and made it the first capital of New Spain between 1521 and 1523. The former village has kept some of its original layouts, plazas and narrow streets and historical structures.
Max grew up in this neighborhood and he took us on a tour of important places in his life – his mother’s home, his schools and church, and many architectural projects of his.
Highlights of our day exploring the neighborhood include the green central plaza and market, breakfast at Dulces in Sanborns with Max’s friends Alberto and Sonya, a visit to the home and museum of Leon Trotsky, the Nativity displays at the Museum of Popular Culture, the San Juan Batista Cathedral, walking the narrow cobblestone streets and best of all – margaritas and food at La Coyoacan Cantina in the afternoon. By the time evening rolled around, Lea and I were too pooped to go out for dinner so we devoured the tamales we found in the refrigerator.
