Architectural Details

In Mexico City's Historic Center, as you head north from the area frequented by tourists, the neighborhood grows progressively more run-down.  But the architecture of the buildings dating from the colonial era, the 19th century and early 20th century reveal that it was once a much better part of town.

This building at the corner of República de Brasil and República de Bolivia, is full of fascinating architectural details.

Look at those drain spouts!

The sculpture on the corner of the building has an inscription in Latin and in Spanish saying "Work conquers all."

More details on the same building

The colonial buildings often have niches at the corner which contain a statue of a saint.

The corner of this building at República of Brasil and República de Perú, with its colorful ceramic tiles, takes the concept to another level.

 

On Argentina Street

Many of the streets in Mexico City's historic center are named after countries of Latin America.  One such street is "República de Argentina".  It runs north from behind the Cathedral.  After a couple of blocks, you reach the Secretariat of Public Education (the building to the left).

The building is of interest to tourists because in the courtyard there are two floors of mural paintings by Diego Rivera, many more than in the better-known National Palace.  I have been there a couple of times, and I have written about the murals on the blog.  Unfortunately, the building is indefinitely closed to visitors.  The rumor is that they are converting a portion of the building into a museum.

Right across the street is a building that is more than 400 years old, the former church of Santa Catalina de Siena.

The church dates back to 1623.  Oddly, it is now a Presbyterian church.

In just one block, the street suddenly changes in character.  It is lined with the stalls of street vendors selling cheap merchandise, and pedestrians, cars and motorcycles all vie for use of the pavement. (I actually snapped this photo at a less chaotic moment.)

I suppose that most tourists would find this street suddenly intimidating, perhaps even scary.  I found it daunting, not so much because I felt unsafe, but because of the congestion and traffic.  (However, I would advise against continuing much farther north along Argentina Street since it eventually ends up in Tepito, one of the city's most notorious neighborhoods for crime.)

So, what brought me here?  I stumbled upon an article on the internet saying that this street, this block in particular, was one of the best places in the city to buy silver jewelry.  Mexico is the world's leading producer of silver, and all jewelry must by law be stamped ".925", meaning that it is sterling.  It is interesting that this street should be dedicated to the sale of silver since the word "Argentina" comes from the Latin word "argentum" meaning silver.

The street is lined with jewelry shops specializing in silver.  (They also had a lot of stainless-steel jewelry for body piercings.)  Most of these shops are "Centros Joyeros" (Jewelry Centers) which are sort of like mini-malls with different merchants selling their wares.  According to the article, along this block there are more than 120 businesses selling silver.  (You will also find many "Centros Joyeros" along more elegant Madero Street, but those jewelers mainly sell gold.)

  

With all the vendors lining the street it was a bit of an effort just to get to the sidewalk and enter the jewelry stores.  I ventured inside three or four of them, and the stores were just as crowded and chaotic as the street.  According to the article, many people come here to buy large quantities of jewelry wholesale in order to sell them for a profit.  I did not even try to take any pictures inside since I knew that I would probably be yelled at for doing so.

I wanted to buy some silver earrings for myself. I did not see anything in the way of unique designs, but I did end up buying three simple pairs at three different shops.  As the article said, the prices were very cheap... which is fine, since I don't wear expensive jewelry.

There isn't much silver content by weight to the earrings, but they are all sterling.  The two with black stones are actually enamel, and the blue stones are zirconium.  The earrings to the left were the most expensive... they cost 89 pesos (a little over 5 U.S. dollars).  They have a fairly thick silver backing in which the enamel is mounted. The middle pair was 18 pesos ($1.08 US) and the blue zirconium earrings cost 39 pesos ($2.34 US).

In spite of the super-low prices, I am not sure that I would return to Argentina Street to buy more jewelry.  It was, however, a bit of an adventure.

Who Was Alexander Humboldt?

 At the far end of the Alameda Park in downtown Mexico City is a small monument which I had not noticed before.  It is a statue of Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859).

You may or may not know who Alexander Humboldt was, but he was a celebrated German geographer, naturalist and explorer of the late 18th century and early 19th centuries.  He led an expedition to the Americas between 1799 and 1804, and he was the first non-Spanish European to describe the region from a scientific point of view.  He took meticulous notes of everything he saw, and published numerous scientific volumes which laid the foundation for physical geography and the interrelation between the physical sciences... biology, meteorology and geology.  Other books based on his travel diaries became "bestsellers", and he was one of the most famous men in Europe.

During the course of his Latin American travels he spent a year in Mexico (then the Spanish colony of New Spain).  He arrived at the port of Acapulco and traveled by mule train over the mountains to Mexico City where he was welcomed by the Spanish viceroy.  Humboldt was greatly impressed by Mexico City, the largest in the Americas at that time.  It was he who supposedly gave it the nickname of "The City of Palaces", and he wrote that "no city of the new continent, without even exempting those of the United States, can display such great and solid scientific establishments as the capital of Mexico."

The topic of Humboldt's personal life remains controversial.  He never married, and he had a number of strong male friendships including companions on his travels.  Since Humboldt destroyed all his personal letters, we will never know for certain if those friendships were of a romantic nature.  I recently read the historical novel "México" by Pedro Angel Palou. Humboldt makes an appearance in the story and has an affair with one of the male characters! 

At the Mall

As you know, on the day that the cleaning lady comes, I get out of the apartment to let her do her work.  Last week, it was just too hot to take one of my long walks, so I took the Metrobus to one of the shopping malls to kill some time.  I went to Parque Delta, which was opened in 2005 on the site of an old baseball stadium.

It is a typical mall with three levels of shops and restaurants.  There are many stores that you would see north of the border... Old Navy, Gap, H&M... there is even a Radio Shack, which survives down here.  There are other chains that you see in all the Mexican malls such as Zara, Stradivarius, Pull&Bear, which are all clothing stores from Spain, and C&A, a clothing retailer that originated in the Netherlands.  I was surprised to see Prada.  The mall is upscale but not THAT ritzy.  There is "Cuidado con el Perro" (Beware of the Dog), a Mexican youth-oriented clothing store.  And of course, there is the ubiquitous Sanborns, the restaurant / pharmacy / gift shop chain owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and found throughout Mexico from Tijuana to Cancún.  

I walked the entire mall without buying anything, and it was time to have my afternoon dinner.  The reason I came to Parque Delta, rather than one of the other malls found throughout the city, is that I wanted to try the Cheesecake Factory.

Now, some of you may ask, why in the world would I go to a U.S. chain in Mexico City, one of the greatest culinary capitals of the world?  Well, I had only been to a Cheesecake Factory once in Ohio, and I liked it.  So, I wanted to try out this branch, one of only two here in Mexico City.

The menu is very large, and I found it interesting that, although the descriptions of all of the dishes are in Spanish, the names are all in English.

I ordered the Korean Fried Chicken which is served with sliced avocado and rice with mushrooms and cabbage.  It was tasty.

Of course, I had to indulge in cheesecake for dessert.  I ordered the "dulce de leche" cheesecake, and it was decadently deliciously.

The prices are a bit expensive by Mexican standards, but I would definitely come back.  I'm not sure if Alejandro has ever eaten at the Cheesecake Factory.  We will have to have dinner here sometime.

Let There Be Light

In my office there is a pair of bookshelves, one on either side of my desk.  Those shelves hold not only books, but a bunch of knickknacks... handicrafts from my travels and numerous mementos.  The only problem is that those knickknacks did not show up very well.  There was a lack of light.

When I was in Ohio in April, I saw some little battery-operated, under shelf lights in a store.  They were just what I needed, and I bought a couple of two-packs.  When I got back to Mexico put them on the shelves, and they looked good.  However, I had only purchased four, and I have six shelves with knickknacks on them.

Alejandro and I were at a nearby mall, and we went into a store called Sternen to buy some rechargeable batteries for the lights.  Sternen is a chain that is similar to our old Radio Shack. (And by the way, Radio Shack still exists in Mexico.)  I asked if they happened to have any lights similar to what I had bought in Ohio.  Not only did they have under shelf lights, but, except for the Sternen brand name, they were EXACTLY the same as what I already had.

So, now all of my trinkets are illuminated.

 

More International Cuisine

Mexico City is a cosmopolitan city, and the restaurant scene confirms that with an enormous variety of international cuisines represented.  Alejandro and I have eaten Italian, Korean, Spanish, Polish, German, Lebanese, Uruguayan and Indian food here, and recently we added the cuisine of another nation to the list.  Not far from the apartment, there is a Japanese restaurant called El Samurai.  It looked as if it would be a very expensive restaurant.  However, we checked out the menu.  While it is not cheap, the prices are not outrageous either.  So, we decided to try it out.

I pose in the bamboo garden in front of the restaurant.

Alejandro poses by a case with a samurai outfit by the entrance.

Since we were not very familiar Japanese cuisine, and I don't care much for sushi, we ordered two of the very few dishes that I had heard of... sukiyaki, and vegetable tempura.  

Sukiyaki is a hot-pot of sliced beef, udon noodles, tofu and vegetables.  There was plenty for us to share, and it was very tasty.

The tempura was also good, although the battered parsley wasn't my favorite.

The service was excellent, and the food was very good.  It seemed authentic, although I don't know enough about Japanese food to judge.  Although it is not the type of restaurant that we would frequent on a regular basis, we would certainly return.

 

A Lego Creature

I have written previously about the axolotl, an aquatic, salamander-like animal which is an endangered species living in the canals of Xochimilco, in the south of the city.  

This past weekend, Alejandro and I were at Parque Tepeyac, the mall near his house.  There is a Lego store at the mall.  In the store window there was a large axolotl made of Legos.  I didn't have my camera, but Alejandro snapped a photo of it with his phone.

Cutting Back

Well before Christmas I bought a poinsettia for my apartment.  It was not until well after Easter that it had lost all its red bracts.  (The red "flower" of the poinsettia consists not of petals, but of modified leaves called bracts.)  The green leaves of the plant looked healthy, and I decided that I would keep the plant and see if I could get it to bloom again next Christmas.

The plant came in a tiny plastic pot, and it needed to be transplanted.  The weekend before last I went to the neighborhood "tianguis" (weekly outdoor market) and went to a stall that sells houseplants.  I bought a pretty "Talavera" style pot, and a bag of soil.  I took the plant to the laundry room and transplanted it into the larger pot there.

I then cut the plant down to the bare stems to encourage bushy new growth.

Just a week later, the stems now have tiny leaves sprouting at each nodule.  I suspect that in another week or two I will have a nice green houseplant.   Only time will tell how successful I am in getting it to bloom again.

Viva, Jalisco!

At the end of our day downtown last weekend, we were walking down Madero Street heading to the Metrobus to return to the apartment.

As we passed by the Church of Francisco, next door to the Latin American Tower (pictured above), there were costumed performers handing out flyers advertising a show that was to be held in the church atrium.  The show was to feature the dances and music of the state of Jalisco.  Jalisco is the origin of mariachi music, which is what most foreigners think of when they think of Mexican music.

The show was going to begin momentarily, and the tickets only cost fifty pesos (about 3 dollars), so we decided to attend.

The dancers could not compare to the Ballet Folkórico de México, but they weren't bad.

Here they are performing the "jarabe tapatío", the dance which is better known to "gringos" as the Mexican Hat Dance.

There were several singers performing traditional songs, and they were quite terrible.  One lady, the worst of them all, had the audacity to sell compact discs of her music after the show.  I wonder if anyone purchased any?  

Believe it or not, this fellow was the best of the lot...

He is singing "El Rey", a very popular song which is a satirical anthem to Mexican "machismo".

No tengo trono ni reina

Ni nadie que me comprenda

Pero sigo siendo el rey.

I have no throne or queen

Nor anyone who understands me,

but I continue being the king!

Coffee and Chocolate

I am falling behind on my posts.  I still have more to write about from our trip downtown LAST Saturday.

After we finished our dinner at the Gran Hotel, we walked a short distance to the old colonial building which used to serve as the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition and then later as the School of Medicine of the University of Mexico.  (The building now houses the Museum of Medicine.)

That weekend a festival of coffee and chocolate was being held in the courtyard of former school.

The courtyard was full of vendors who were selling, for the most part, products made from chocolate and coffee.

¡Que los Dioses te acompañen!

May the Gods be with You!

In pre-Hispanic times, chocolate was considered the beverage of the gods.  So this vendor has created bars of chocolate that are molded to represent the ancient gods.  He even had large discs of chocolate sculpted in the form of the Aztec "calendar stone".

The wooden tools known as "molinillos" are used to froth your hot chocolate before drinking.

The fellow was selling powders and pastes for making "mole".  Most "moles" have chocolate as an ingredient.

I purchased a jar of salsa made from eight different kinds of peppers along with carmelized cacao.  It was quite spicy but very tasty.

Happy Mother's Day

 

"You are my star, mom"

An advertisement from Sears at the Mexico City World Trade Center

Today is "Día de las Madres"... Mother's Day... in Mexico.  Unlike the United States, where the day is celebrated on the second Sunday of May, here Mother's Day is always on May 10th.  The holiday was introduced from the United States in 1922

Later this afternoon, I will take the Metrobus to Alejandro's family's house.  We will have dinner together and Alejandro and I will give his sister the present that we bought for her.

The Three Virtues

Atop the clock tower of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City there were three sculptures representing the three virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity.  These were created by Manuel Tolsá, the Spanish-born architect and sculptor who introduced the Neoclassical style to Mexico at the end of the colonial period.

On September 19, 2017, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck central Mexico, and there was significant loss of life and damage in Mexico City.  One of the statues, the one representing Hope, fell to the ground.  Later, the other two statues, were removed from the clock tower.  One story which I heard was that those two statues would be put in a museum where they would be safe in case of future earthquakes.

Last Saturday, when Alejandro and I were downtown, as we passed the Cathedral, we noticed that the three statues were on the clocktower once again.

I have not been able to find any information about the sculptures on the internet.  I thought that Hope, the statue to the left, had been smashed beyond repair.  Zooming in on the three, you can see that the anchor held by Hope, the cross held by Faith, and the flame on the head of Charity are yellow.  Gold gilt?  Were those features of the statues originally gilded?

I have no idea what the story is, other than the fact that the three virtues are once again on the Cathedral.

Lowering the Flag

When we had dinner at the restaurant at the Gran Hotel on Saturday, I was able to observe a ceremony which occurs every day in the late afternoon on the Zócalo.  The enormous Mexican flag which flies over the plaza is lowered.

Because the flag is so large, it is rolled up rather than folded.

Once it is removed from the flagpole, the soldiers carry it back into the National Palace.