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On Monday Jeff and I started the day at the cathedral. Jeff wasn’t as into the church as I was so he waited outside. When I came outside I saw him talking to a group of people. I assumed it must be a cult.

It turns out it was a group of nursing students that needed to give a presentation in English for their school.

After they gave us their presentation they took our vitals. We both passed.

After we wanted to find a place to see the square from above. It was 100% not our fault that McDonald’s had the best rooftop terrace.

After a quarter pounder and fries I had a Spanish lesson. Then later in the day we went out for a local drink made from raisins with goat cheese.

For dinner we went to this restaurant in a beautiful setting. It was a restored house from the 1600’s.

It was so gorgeous inside.

Unfortunately they must have spent all their budget on the design and had nothing left for food or waiters. It wasn’t good. So we left and went to a to another place with amazing food.

This is a duck empanada with mole sauce. Amazing.

On Sunday we walked around town and just relaxed and took in the sights.

Our hotel has a great breakfast included with our room. One thing I was not expecting was Jello. They love Jello in Mexico. I had a language mishap when getting coffee. They’re was a carafe of coffee but I wanted the waiter to pour it for me. I was afraid of spilling it. I should have said:

tengo miedo – I have fear, or I’m afraid.

unfortunately I said:

tengo mierda – I have shit.

I realized it right away but didn’t know how to explain it so I just took my coffee and ran.

After breakfast we walked around and I tried not to take photos of every building. We heard music and stumbled on a orchestra.

We also stumbled upon a fried grasshopper saleslady.

We saw several more vendors. I guess they are in season. We didn’t try them.

Puebla is famous for their pottery. I may need to buy some. It would be a nice addition to our storage locker.

For dinner we went to a Mezcalería which is like a wine bar but for Mezcal. Mezcal is like tequila but made from different kinds of agave. We told the bartenders what we liked in flavors and they brought us different ones to try. I don’t like Mezcal but they found one that I liked.

Almost every restaurant we go to I order chips and guacamole. I skipped it here. You can see why when you read the menu.

We got these instead. They did not have any grasshoppers in them.

Jeff and I got up on Saturday and packed our suitcases. They were so full everything would fall out if we opened them. We each put on the clothes we left out to wear on the bus and realized we matched.

There was no time to open our suitcases and repack so we had to just be nerdy gringos and match for the day.

The bus was like boarding a plane. We checked our luggage at a counter, went through a metal detector, and watched as our luggage was loaded.

Everyone got a bottle of water as they entered.

We didn’t match as much sitting side by side.

We watched the movie Shang-Chi and the Ledgend of the Ten Rings. It was so weird to watch a movie that took place in China dubbed in Spanish.

Three hours later we made it to Puebla. Thus bus was great. Lots of legroom, AC and cheap, only the equivalent of $10 USD.

On Friday we went to the neighborhood of Polanco. This is the upscale part of town with outdoor cafes and luxury shopping.

Even here on these tree lines streets traffic was bad. But it didn’t have the noise level of other areas.

Even the street performers were classy.

We strolled around, had lunch and then went to a park.

The ultra rich don’t wear tee shirts from Walmart and baseball caps from Under Armor but it was fun to pretend.

On Thursday Jeff and I went to the Aztec Temple which is right in the middle of town. It turns out Aztec is a term made up by a German in the 1800’s. The Mexican term is mexica.

The site is huge, seven city blocks.

And it’s truly in the middle of town. Here’s a wall of stone skulls with a church from the 1500’s behind it.

They were really into skulls.

As if a wall of carved stone skulls wasn’t creepy enough, they also did this.

The attached museum housed all the things found at the site which is good because the museum is air conditioned.

This stone tablet was so big you needed to be up.2 floors top see it.

And I think they must have invented the recorder we all played in third grade.

The green instrument is made of stone but looks exactly the same.

This guy might have invented corn on the cob

This was something to put an offering in. I love the face on it.

And of course one that looks really pissed off.

Then it was back to the apartment to have a Spanish lesson.

On Wednesday I woke up with some digestive issues. Jeff worked in the morning while I slept and made repeated trips to the bathroom.

By the afternoon I thought I was better. From the look of the photo of me waiting for the Uber perhaps not.

But we got to the museum and started with the famous Frida Kahlo painting above. I was feeling pretty good. There was a lot of amazing art to see.

But there were some bathroom breaks.

I spent an unusually long time looking at this painting because there was a bench in front of it and I needed to rest.

By the time we got to the sculpture garden I was feeling better.

And then less better.

And then lean on Jeff, time to go better.

But even though I spent almost as much time in the bathroom as in the galleries I’m so glad we went. It was a beautiful museum.

After we got back I took another nap and felt OK.

On Tuesday we went to the Anthropology Museum which was truly amazing. It was so big we only made it through half of it.

Before we even entered we saw this dance being performed. Or, some lost a contact.

We started on the second floor and were not impressed. The above was ok but we weren’t blown away. We were confused until we went back down to floor one.

The below statue was giving me the side eye.

I think we all know if I was an artisan in this time which one below would be mine.

Jeff thought the one on the left might have been a kid’s artwork.

The above one looks disgusted.

I think the above statue has a bird on his head but it also looks like a faucet.

This is my ancient role model. Not just sitting down but half reclining.

After a few hours I was done. If there had been beds in this tomb I would have taken a nap.

And then we went out to lunch. The restaurant at the museum was really good.

On Monday all the museums were closed so we did a Hop On, Hop Off sight seeing bus. We normally don’t do these, but Mexico City is huge. It was a good way to see a lot of things.

It was fun seeing the second stories of the buildings which is hard to see from street level. Due to the heat, and laziness, we didn’t get off the bus. We just saw,everything from the bus.

Although we had already seen some of the things at different stops.

After the bus did it’s 10 stop loop we stopped for lunch. I was super thirsty so ordered a “jarra”of jaimaica which is hibiscus flowers, water and sugar. They must use a lot of sugar because it tasted a lot better than when I tried making it at home. I learned that jarra does not mean jar but jug. It was a lot of jaimaica.

Good thing Jeff was dehydrated too.

On Sunday we woke up in the hotel we had moved to and ate some bread. A few days prior we bought this really heavy, delicious sourdough bread.

Little did we know we’d be carrying it all over town. When we moved hotels the night before, our Uber took us to the wrong hotel. The bellhop loaded all our suitcases onto the cart, Jeff carried a five liter bottle of water, and I carried the bread down the street and around the block. This is the bellhop after he unloaded the suitcases.

Next we went to Bosque de Chapultepec. This is a huge park in Mexico City. It’s been a forest since pre-Aztec times. It has a zoo, several museums and of course a Starbucks.

Jeff and I were talking about our hatred for Trump when a nice young gentleman asked us if he could interview us for a paper he was writing for univeristy. We agreed as long as he didn’t us our names.

We had planned on going to some museums, but they are free on Sundays and were packed. We decided to walk around in natural instead.

A lot of other people had the same idea. There were a lot of stands selling all kinds of things.

We ended the day with more tacos. These were slightly different and I thought better.

On Saturday we spent most of the day trying to get out of our 2 week Airbnb reservation.

The apartment had a lot of problems such as the couch.

The biggest problem was the “air conditioner” which was really a big fan. It didn’t cool the bedroom or any room down. The host didn’t want to give us a refund do we had to get Airbnb Support involved. They were able to refund our reservation and even pay for our night in a hotel. We were so happy to get into an air conditioned hotel.

We normally travel with a stainless Steel French Press but since we’re traveling light (by our standards) we left it in Merida. We thought we’d just use whatever was in the Airbnb. That lasted a day. Then we were in the market for a pour over. Not that we don’t have several in our storage locker in Seattle.

Dinner was Tacos Al Pastor. Mexico City is famous for them.

Vegetarians enjoy this photo of beer and stop reading. Skip the rest of this post.

They are pork tacos cooked on a spit like gyro meat . There is always chunks of pinapple included which is whats on top of the spit.

These were good. The best? No. We, have to keep trying more.

They are small, but was eating 5 overdoing it? Perhaps.

Should we have been curious and looked up the translation for the part of the menú with the skulls? Definitely not.

Suritida-assorted

Trompa-snout

Cachete-cheek

Ojo- eye

Maciza-solid (I don’t want to know)

Sesos-brains

Lengua-tongue

We have a lot more tacos to try. We will be only ordering tacos al pastor an no cabeza de rez. There was a time when I was trying to eat all parts of the cow in Argentina. I’m glad I stopped that quest before I got to any of the above.