A Trip to the Market

Alejandro and I are planning to return to Ohio for a visit in April for the total eclipse of the sun.  Of course, we will be seeing all my friends back home, and I want to bring them some gifts from Mexico.  That trip is months away, and we haven't even made our airline reservations yet.  However, since some of the presents I want to give are Christmas-related, I figured that the selection in the handicraft markets would be better now.

On Saturday Alejandro and I were planning on going downtown again, so I asked him if he would like to go to the Ciudadela Handicrafts Market.  He said, "Sure."  We headed off with a couple of "morrales", woven shoulder bags, for carrying our purchases, and took the Metrobus to the market.

The Ciudadela Market is probably the largest handicraft market in the city.  It was the first of its kind in the country, and it was built prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics to promote Mexico's rich tradition of crafts and folk art to visitors.  There are more than 350 vendors on the four acre site.  I have written before that a lot of the merchandise for sale here is pure tourist junk.  But you can also find amidst the kitsch some nice quality handicrafts.

This stall had lots of Christmas merchandise.

At the entrance was a Nativity scene with large figures made out of henequen, the fiber of an agave plant from Yucatán.

We went up and down every aisle of market, and we ended up buying more than just Christmas related items.  We ended up with gifts for just about everyone on our list.  I was afraid Alejandro would be bored on this shopping trip, but he actually seemed to enjoy it.

Of course, I am not going to mention or show what we bought, since some of my friends will be reading this.

  

Random Christmas Pictures

Here are some random photos taken in different parts of the city...

Decorations at the Hotel Marquis Reforma on the Paseo de la Reforma

At the St. Regis Hotel, also along the Paseo de la Reforma

A Christmas tree, Nativity scene and poinsettias decorate the lobby of the Majestic Hotel in the "Centro Histórico".

In my neighborhood I could see a bunch of lights from about a block away.  I thought that it was a building decorated to the hilt.  When I walked over, I discovered it was a sidewalk vendor selling Christmas lights.

A piñata hanging by the door of a house in the neighborhood of San Pedro de los Pinos

Christmas lights along Madero Street in the "Centro Histórico"

A Christmas tree with a snowman on top in front of an office building along Insurgentes Avenue

A neighborhood steak house ablaze with lights

An organ grinder in the "Centro Histórico" dressed as Santa

Clear Skies

The weather the last few weeks has been chillier than normal, and the skies have been depressingly overcast.  We have hardly seen the sun at all.  We have also had some rain, even though this is the dry season.  I was wondering if this was because of "El Niño" and if we were going to have gray skies all winter long.  This past weekend the weather pattern finally broke.  It's still chilly, but we had plenty of sunshine.  The long-range forecast calls for mostly clear skies all the way to New Year's Day.   And with the sunshine, the high temperatures are forecast to return to the 70s Fahrenheit where they belong.

Monday morning (I was at Alejandro's family's house), when Alejandro returned from taking his sister to work, he told me to go up to the roof.  There, silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky, were the volcanoes Iztaccíhuatl (left) and Popocatépetl (right).

Welcome back, sunny Mexico!

  

Lunch Downtown

After visiting the exhibit at the Palace of Fine Arts on Thursday, I decided to have lunch at "Café El Popular".

"Café El Popular" is something of an institution in the "Centro Histórico".  It's been around since 1948, and it is one of the few restaurants that is open 24 hours.  It's definitely not a fancy place, but I ate there once before, and I thought the food was pretty good.  The name is fitting since the place is very popular.  Often there is a line outside waiting for a table.  However, I was there at 1:00 PM, a little early for the typical mid-afternoon dinner.  I was seated immediately.

In addition to their regular menu choices, they had a number of special items for the Christmas season.

  

From the Christmas specials, I ordered the "Duo de Tortitas"... two little sandwiches, one filled with spicy, shredded pork loin, the other filled with "bacalao a la Vizcaina", Basque style cod, a very traditional Christmas dish here.  The sandwiches were very good.

I decided to order dessert.  The Christmas specials included fruit cake (written on the menu in English).  Unfortunately, it was quite dry, not that good.

After I had already ordered my meal, I noticed an item on the Christmas menu that sounded really good... pork loin in pistachio mole.  On Saturday, Alejandro and I went downtown again.  When I told him about the pistachio mole, he agreed to go to Café El Popular.  He had never been to the place before.  Surprisingly he had never even heard of it before.  This time there was a twenty-minute wait for a table, but the wait was worth it.  We both ordered the mole.  Alejandro, who is something of a mole connoisseur, agreed with me that it was excellent. 

Mexico in Color

On Thursday I went downtown to the Palace of Fine Arts to see an exhibit called "Mexichrome - Fotografía y color en México" (Photography and color in Mexico).

Mexico is an incredibly colorful country, but throughout the early years of photography the country was recorded in black and white.  Even after the development of color photography, the higher cost or film and development discouraged many local photographers.

This exhibit is a collection of color photographs taken in Mexico.  They span decades and a wide range of subject matter.  Some were taken by Mexican photographers and others by foreigners.

Here are some of the photographs on display...

This picture was taken by a Mexican photojournalist in 1998.  It shows Mayan women in the state of Chiapas resisting an incursion by the army into their territory.  The photo was published in a newspaper in black and white.  The original color photograph, the description notes, provided the contrast between the red in the women's garments and the green uniforms... "the national colors in full conflict."

Vintage color postcards

The Church of Santa Prisca in Taxco - 1950

Mexico City's Paseo de la Reforma - 1965 (My, how it's changed since then!)

Mayan costumes and the ruins of Uxmal - 1970

Ciudad Satélite was a suburban development outside of Mexico City begun in the mid-1950s.  The landmark sculpture known as Satellite Towers were photographed in 1959.  You won't see any cow grazing nearby anymore.

This opulent mansion of questionable taste was being built in 2012 by a Mexican politician.  The photographer captured the image as a testimony to the excess and corruption of government officials.

 

"Rejas" are the grillwork to be found at the windows and entrances to most Mexican homes.  This series of photos taken between 1998 and 2000 makes a colorful composition.

The famous artist Rufino Tamayo and his wife photographed at their home in 1978.

A woman with her eight children photographed in 1967

In 1972 a photographer from the U.S. was the first to record in color the inhabitants of the remote villages of the Huichol tribe.

Christmas morning of 1973 in the Tarahumara Mountains of the state of Chihuahua (yes, it snows there.)

Mexico City street scene in 1973.  For the Summer Olympics of 1968 the government painted many buildings with bright murals to disguise urban blight.

Mexico City street scene, 1963

The Mexica (Aztec) Hall of the National Museum of Anthropology, 2015

Restoration work on a sculpture of the Mayan rain god at the National Museum.

(That was before the Anthropology Museum existed.)

Frida Kahlo holding an Olmec sculpture, 1938

Tourists at the ball court of Chichén Itzá, 1982

The Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan, 1961

The volcano Popcatépetl, 1950

The volcano Iztaccíhuatl seen from an unusual perspective, 2005

This Year's Christmas Card

Those who have been following my blog for a while know that each year I do a painting which I then use for my Christmas card.  This year I made sure to paint my picture, have the cards printed, make out the cards and put on the postage stamps before I left for Mexico.  I gave the cards to Gayle, and she took them to the post office just before Thanksgiving.  I had the original painting framed down here, and it is now hanging in the office of my apartment.

I am quite sure that by this time everyone has received their card, so I can reveal it on the blog.

I thought that it would be appropriate, since I have made the big move to Mexico, to paint a picture of the house in Ohio where I lived for many years.  My parents bought this house when I was three years old, and I lived there up until I sold the house this year.

I hope to continue my Christmas card tradition even though I am in Mexico.  I have my easel and painting supplies down here.  I can do a painting, and I am sure that I can find a printer to print the cards down here.  I think that I will probably make a yearly trip back to Ohio in the fall in order to get my vaccines... flu, COVID, etc.  While I am there, I can stamp the cards, and, if Gayle would be so kind to mail them again, I can give them to her.

Christmas is still a week away, but I will wish all my readers a very ¡Feliz Navidad!

 

Lunch at a Department Store

One of my childhood memories is taking the bus with my mother and going to downtown Cleveland to the big department stores to shop for Christmas presents.  We would always stop for lunch, often at a restaurant in one of the department stores, such as the elegant Silver Grill in Higbee's.  (I bet that some of my readers of a "certain age" have similar memories too.)

Nowadays there are no department stores in downtown Cleveland, and the ones in the suburban malls do not have restaurants.  On Wednesday, I sort of recreated those memories when I went to the Liverpool Department Store to do some Christmas shopping.

I didn't go the original Liverpool downtown, but to a branch located about 1.5 miles down Insurgentes Avenue from my apartment.  

This branch is one of the larger Liverpool stores with five floors (including the basement) with almost everything you might be looking for, from clothing to appliances to furniture to exercise equipment to dinnerware to toys and more.  They even have a fancy barber shop and a travel agency within the store.  Liverpool is not the ritziest department store chain in Mexico City, but this store in particular was quite upscale.

"Bolo" is the mascot for the toy department at Christmastime.  Each year Liverpool has a parade in December called "Bolo Fest".  You might say that it is Mexico City's version of Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.

I explored each floor of the department store and did a bit of Christmas shopping.  The top floor of the store is largely devoted to what they call an "Experiencia Gourmet".  There are stations selling various kinds of food... Italian, Spanish tapas, shellfish, etc... that you can eat there.

I was ready to eat.  However, I decided to skip the "Experiencia Gourmet", and go to the store's restaurant which was located on a mezzanine overlooking the ground floor.

The menu is fairly extensive.  I ordered Aztec soup, and, deciding to have something healthy as a main course, I ordered "pescado empapelado" (a fish fillet and vegetables wrapped in aluminum foil and grilled).

(Those are slices of plantain, not bananas, on the rice.)

The restaurant did not match the elegance of the old Silver Grill in Cleveland.  But the service was excellent, and the food was good.  I would return here to eat if I should be shopping at Liverpool at lunchtime.