Mexico- Day Two

Note, read this post first for the description of the cast of characters.

We were supposed to get up at 7:15am but A.'s alarm on his watch went off in Eastern time (6:15am) and he thought he'd reset it and we fell back asleep. At 7:40am the phone rang and it was N. who was down in the hotel restaurant with the others. We were supposed to leave at 8am (oops!), but she said not to worry, we'd leave when we were ready. So we got showered and dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast in the hotel. The others were almost finished, but some were still hanging around their table. A. was feeling a bit from the night before so decided to order a simple breakfast, 2 fried eggs and toast. The eggs were sunny side up and had the most orange looking yolks I've ever seen! Zoe ordered the kid's pancake breakfast and fruit. I ordered sincronizadas, which were three tortillas layered with melted cheese and ham with guacamole on the side. I had this later on at the hotel in Orizaba but it was not as good as it was here, so good I had them each morning we were at this hotel.

So after we finished breakfast we all piled into the big white van and into J.'s Honda CRV. I forgot to mention J in my original cast of characters. There are actually 2 J.'s, both with the same name and both partners. J. #1 is L.'s brother and N.'s best friend. J. #2 is J.#1's partner.



So today the plan was to go to the Aztec pyramids outside of Mexico City called Teotihuacan (I can never remember how to say or spell or pronounce that word for some reason). It took us about an hour or so to get there. It was good that we got there early as it was not too crowded, by the time we left throngs and throngs of people were arriving.

Except for R.'s mom, whose hip has been bothering her, the rest of us started climbing the Temple of the Sun pyramid. The steps were very steep, irregular, and there were often holes in the stone. At first I thought I was doing pretty good, although I could feel some pain in my hip and back from bringing my right leg up to the next steep step. There was a very long set of steps that reached the midway point of the pyramid. I got up it just fine but when I got to the top and leaned against the wall to rest I was hit by a big wave of nausea. I immediately slipped down to the ground and drank some water and told the others that I had reached my limit and to keep on going without me. I think it was the altitude. Mexico City is similar to Denver in altitude, and I don't know what the altitude was where we were, but climbing that giant pyramid was bringing us a lot higher. Whew! Luckily I recovered fairly quickly, but then I had to figure out how to get myself up off the ground, no easy feat with my back and hip issues. But I did it and found a nice spot near the steps to stand and enjoyed watching all the people going up and down and their trials and tribulations in doing so, and the gorgeous view.

After everyone got back down to the ground someone asked if we wanted to go climb the other pyramid and there were no takers. We were all pretty much exhausted from that one. We didn't get to go explore the other sites either, but took some pictures of each other with the pyramid in the background and bought some trinkets from the people selling things for the kids, some carved animal whistles that played more than one note and a glass pyramid necklace for J. and glass pyramid key chain for Z. (which unfortunately she managed to lose the last day of our trip so it never made it home.) N. also bought Z. a glass "gem" and stand. It was probably 3 1/2" wide and a 3" tall, heavy and admittedly was pretty (which did make it home just fine).

We got back to the car and drove a short ways and stopped at some street vendors for lunch. It was a cool, overcast day and they were using coolers and ice to keep their food cold so our hosts felt it was safe. There was a plastic awning with tables and chairs so most of us sat down in there while a few of the Spanish speakers brought over food and drink as it was ready. N. was calling them empanadas, but my thought of empanadas is a fried dough type of thing, and this was more like a corn tortilla quesadilla folded like a taco (dry fried on the griddle to melt and heat the insides). The tortillas were handmade on the spot from blue corn and were some of the best tortillas I have ever had. The first batches that came out had melted cheese inside and were so good. The next batch had pumpkin flowers (similar to a zucchini blossom) and cheese and were also fabulous. The last batch had a seasoned pork and was most people's favorite, although the plain cheese were awfully close for me. While we were waiting for the food to be made a few people had bought these big bags of peeled cut fruit from the vendor across the street (oranges, watermelon and I think pineapple was on the bottom). Some bought them plain but a couple of the bags had chile powder sprinkled on top (mainly the oranges and watermelon). Oh my was that good! The chile powder was not very hot but extremely flavorful. N. bought her and myself bags of the chile powder before we left and I can't wait to find some good oranges (somewhere, not exactly the season around here) to sprinkle it on. In the meantime I did buy a jicama and will try it on that.

The other fruit that they bought from people on the side of the road were called tunas. They are part of a particular cactus, these little ball like things on top that are peeled and put in plastic bags and sold all over the place on the sides of roads. The more common ones were the light green ones, but they also bought a bag of the red ones (I only tried the green ones). They were delicate in flavor and kind of watery on the outside and crunchy inside.



From there we drove back to Mexico City and they wanted to bring us to Our Lady of Guadalupe church, but it was Sunday and there were massive amounts of people making a pilgrimage there so it would have taken us hours to get near the place so we scrapped that idea. (The next morning A.-Sr., L., R., N., and R's parents got up early and went back while the rest of us slept in). So instead they drove us to the Museo Frida Kahlo, which was in her family home which is also where her and Diego Rivera lived for a while in Mexico City. There were some paintings but mostly drawings and photographs, (difficult to understand what they were as everything was written in Spanish). They also had some rooms set up with her famous beds (one with the mirror on the canopy so she could paint in bed while bedridden), their studio, the kitchen, and some of her clothing (she was fond of traditional Mexican dress) and the corset like brace she had to wear as she recuperated from her many surgeries due to the horrific bus accident she was in.

After leaving there we drove to a coffee shop. There was a coffee bar where you could get espresso (or whatever) and I was happy to find they had decaf (almost impossible to find in the places we were at in Mexico) so got a decaf cappuccino (the decaf was 15 cents extra but the cappuccino was only 95 cents to begin with). There was a bakery attached which had the most gigantic donuts I have ever seen in my life and they had MAPLE glazed donuts (impossible to find around here, I have mostly seen them in New England) with crushed walnuts on top. We had to get one of those, and Z. wanted this giant sweet pretzel shaped pastry so we got one of those, and also a chocolate frosted donut and all sat and ate and drank on benches right outside the place. We didn't quite finish it all, but made pretty good headway considering how much we ate for lunch. I was in heaven as I adore maple glazed donuts (well, I adore most donuts, but usually confine myself to eating them once a year, freshly made donuts at the Amish festival at a local farmer's market every August) and haven't had one in many years. Not exactly on a diabetic diet, but it was about that point that I gave up and decided to just enjoy myself for the week and for the most part, except for a distinct lack of vegetables, I don't think I did too bad.

So there was more driving around the city to show us things before getting back to the hotel and collapsing. Some notes about the hotel: There were no face cloths, no ice buckets, no pens and paper or clock. Right inside of the door to the room there was a thing on the wall that you put your hotel key card in. This turned on the electricity, when you left you take the key and it turns everything off (and they gave us just one key). This was a good thing when I forgot to unplug my heating pad before going out to dinner that 2nd night. We used bottled water to brush our teeth but it was likely not necessary as most hotels have filtered water. We were feeling extra cautious at the beginning, the subsequent hotels we used the tap water (and one hotel had a little sign saying the water was potable).

Z. went down to spend a little time with J. and V. in their room and shortly after we all left the hotel and walked a few blocks to a modern mall right next door to the Holiday Inn. Most of the stores were European, but the feel of the mall was like a small upscale American mall. They had a food court complete with American fast food which is where we ended up. Z. was excited to have chicken mcnuggets (it was so easy to order at McDonald's as the menu was basically in English) and fries and I ordered a diet coke. J. got a burger and most of the others ordered from a Mexican fast food place (a Mexican chain that specialized in grilled meat platters) that actually took a while to prepare the food after you ordered it). I was pretty full so ate a few of Z.'s fries and drank my diet coke. After J. and Z. were done eating I took them to a small kiosk that only sold McD's ice cream cones and sundaes. The three of us each got a "large" vanilla cone, which was actually quite small but just enough for me.

Back at the hotel Z. took a shower and crawled into bed and fell right to sleep. My back was bothering me so I was having a hard time sleeping which was made much worse by some extremely noisy neighbors on the bed side of the room. Their yelling wouldn't have been so bad but periodically they would bang against the wall and if A. and I did happen to doze off we were woken up with a start. About 3:30 am A. got up and called the front desk, we heard someone knock on the door and a bit later someone rang the phone but it didn't quiet them down at all. I had taken a muscle relaxant for my back, which normally puts me out, but even that didn't help me to sleep. Finally about 5:00am they fell asleep and so did we but we needed to get up around 8:45am so it wasn't a whole lot of sleep. The next morning N. asked the desk clerk about it when we checked out and they said it was a school group with a couple of teachers from the US.