Hello from Mexico City :-)

Greetings from Mexico City where I'm spending a few days with my son, Jake. We are exploring as many regions as possible (within reason!) of this sprawling city of 26 million. Mexico City is the oldest capital of the New World and is renowned for the cultural and historic richness of its dozens of museums, striking architecture and widely varied gastronomy, all of which are of keen interest to both of us.

Christmas Day was quiet in the city since most locals celebrate at home with family, and generally restaurants and museums are closed. We began the day by walking from our Airbnb in Condesa to the Hotel Condesa DF for a wonderful, leisurely buffet breakfast in the central courtyard pictured below.  

This luxury hotel also has a beautiful rooftop with views over the city, a bar, an exercise room and hot tub, and lots of open air seating to enjoy the pleasant breezes and mid-70 temperatures. Indoors on the ground floor are several soothing spaces for reading and relaxing, most painted in a striking shade of blue.

We spent some time walking around the Condesa neighborhood which is trendy, residential and very green. Many wide avenues in the parts of Mexico City I've seen so far are tree-lined and well-swept, with broad walking paths and park benches. There are lots of small, immaculate parks as well. It's great to see the investment the city has made in public spaces, at least in many areas of the city frequented by tourists like us as well as local residents. Also, the Metro (subway) is super extensive, safe and easy to use, incredibly inexpensive (25 cents per entry to go as far as you want!), very clean and we've never waited longer than a couple of minutes for a train. We've used it quite a lot and it far surpasses any other metro system I've used anywhere.

The afternoon of Christmas Day we walked through the massive Bosque de Chapultepec park, from where you have a good view of the city, despite the constant smog.

There's a spiral-shaped museum in the park, surrounded by cacti...
 

 ...and a castle that once housed Aztec emperors.

The park has a lake with paddle boats, play areas and interesting shelters, and lots of grassy slopes for lazing away the day.

 After a long day of walking, we treated ourselves to a poolside cocktail at a nearby hotel.

One evening we took the Metro to Zocalo, an immense public square in the historic city center. There were lots of Christmas lights and music and huge crowds of people - not my favorite type of venue! So to escape the crowds we went and had a mojito on the top floor of the Downtown Hotel, which was also lavishly decorated for the holidays.  

Yesterday we tried a cooking class with a local couple, Nicole and Ricardo, who took us first to the Jamaica Market to get fresh ingredients. Besides fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, a large part of the market is exclusively for flowers.

At their modest home, we prepared fish tacos topped with watermelon, cilantro and onion, chalupitas with cactus, refried beans and cheese, lime water, and fried plantain with cream and strawberry jelly for dessert.

More to come, but that's probably plenty to read for now!