Saturday, August 12, 2006
Reforma y Frida y Krispy Kreme
My good friend Debra is here for a long weekend visit. Since I work 6 days a week, I knew she would have adventures on her own for a day or two until we could spend Saturday together. But I got lucky! I didn't have to work on Friday and oh my god was I so happy! 2 days off in a row! ¡Milagros! We slept until 8:30 in the morning yesterday and again today. Heaven.
We started our day with a walk down Paseo de la Reforma. People have shut down the street to protest election fraud. It is not full of people, but it is like a camp and the people on Reforma are there to keep the road closed as the main citywide demonstration. People generally gather in the city center, El Zocalo, on weekends. This week they had a recount of 9% of the votes (the protestors wanted 100%) and the results will be announced tomorrow -- yowza -- should be interesting.
That morning there was a 5.9 earthquake in Mexico that could be felt in the tops of the skyscrapers here. We didn't feel it but tons of people were on the street. We thought they were part of the protest at first, but after a call from my sister, realized they were all just evacuated from their buildings for safety.
Shutting down Paseo de la Reforma is like shutting down Santa Monica Blvd. (For you Angelinos.)
Lucha Libre is never far from anything here...
And while I take this demonstration seriously (I doubt something like this would ever happen in LA) I couldn't help but take a picture with my favorite fountain. Normally the circle is FULL of traffic and I could never get this close...
Then we made our way on the subway (see the post "Xochimilco Part I -- The Boats" that will follow this post) to Coyoacan to see Frida Kahlo's house and museum, also known as the Blue House. It is not a big museum, most of her work is in larger museums around the world, but it is an intimate portrait of where she lived and worked, along with Diego Rivera. You can see her studio and her bed nearby. Her body casts, the ones she lived through and painted on, are there also. It is a beautiful place and I look forward to reading more about her.
We walked through Coyoacan, a very nice neighborhood, and through a huge indoor market selling everything from fruits and veggies to meat and dairy to toys and clothes and kitchen gadgets. There were also food counters galore. We were tempted but decided not to tempt our tummies with possible bugs. (See the next post, Subway to Xochimilco for indoor market photos.) Outside was this corner restaurant that was very tempting:
We walked and shopped through Coyoacan and along the way saw this cute, tiny hair salon. They were kind enough to let me take a photo.
Finally, after a long day we went to dinner in Condesa, very popular neighborhood for eating and socializing. There we saw this:
The second one I've seen in Mexico City! Shocking.
We started our day with a walk down Paseo de la Reforma. People have shut down the street to protest election fraud. It is not full of people, but it is like a camp and the people on Reforma are there to keep the road closed as the main citywide demonstration. People generally gather in the city center, El Zocalo, on weekends. This week they had a recount of 9% of the votes (the protestors wanted 100%) and the results will be announced tomorrow -- yowza -- should be interesting.
That morning there was a 5.9 earthquake in Mexico that could be felt in the tops of the skyscrapers here. We didn't feel it but tons of people were on the street. We thought they were part of the protest at first, but after a call from my sister, realized they were all just evacuated from their buildings for safety.
Shutting down Paseo de la Reforma is like shutting down Santa Monica Blvd. (For you Angelinos.)
Lucha Libre is never far from anything here...
And while I take this demonstration seriously (I doubt something like this would ever happen in LA) I couldn't help but take a picture with my favorite fountain. Normally the circle is FULL of traffic and I could never get this close...
Then we made our way on the subway (see the post "Xochimilco Part I -- The Boats" that will follow this post) to Coyoacan to see Frida Kahlo's house and museum, also known as the Blue House. It is not a big museum, most of her work is in larger museums around the world, but it is an intimate portrait of where she lived and worked, along with Diego Rivera. You can see her studio and her bed nearby. Her body casts, the ones she lived through and painted on, are there also. It is a beautiful place and I look forward to reading more about her.
We walked through Coyoacan, a very nice neighborhood, and through a huge indoor market selling everything from fruits and veggies to meat and dairy to toys and clothes and kitchen gadgets. There were also food counters galore. We were tempted but decided not to tempt our tummies with possible bugs. (See the next post, Subway to Xochimilco for indoor market photos.) Outside was this corner restaurant that was very tempting:
We walked and shopped through Coyoacan and along the way saw this cute, tiny hair salon. They were kind enough to let me take a photo.
Finally, after a long day we went to dinner in Condesa, very popular neighborhood for eating and socializing. There we saw this:
The second one I've seen in Mexico City! Shocking.
Permalink posted by Julia @ 8/12/2006 03:39:00 PM 
