Ritzy, Flowery Polanco

 My visit to see the Frida Kahlo show on Thursday took me to a neighborhood I do not often visit... the very affluent district known as Polanco.  It is sometimes referred to as the Beverly Hills of Mexico City.

I took the subway to the Polanco stop which is on Avenida Horacio, named after the Roman poet Horace. (Most of the streets in Polanco are named after writers, philosophers, and scientists from antiquity to the modern era... names such as Sócrates, Poe, Aristóteles, Tennyson and Galileo.)  Avenida Horacio is a broad street with a tree-lined pedestrian walk in the center.

The neighborhood was laid out in the late 1930s.  The homes were all mansions, often in neo-colonial style, for the city's wealthiest residents.  Today most of the neighborhood is filled with modern high-rises, but many of the original mansions remain.

Some of those elegant houses are now embassies or consulates.  This is the consulate of Spain.

Other former mansions have been put to upscale commercial use.  This place which looks a bit like a French chateau is a high-end flooring store.

This is the parish church of San Agustín, an impressive example of 1940s Mexican modernist architecture, and obviously a very wealthy parish.

Just a few blocks away is the Polanco branch of Mexico City's ritziest department store chain, "Palacio de Hierro".  Their snobby advertising slogan is "Soy totalmente Palacio."  "I am totally Palacio."  Alejandro and I joke about it, and I say "Soy totalmente Woolworths."

As I said, I don't often visit Polanco, but as I was walking down Avenida Horacio, I realized that I had picked an opportune time to come here.  They were having their Festival of Flowers and Parks.  I first realized this as I approached "Parque de las Américas", a park along Avenida Horacio.  The walkway led you through a series of floral archways.

 In the park itself were more arches and floral displays.

A map in the park showed that there were many other floral displays in the neighborhood, especially along Polanco's main shopping street, Avenida Presidente Masaryk.

I decided that after my visit to the Frida Kahlo show, I would check out more of the Festival of Flowers and Parks.