After driving through rush-hour traffic to get to our place, we decided to park our car at the airbnb the entire visit, and take the metro to get to the sites. The metro is cheap (Alec was free!) and got us close to the most places, although we still had to walk a lot. Luckily our kids are used to walking! We sometimes found seats on the metro, but most of the time it was crowded. Then I started taking Macie and the two younger boys on the special "women and children" train car and we had a lot more room. Poor Jodee and Carter had to squeeze into the other cars!
Altar a la Patria, located at the entrance to the big park in the Historic Center. The park contains a castle, a pond, playground, a museum, and several stands selling food, toys, and various knick knacks. We walked on the path behind the stands to avoid being bombarded by salespeople. But the kids thought it was hilarious when we walked down the center of the restaurant stands and literally every five feet someone put a menu in front of our faces. Good times! 😂
Chapultepec Castle was our first stop after entering the park. We had to walk up a long hill to reach the top. Jodee got to walk up the hill twice because we couldn't take our water backpacks into the castle and the lockers are at the bottom of the hill. Lucky him! Despite the rough start, we enjoyed touring this castle, which has served as a military academy, imperial residence, Presidential home, observatory, and currently the National Museum of History.
The location on top of a hill provided us with amazing views of the city. The garden on top was equally impressive.
Silly boys trying to imitate the statues.
Macie and I loved this hallway with its checkered floor and stained glass windows. The boys liked this blue grandfather clock.
Are we done yet??
The zoo was a fun diversion and it's free everyday! It also has a panda bear, which we got a glimpse of (but I forgot to take a picture!).
The best part was watching this little jaguar (cheetah? I forget.) play in front of the glass. It would run back and forth and put its paws up and bear its teeth. Quite entertaining!
The National Museum of Anthropology was amazing! It is a huge museum with so many rooms full of treasures. I could have spent twice as long there, but the kids weren't as impressed. Apparently they think ancient artifacts all look the same after awhile. 😆
Contrary to common belief, this round disk is not an Aztec calendar. Instead, it is a sacrificial altar! We'd seen replicas of this at Teotihuacan, so it was fun to see the real one.
Ian was my buddy and went around to lots of exhibits with me, when the other kids were resting.
Thanks to yelp, we found this yummy Argentinian pizza place around the corner from our apartment. The thin crust pizza and empanadas were delicious! The owner/waitress was so sweet and nice to our kids - Alec even gave her a hug when we left!
We took a hop on-hop off city tour bus the last day because we were all tired and needed the break. It was a fun way to see the city! But sometimes the branches came down a little too close for comfort!
We all got headphones that we could tune into the English language channel. The information was minimal (for me) but perfect for the attention span of the kids.
Angel of Independence
We hopped off the bus for a little while to visit the Museo Mucho Chocolate. The displays were just ok and it was very small, but the kids loved playing in the huge pile of cocoa powder! We bought some chocolate pieces and tried a chocolate tamale, too.
Another stop was at the famous Metropolitan Cathedral. It is the largest cathedral in the Americas, and it's a beautiful building, both inside and out. However, it is slowly sinking because it was built on soft ground. Much of the city was built on a former lake. You can tell from the picture below, the right side is lower than the left (look at the doorway at the back). The outside pavement is also cracked. Hopefully something can be done to save this historic building!
Right outside the cathedral we saw this man doing some kind of healing ceremony, complete with incense and chanting.
This little guy got bored, then grumpy, and then gave up and slept the last hour of the ride!
This pretty much sums up how Alec felt about the bus! Everyone else enjoyed it though!
We stopped by this bakery for a quick treat. The boys had a hard time choosing because there were tables and tables of goodies!
Overall we enjoyed our time in Mexico City. We ended the trip with a memorable event on the last night. We were later than normal getting on the metro to head home for the day. It was 7 pm and we went down to get on our usual train. When we got to the tracks, we were shocked to see hundreds of people lined up to get on. People were in rows 4 or 5 deep, shoulder to shoulder. When the packed train arrived, people started pushing and screaming and only a few people ended up getting on and off. It was quite the sight! A local told Jodee that this occurs every night for a few hours. We decided to get an Uber instead of waiting around. :) I can't imagine having to try to take the metro every night like that! After several busy days in CDMX, we were ready to head to quieter Oaxaca City!
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