Journeys: Mexico City, Mexico - Sightseeing

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Mexico City, Mexico - Sightseeing

There were no fireworks or red, white, and blue for me this year. Instead, I spent the 4th of July holiday weekend visiting my friend in Mexico City.

Mexico City is a special place for me; it was the first international city that I visited as a kid. My grandparents took me there when I was in 9th grade and it was quite an adventure from what I remember. Mostly I was impressed with how confident and adventurous my grandfather was considering he did not speak Spanish and had to look after both me and my grandmother in an absolutely massive city.

Mexico City is overwhelming. I don't particularly like cities and I certainly don't enjoy massive crowds of people. I felt on edge and uncomfortable most of them time. Despite those feelings, I enjoyed revisiting memories from my childhood, wandering around a city of epic proportions, and checking out some of the finest museums in the world.

The primary purpose of this trip was personal, but we did manage to head out for a couple of adventures. On my first full day we headed to Zocalo - the historic district of Mexico City. The area is full of street vendors, markets, and lots of entertainment. There is also a massive public square and even some ancient ruins from the beginnings of Mexico City.

Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de María

Ruins of ancient Mexico City - Tenochtitlan

Zocalo

The Plaza de la Constitución in Mexico City

We spent the second day exploring the ruins of Teotihuacan north of Mexico City, a massive archaeological site with some famous pyramids built between about the 1st and 7th centuries CE. We climbed both the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon and explored some of the surrounding residential complexes.

Pyramid of the Moon viewed from the Pyramid of the Sun

Pyramid of the Sun in the background

Facade carving

Preserved mural

The Pyramid of the Sun viewed from the Pyramid of the Moon

I spent the final day in Mexico City walking down Paseo de la Reforma - the main avenue of the city. I walked around Zona Rosa and Chapultepec Park and spent a good portion of the afternoon at the National Museum of Anthropology.

The Ángel de la Independencia - Paseo de la Reforma

Paseo de la Reforma

"Altar to the Nation" monument - Chapultepec Park

Aztec Sun Stone - Museo Nacional de Anthropologia

Museo Nacional de Anthropologia

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess