Our rest last night was a bit of a struggle. The bed is small, a bit hard and with a fan blowing most of the night, tough to sleep. Oh well, hopefully it gets better. I got up and wrote the first days blog. I then had to work a bit...about 3 hours...mostly because I had a conference call I needed to lead to determine a fix for a key problem we are having with some software we want to upgrade. Fortunately, someone did something, and the software now works. Love it when you are never quite sure what solutions are. But in the end you are just grateful that it works.
After showering, Denise and I decided to go for a walk to check out this neighborhood we are in. It is a nice, average, Mexican neighborhood with lots of shops, schools and things nearby. As a matter of fact, I could hear school kids talking and playing all morning. Turns out there is a school just across the street. Anyway, our walk took us on an adventure to find the church we will attend on Sunday. Google said a 10 minute walk. And indeed it was. Quite close. But you have to walk a street that takes you through an industrial park like area. That was kind of interesting. We found the church, all gated and locked up. So it will be easy to find again Sunday. On the way back, we took a different route back. The street we took, Calle Norte 25, was a much bigger and business oriented street with lots of food vendors on the street and little shops. We eventually made our way to where we had eaten tacos the night before when arrived. It was about lunch time, so we decided to get some food. We first purchased some potato chips that were fried right there. They sprinkled them with salt and lemon and lime. They followed that with a mild picante sauce on top. They were really good. We then crossed the street and purchased a Hawaiin Torta (cooked sandwich). We carried that back to our apartment and ate it there while we waited for the 'crew' to show up in their 'bus' to take us into the city center. The Torta was delicious. Denise says we are going back for another one before we leave!
Well...our bus showed up about 30 minutes after we arrived back. The group had grown. They had added Blanca's sister, Mareya, and a good friend, Sylvia, to the group. We were now going to pack in 8 adults and 2 children into a van that seats 8 humans very uncomfortably. So much for child seat belt laws in a country whose driving is suspect at best. I'm taking this info back to the states and when someone tells me that it is bad that my grand kids are not in car seats, I'm going to refer them to this blog post. I know that Atticus and Lorenze will not want to ever get back into their car seats again. :-)
The drive into the center of the city took about 30 to 45 minutes. As you can imagine, with 20 million people living here, the streets are quite congested. We eventually arrived and then the search began for a parking spot. Juan, our driver and Neza's father in law, did a wonderful job getting us around and finding places. We found a garage. We all piled out before they took the car and headed off down the street looking for food as the 'crew' had not eaten lunch. With Taco and Quesadilla stands all over, they found a place to eat quickly. It is amazing that people just pull up small seats, sometimes buckets, to sit down at the grill to get served the food. People just standing on the street eating. Anyway, after lunch was complete, we headed to a location where we could buy tickets for a city tour bus. There was a bit of a debate if we should do it. But Karlie held firm that the two to three hours would be fine. So we did it. It was 160 pesos for each person and the kids travelled free. Neza paid for everyone to make it easy. But Denise and I are always paying our way. I think the others not. I think Neza, living in the USA, and making 'millions', he is paying everything for all of them. Very interesting. But I get it though...it is tough just to survive down here some times. And to do this might be a pretty big financial burden on his family. Denise and I will help Neza and Karlie with expenses.
The city tour took a good while. We jumped off at one point and let the boys run around at some famous monument. We saw lots of the old, really cool, buildings, statues and so on. We saw the modern architecture that also makes up the downtown. We drove through some of the up and coming neighborhoods that featured various ethnic groups. We saw big new arenas, an Olympic stadium where they did the horse riding years ago and so on. But the one thing I will remember most from this while riding on the bus was the low hanging wires as we passed through neighborhoods. Literally, if you stood up, you could be decapitated. And the number of wires going everywhere was amazing. We have a few pictures. I hope they show this. Karlie was amazing handling some of the kids' issues...and they had a few. They are out of their norm. Fortunately, Atticus fell asleep for about 45 minutes and Lorenzo crashed later when we were eating dinner. It is tough on them.
As our bus tour concluded the clouds came in and the rain started...in a huge way. All of us on top of the bus headed downstairs and packed into the downstairs area of the bus. We were about 15 minutes away from our stop. But even then, what were we going to do? It was pouring! Before getting on the bus, Sylvia bought garbage bag like covers for 10 pesos a pop. We all had them over us...but they did little as the rain was coming down in buckets. We found an awning where we stood for a good 20 to 30 minutes until it slowed down a bit. It was about 6:30 PM by then and starting to get cool. Neza wanted to find a Quesadilla restaurant...which we did. It was small and very interesting. We took the largest table. The food was quite good...quite cheap as usual.
After dinner we headed back to get the car and head back to our 'homes'. On the way, we found a bank and Denise and I went in to get peso from an ATM. The first attempt, we ended up getting 100 pesos and it cost us 80 pesos to do that. We thought we were getting 100 USD and not 100 MXN! So the next time we got it right. The machine threw us a curve as it did not accept our request for 1500 pesos the first time. So we thought it might be thinking dollars. But no, we were wrong. Anyway...cost us a bit more to withdraw than hoped for.
All 10 of us piled back into the van to make a very congested drive of about an hour back to our AIRBNB. The rest of them had to drive another 30 minutes to get to Juan and Blanca's place. We all made it. Another day is upon us.....
Pictures:
Neza and his beautiful boy....
A melon cup with picante stuff on it. Quite good....Mango, Watermelon, etc..
Having fun on the bus tour....
On the bus getting ready to get soaked!
Karlie and Lorenzo playing with ear phones....
Policia everywhere down here in herds no less. Pretty interesting how much police force is here.
Our Kitchen in our apartment...
Dinner...it was yummy. Pretty narrow room. And I think I’m sitting on a bucket like stool. Pretty informal.
Viva Mexico! Their heritage.....
The bus riding group. Neza, Atticus, Blanca, Juan, Maraya, and I think Sylvia is behind Juan.
The blogger....
Our potato chips at lunch time today. Made in front of us. Pretty good!
Newer buildings in downtown Ciudad de Mexico...
We got off the bus at this memorial and walked around it a bit to let the kids stretch their legs. I wish I could remember what it represented. I’m not a good historian like others in the family.
National Palace I believe...
Mexican flags are flown everywhere here. This is our hosts place above our apartment.
You can see how hard it rained here. It went for quite a while.
Viva Mexico...displayed in many places.
Another significant plaza and building. You can see a military helicopter in the background.
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