Traveling through Kyrgyzstan Part 3: Do I Prefer Wilderness Now?by Randi / October 15, 2017
After a week in the wilderness of eastern Kyrgyzstan, we were finally on our way to the big city for a few days. Bishkek (formerly Pishpek lolololol) would bring us restaurants, cafes, parks, museums, a hotel, laundry, all the markings of civilization – plus a shittonne more people and, with other cars besides ours in a 100 mile radius for the first time, lots and lots of pollution from the exhaust. But laundry!
Catch up on the previous Kyrgyzstan posts!
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Part 3: Jeti Oguz, Karakol, Cholpan Ata
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village
Part 3: Jeti Oguz, Karakol, Cholpan Ata
Bishkek has almost 1 million residents in an area of 127 square kilometers. Considering public transit is really not a big thing there (most people rely on mashrutkas (which we will be talking about a lotttt in the next post) which are literally just small unmarked white vans crammed with lots of people and you just like get in???? no!), the traffic is abysmal. It took like an hour to go a mile one afternoon. Yes we could have walked faster. Because of all the cars, and all the lack of environmental regulation on said (super ancient Soviet) cars, the pollution in the city was intense. The concentrations of dangerous pollutants in the city center often exceed allowable maximums. It’s not as bad as the pollution in Beijing, but I noticed it 100x more, and smelled it. I guess different sources make different smellies. I wonder what the world will do about this sort of thing oh that’s right NOTHING.
Aside from that Bishkek was pretty nice.
There’s a good amount of green space and parks in the city center, and lots of statues and arts
Day 7
We woke up in the Chon Kemin CBT guesthouse to the wifi not working. Since this was the day we were going to actually drive to the capital city, we finally switched on the privileged yoot section of our brains that we had turned off for so long in the wilderness and righteously complained (to each other; we’re not monsters) about the lack of modern-day amenities. Entering a yurt for breakfast while totally unaware of what happened in the world overnight?! Who does that? Besides literally everyone who lives in yurts, I mean.
Breakfast was a heavy fried dough calzone type thing filled with potato, so not exactly the kind of thing that sets me off feeling great for a day. I wish I could have refused but yurt lady would not allow people to even refuse to drink tea! Old yurt ladies are not to be messed with! So I tried to eat some and pretended to drink my tea all while looking around the table for my missing friend, the watermelon. Arbus! Arbus where are you?
this field did not have my friend arbus
however it did have this giant f-ing hoe (bag)
We set out for our drive to Bishkek with a few stops on the itinerary. First stop after only a few minutes was this giant hoe in a field. I think it’s a giant hoe. It might be a giant guitar. Who knows and who knows why. Z do you remember? I mean who doesn’t like big f-ing things in the middle of fields, I guess.
Next up was a legit tourist attraction, the Burana Tower, which is a big minaret from the 9th century. The original tower was severly damaged by earthquakes over the years (omg there are earthquakes here?) and restored in the 1970s. You might be thinking that those renovations not so long ago mean that the tower was reconstructed with modern audiences in mind, but you would be wrong. Climbing to the top of the tower, which is the thing to do if you are able-bodied, is a legit shitshow. Hold on here’s a picture first.
tower of doom
First, you climb up a rickety metal winding staircase on the outside of the tower, to a platform about 2 stories up. (I don’t know how big a story is but it seemed like 2 times what I do to get upstairs at home.) We found about 4 people on the platform, waiting at the entrance/hole cut out of the tower. We were told we had to wait for everyone up at the top at the moment to come down, because the stairhole inside is only big enough for one person at a time in one single direction. And you have to climb up and down using your feet and your hands because it is so cramped and narrow and super steep. SO MUCH FUN. Like I said above, you have to be able-bodied, and more than that you have to not be claustrophobic because if you freak out inside there is literally no way for anyone to get to you. I was petrified. I almost said f it and turned back down the winding staircase to the safety of the ground, like two of the people in line ahead of us did. But I figured I would want to have done this. I guess. It’s really not a huge deal. It’s not the great wall. I don’t know if I recommend climbing up if you are not super enthusiastic about tiny ancient stone torture methods. Oh ps no one works on the tower to keep order; just another guide told us about the waiting and the narrowness so it was lucky she was there. They should have a sign or something.
Finally (we waited like a half hour) the other tourists came down, clearing the way for us to go up. You know who one of those finishing tourists was? An eighty-year-old woman. F-ing hell. I had to try after seeing her! See me above, tentatively grasping for the stair above me while I still had light? After these first few steps, they wind around so that the brick wall is right against your back and you have to climb up like you are in 2D. And it was dark. It was scary. Blech. Luckily it didn’t take as long as I feared; maybe the fear made me scamper faster. Anyway this was the view.
So, you know, not, like, gorgeous.
Going down was awful, since you couldn’t see (even if there was light, it was too squashed) what your feet were reaching for as your hands did their best not to let go. But finally we were back on solid ground. The rest of the Burana site had a few small museums with artifacts uncovered in the area and some ancient stone statues, probably for fertility or war.
Finally we made our way to Bishkek! We dropped our stuff at our hotel before Sacha took us on a tour of the city. That’s right bishes, a hotel! It was a nice little clean and modern place called Futuro Hotel and it was splendid to have my own bathroom again, even if there was a big mirror in the shower which is just weird. The only downside was that, despite being a smaller cooler not-upscale hotel, Futuro mimicked upscale hotels’ stupid stupid stupid overpriced laundry service costs, the per-item kind where it’s cheaper to just buy new clothes than to pay $4 to clean each sock. Speaking of, I had lost a sock so I was down to one clean one which really did me no good. I get that fancy hotels do this because a lot of people who stay there don’t care what it costs or can charge to businesses or something, but this hotel was clearly catering to the laundromat set who would never spend more on cleaning a tee shirt than they did on the room itself. Anyway, so we searched high and low for a laundromat. Where was my laundry babushka when I needed her? (Oh in Ulan Ude.) We found one online – one – but it didn’t have an address, only a neighborhood and a phone number that didn’t connect 99% of the time. Sacha called A LOT and they never picked up until ahhh finally they did! Where are you located, we assume he asked? And they said the name of a main street and that was it. Wtf. We drove up and down the main street 100x and there was no sign of it. Sacha yelled at every single passerby “DEVUSHKA!” (the word for girl and like waitress) and asked if they knew where the laundromat was and no one had any idea that there was one in their city. Why doesn’t every single city have a laundromat I don’t understand! It would do such good tourist business. Finally we went down an alley and then turned into another alley and found a dusty shed of a place that was a carpet cleaning business. That was it, it turned out! I felt real weird leaving all of my clothes at a carpet cleaning shop but they said they could clean clothes too so okay. It was the equivalent of like $4. We picked up the next day and everything was ostensibly clean, but smelled like horse.
yeah like that
After we got that sorted, we could finally relax and see Bishkek. Well, relax as much as possible when we were 75% sure we were never getting our clothes back. Eh I’m sick of everything I brought anyway. Bishkek was a welcome shot of modernity after the past few weeks. There were buildings and sidewalks, restaurants and museums, all kinds of signs of a real city. And like I said before, tons of horrible car exhaust to try not to inhale. Funny how traveling can make one long for London’s pollution. Bishkek had lots of important statues all around the center commemorating important state history as well as important world events. The guy on the horse above is Magnanimous Manas, one of the most important legends in Kyrgyzstan. Manas is from an epic poem that is 500,000 lines long, and while Kyrgyz people argue that that’s the longest epic poem in history and Tibetans are like naw look here, I think we can all agree it’s in the top 3. Manas’s stories contains the expected battles and invasions and his heroism in such things. He’s strong and brave, and then he has a son who is equally brave and strong and they defeat the Afghans and stuff. Rode horses.
well I’m not entirely sure if this was one of the war ones but it looks like it right, and odds are good
this one definitely looks like war stuff
this one is definitely about the war. It’s in a whole memorial square in the city center, near the arches pictured at the top
The statue pictured above, of the MAN HOLDING UP A HORSE, represents the very important guy Baatyr Kaba Uulu Kozhomkul. Hoo boy, this guy, he’s big here. He was said to be 7.5 feet tall, over 400 pounds, and so strong that he carried his horse through a mountain pass after an avalanche. Hence this statue, outside the sports stadium named after Kozhomkul, honoring his most famous Feat of Strength. Hysterical.
But of course my favorite statue had to be the requisite GIANT LENIN that every once-Soviet city must flaunt.
giant lenin giant lenin giant lenin
We walked all around the city center with Sacha to see all the things, and it was soo freaking hot. 35 degrees celsius which even I know is hella hot despite my refusal to learn celsius. There was a good deal of green space which helped give a little relief from the sun. One of the parks had my favorite thing, a moon bounce. I mean a bouncy house. I mean a bouncy castle.
why aren’t they ever for grown ups
i just wanted to share a picture of this pretty flower square I SWEAR TO MANAS that that white figure in the background in the hat was NOT there in real life wtf???
Actually since we’re on the subject of favorites and I usually have 100 favorites thereby completely draining the word of any meaning, here’s my real favorite thing about Bishkek. This square right in the city center had this giant screen sharing information, maybe news, maybe pictures of art, or maybe advertisements. I don’t actually know, because this is how the screen was when we were there – not working, on the windows desktop by accident. I am still hysterical at this. Did NO one responsible for it notice?
Someone got fiiiiired.
After our scorching hot tour of the city with Sachafierce, we had the evening to ourselves. First on my list from HappyCow was a restaurant called Social Coffee. They had a vegetarian section in the menu! I was so excited – I got hummus (my favorite), tofu (my favorite), and green juice! The hummus was good but they didn’t serve it with nearly enough bread or crackers so I had to eat most of it just on a fork which is whack. The tofu was good for not being in a tofu country! The green juice was whatever, green juice, but might be the thing responsible for my nausea later than night. Betrayed! No it was probably because it came with ice. Ugh. I was okay though it passed. I know you’re concerned.
The best thing about the Futuro Hotel was, well my own bathroom, but aside from that, the best was that five minutes up the road was a huge Globus Supermarket! (It was so big they named it after the globe!) They had amazing stuff – a giant prepared food section with wonderful vegan dishes like – of course – my favorite tofu skin and carrot salad that we had all through Siberia. AGAIN, it translated from the Russian as “asparagus salad”. If ANYONE can explain to me why they call strips of tofu skin ‘asparagus’ please let me know! Isn’t that confusing for them? Or do they not have asparagus in this part of the world so like, they just gave that name to something else? Isn’t that still confusing when like people from other (non-Soviet) parts of the world talk about asparagus? What if you’re having a conversation and someone is like “we had this great asparagus it was cooked just enough so it was still crisp” and the former-Soviet person would be like, “what do you mean still crisp? it’s never crisp, it’s stretchy.” I mean I guess the odds of this conversation happening are slim to none but still, there’s grounds for confusion and I wanted so badly to have someone work this out with me but my Russian is barely good enough to order all the asparagus/tofu skin salad. Which I did.
the next night we had a hotel room buffet dinner from Globus with this ‘asparagus’ and the potato wedges you can sort of see and a huge cabbage salad and bread literally one of my favorite dinners ever 😛
Globus also had a great bulk food section of things like nuts and dried fruit and my favorite thing – fried broad beans! Like I found in the Kashgar bazaar! Luckily, unlike those market beans, these grocery store beans did not threaten to break my teeth every time I tried to chew them. These were actually made safely for human teeth! I wish I had more ugh so good. And yes London people I know the organic shoppe up the street from me sells these from the bulk bins too but it’s not the same! This was sustenance!
The supermarket, and Kyrgyz minimarts, also had this amazing chocolate popcorn that happened to be accidentally vegan. We ate the shiiiiz out of that.
lolol ‘real American’ okay sure I’ll take it!
Speaking of ‘what Kyrgyz people think America is’, here’s the peanut butter they had for sale. CRACKING UP.
THOSE ARE TWO DIFFERENT STATES
But the real best was in the toiletries part of the store. There was a GIGANTIC section of hilarious socks. I’m obsessed. They were cheap and adorable and easy to squeeze in my pack so I bought sooo many. If we’re friends in real life you will probably be getting one of these beauts soon.
Full with TWO different kinds of protein, my bag stocked with crazy socks, beans, and popcorn, I was pretty happy with our first day in Bishkek. That first night’s sleep in the hotel was amaze.
DAY 8
For our last day in Kyrgyzstan, Sacha picked us up early to drive us to Ala Archa National Park. Forget Ulan Ude, Ala Archa is the REAL way Russians say “Alan Alda”. Ala Archa (which is pronounced, at least by Sacha, with an amazing elision so it’s more like ‘alarcha’) is an alpine park about an hour’s drive from Bishkek. It’s still part of the Tien Shan mountain range, can you believe how big that range is?! Still since China! The park is mainly the gorge from the Alarcha River and all the pretty mountains for trekking and hiking and climbing and just general wanderingment.
look at those freaking snow capped mountains! can’t get over
Alarcha is gorge-ous
always screaming about something this bish (actually sneezing is more likely)
Ala Archa was beautiful, as you can see, and also serene, feeling a lot more untouched and raw than other national parks sometimes do. We had all morning to hike around the trails and relax in nature while we still could. It’s places like this that make you forget all the troubles of the world. Well until Sacha recommended that we climb a particularly steep part of a mountain to a place affectionately known as “climbers’ cemetery”. Mmm, nah, we good.
THEEEE HIIIILLLLS ARE ALIIIIIIIVE
Still can’t believe things like this exist in this world
troubled little bridge over even more troubled water
We walked all around the park and the gorge, exploring the area around the rapids via these tiny little petrifying bridges. Luckily Sacha didn’t try to drive over this one. I love how loud the water is, when it’s the only sound you can hear in the whole world.
SQUIRREL
As ever, the signage did not disappoint.
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? FOR THE LIFE OF ME. I CANNOT FIGURE OUT WHAT WAS INTENDED.
Regardless of how much my head still hurts from trying to figure out that sign, this was a pretty perfect last day in Kyrgyzstan. Ala Archa was lovely and reminiscent of my favorite place, the similar Jedi Oguz Geopark place from the last post. To say goodbye, Sacha took us out to a great lunch (I got TWO kinds of cabbage salads!) and gave us these absolutely ridiculous and perfect souvenirs.
They crack me up every time I look at them! So perfect. So, I know you probably wanted me to despise my time in Kyrgyzstan (it’s funnier that way FOR YOU) but as it turns out, I kind of loved this trip! I would highly recommend a visit around the country for anyone who likes natural beauty and places off the beaten path or terribly named peanut butters. Such a wonderful time.
Tomorrow we leave for Kazakhstan! Mah wife!
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Gozo, Malta: Lots to See and Enjoy Besides the Azure Window (RIP)
Last summer, Husband and I spent a lovely vacation all over Malta, a tiny country with many beautiful sights and at least one very amazing Eurovision song. It’s just below Sicily and to the east of Tunisia so, unfortunately, it’s often overlooked when people plan vacations to the area and choose the more well-known places. They/you shouldn’t, because Malta is a wonderful spot for a holiday. It offers a calmer, smaller experience than the more famous places in the area but with natural beauty and charm and (most importantly when coming from Britain) warmth. I wrote about Valletta, the capital, a while back and I’ll be writing about all the different places we saw eventually, but today I want to talk about Gozo, the even tinier island just to the northeast of the main island. Gozo was probably our favorite part of Malta. It had stunning natural beauty and interesting archaeological sites. The seemingly endless dirt ‘roads’ and desert-like atmosphere made it seem like we were discovering new land, which is a hard feeling to have in Europe.
Despite its size, Gozo has a lot to offer travelers. We spent two days on Gozo, arriving via the ferry from the main island. You don’t have to pay to go to Gozo – you pay for the round-trip on the return journey. Very efficient! During the short time, we drove our rental car all over tarnation with Siri telling us atrocious things to do like make a left turn into a café and then drive down a pedestrian pathway full of tables and benches. (We did not do those things.) So, if you go, note that Malta is like the most civilized, settled place in the world that global positioning systems just do NOT understand. Those drives included trips to the beach, another beach, another beautiful beach, archaeological sites, and more.
One of our favorite sights was the Azure Window, a natural stone formation at the coast that somehow, through the power of nature, formed a kind of square above the insanely violent, crashing waves of the Mediterranean Sea, which I never knew could be so ferocious and intense. So, this brings me to today’s most serious self-beratement as I realize that hot damn I need to be more punctual with my blog posts (I still have a 2.5 year backlog) – because of the news coming out of Gozo a few weeks ago that that shockingly violent sea finally caused what the Maltese had been dreading, the fall of the Azure Window. Ecological reports during recent years have stated that this destruction would be inevitable and that there was no manmade engineering feat that could save it. A particularly bad storm was the final act that brought it down, but it was going to happen soon anyway. It’s devastating for the Maltese people to have one of their most beautiful sights and an important part of their culture gone in a flash. As travelers, it’s a reminder to us that you can’t expect the world to stay the same until you’re ready to see it. We were lucky that we up and decided to go to Malta last year, as it was generally a random decision based on ‘this sounds like a nice place’. If we had thought eh maybe next summer, we would have missed this experience. The world keeps changing in all kinds of ways, and if you want to do or see something, it won’t wait for you.
Luckily for those of you who haven’t been to Malta, the country and Gozo itself still has a lot to offer. It’s a shame that you won’t get to see the Azure Window, but there’s still plenty to see and plenty reason to go.
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ok so I know it looks like just a pile of rocks but SHE GIVES YOU FOOD AND SHE GIVES YOU REST AND SHE HOLDS YOU CLOSE TO HER GIANT BREAST
A very cool archaeological site we saw in the town of Xaghra was Ggantija (pronounced just kidding I have no idea), or “Giant’s Tower”, which is fun because literally all day I was singing “there are giants in the skyyyyyyyy”. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site along with other Megalithic Temples of Gozo. These towers are hella old, like dating back to 3000 BCE, older than the Egyptian pyramids and, at least according to mythology, made with less blood and suffering. The manmade religious structure is a ceremonial fertility site, which makes sense when you consider the folklore behind it: A giantess who ate nothing but broad beans (#me) had a bebbeh with a commoner, and once she birthed the baby she just carried it around and built the temples while holding it, nbd. Strong giantess sounds LEGIT. A big tall terrible lady giant sweeping the floooooor…
This site was hard to find because the GPS was wrong, as it was pretty much the entire trip. But it was worth the frustration of finding it! It’s a relatively small site, but definitely a must on Gozo.
AND YOU KNOW THINGS NOW THAT YOU NEVER KNEW BEFOOOOORE
i do snack on broad beans a lot, those fried and salted ones that are sold in every natural food store here? so good! and usually in the bulk bins too so they are economical |
SUCH a romantic poem jesus h christ men are SO WEIRD AND GROSS THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC AHHHHH |
Next, we drove to the town of Victoria to see the Citadel, or Gran Castello, which is much better than the school in South Carolina full of sexism. The Citadel is a medieval castle and fortress with fortifications dating back to 1500 BCE. Apparently it was built by the Crown of Aragon, but I think some nerds were having fun messing with Wikipedia because he’s a guy from Lord of the Rings; even I know that. We walked the maze of walkways along the ramparts as they were gallantly screaming and just kind of took it in, ya know, got sunburnt, ya know.
best part |
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the view from the Citadel it makes you so thirsty right?? so dry!
We also stopped in the Church of St. John the Baptist, mostly because there was a panorama view at the top. Whenever we travel, if there is a thing at the top of something, we climb it. It’s what we do. Unforch, this church didn’t have stairs up to the top (or that we could find), but it did have an elevator. The scariest lift ever. We tried to take it, but it wasn’t working, so some staffer (bishop?) came and fiddled some but then called for an electrician. We were like, naw man it’s okay, don’t worry about it, but he was like ‘no no the electrician is outside’. It was hard to discern whether the electrician was already en route to fix this elevator or whether Gozo really is that small that you’re just like, always right outside any place, but regardless, electrician came in, turned a key, and up we went to the top of the church, by ourselves, 99% sure that it wasn’t going to stay powered the whole way up. Luckily it did, and we explored the quite large roof terraces before worrying about the trip down. The best part by far was the great signage around the walkways, followed closely by the views. Oh and also there was a chair in the elevator, which I found hilarious. It’s like three stories.
oh look this is a church 
this was the original lyric to ‘come on get happy’ |
they wanted me to review the elevator on tripadvisor literally just the elevator. it was a good elevator I guess because it worked 
i still object for the record |
view from the citadel
The best part of Gozo was the beaches. We drove around to a few different ones one day. As luck would have it, the last beach we went to, Ramla Bay, was the best one, which sucked because we had such a short time before it started getting cold and dark, but still it was great. The red sand of this beach made me feel like I was on Mars or something but without the horribleness of being in space. There was nothing really special about the flat scenery compared to the gorgeous rocky cliffs in other parts of the island, but something about how pleasant it was, how easy it was to maneuver, and how much it was like the beaches we’re accustomed to (i.e. soft sand and an open sea) made us feel peaceful and happy.
So, even though it’s really heartbreaking that the Azure Window is gone, you shouldn’t count out a trip to Gozo because of it – there’s still plenty to do. Just think, all this is just the stuff I can remember! There are literally hundreds of photos of cool things that I just can’t identify because it takes me years to blog about things! So go and see all the things and then maybe you can help me figure out what else I saw.
you could be a farmer in those clothes
Vegan In Mexico City Part 2: Coyoacan! Frida! Nacho Libre!
What’s up party people! We’re back and ready to talk more about Mexico City! We have so much to talk about because as usual we packed an absurd amount of Activity into our short time there. (Okay other practiced travelers are probably saying ‘no you do a normal amount of Activity for a travel blogger since we need to see as much as possible when visiting a new place’ but you forget how much sleep I need.) As I said in Part 1 of the CDMX posts, we’re breaking up the info roughly by neighborhood to give it at least a chance at making organizational sense.
ok these might not be bears but you get it
In this post, we’re moving south to the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City, where we find the famous blue house of Frida Kahlo, Casa Azul. I mean I guess it’s the famous house of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera but he seemed like a bit of a wanker so I’m going to focus less on him. Just a few blocks away is the Leon Trotsky house, where the Soviet revolutionary/Marxist/politician/Bolshevik/ Communist Party leader/&c lived and died in exile but not before partying with the Kahlo fam bam. I almost used a photo of the Trotsky house as the banner picture for this post but thought that might be weird/get me on lists. Anyway, aside from those two house museums we’re gonna eat great food and then go to a spectacular spectacle that I shockingly loved: Lucha Libre, the crayballs Mexican wrestling extravaganza.
Let’s start with the Commies!
THE LEON TROTSKY MUSEUM-HOUSE
Since I’m American, let’s start with the commies. You know how into all things Russia we’ve been for the past few years, learning as much as we can about the people taking over America, &c (and their language! правда!) so we weren’t missing this. I recommend a visit – it’s pretty quick and fairly interesting. It costs 40 pesos and would not take you more than 40 minutes to visit, so it’s like a peso per minute, a ratio that bothers me much less for museums than it does for theatre, strangely.
Trotsky was kind of a big deal in the USSR in the early 1900s, which is pretty much the time of all the big Soviet leaders whose names you know, like Stalin. Trotsky did not like Stalin. I mean no one ‘liked’ Stalin but he did it to his face. I really want to give him the nickname ‘The Trots’ but he’ll probably haunt me for that so no. Okay, so Leon was big into Marxism as a teen, as all teens are (?) and helped form the South Russian Workers’ Union. Since that sounds kinda nice, unions are good, he was exiled to Siberia, while I on the other hand paid to go there which is hilarious. (It’s not bad.) An enterprising young Trotter escaped to England, changed his name to the one we know now, and met up with fellow Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin, and they drank and argued in all the classic English pubs every night till closing about which of them would be commemorated in the future in every single Russian village and city with a giant and I mean GIANT bust of his head. (It was Lenin.) Mista Trotterrrr returned to Russia in 1905 for the Russian Revolution and was again exiled to Siberia and again escaped. This f-ing guy, am I right?
His radicalism got his azz thrown out of lots of otherwise nice places like Paris, Spain, NYC, and Switzerland (I mean but ‘neutrality’ favors the oppressors so fork you) (I know I know it is bothering me too that that list goes city, sovereign, city, sovereign but that’s how the source material I’m referencing does it ugh) and then he went back to Russia in time for the 1917 revolution. I mean he shows up for the important events, you gotta hand it to him. He was instrumental in the Bolshevik’s successful power grab, and he became Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs. He did lots of stuff, yada yada yada, learned English from Seinfeld, and seemed to be the successor to Lenin, but as The Death of Stalin taught us, once a leader gets sick all hell breaks out and the succession struggle falls into chaos. When Lenin died, Stalin emerged as leader, and since Trottingham East didn’t like him and in fact openly criticized his polices, Stalin propagandaed him, removed him from his posts, and then exiled him from the Communist Party and then the Soviet Union. After some time in Turkey and a few other Euro stops, Trottingham North was granted asylum in Mexico! Yay Mexico! He and his fam first lived at the Casa Azul with Frida! Did you know! Trotavarius had an affair with Frida, a fellow Communist (Alexander did you know), but like who didn’t (we will get there). I imagine he also ate some amazing food that must have been a welcome respite from cucumber-tomato salad (what I had all throughout the former USSR). After a few years and a few too many fights with Diego (I can imagine what about), the Trotskys moved a few blocks away to their own house, which is now the museum. Despite being probably as far away as possible, Stalin was still mad and prob jealous of the food so he ordered Trotsky’s assassination. The first one, using guns, was a failure, but the last one, with an ice axe, well, the details make it seem like also a failure (I wish I didn’t know the details) but he died the next day from his wounds.
So the museum! So fun! The entry building has lots of photographs from Trotsky’s life and info about his work. It was fun to practice reading Cyrillic again and to listen to all the Russian tour groups (I think when we were there it was just us and Russian tour groups). It’s not super informative but some of the photos are interesting. The real focus of the museum is his actual house and gardens. It has been kept just as it was when he lived there, which means it’s dark, due to bars and shutters on the windows. That also means some of the interior walls still have bullet holes from the failed attack. In the kitchen, his pots and pans are still out; in the bedrooms, shoes are still lined up; and in Leon’s study, his papers and glasses and books are still on his desk. Out in the lovely gardens is his tomb.
So, it’s not the most popular tourist attraction, but I definitely recommend a quick visit before the Casa Azul, especially since his relationship to the Kahlos can help you understand them more.
CASA AZUL: THE BLUE HOUSE OF FRIDA KAHLO
When you visit the Frida house, you buy tickets online in advance. It’s too busy and popular to risk otherwise. But even so, you’ll wait in an endless line snaking around the house, around the block, and several blocks away to enter. Yes, when we arrived in what we thought was good time for our ticketed slot, ticket holders were waiting in a queue for almost an hour. In the SUN, guys. It was rough. If it was for the theatre I would have missed most of the first act and demanded an exchange and better seats.
Is it worth it? I mean I’m not a Frida nut but it’s pretty interesting and, ya know, it’s the big f-ing thing to do. If you really don’t care, then by all means skip it; there’s no reason to set aside a whole afternoon for it. But if you have the time, it’s fairly interesting. You learn a lot about Frida, what she went through, what kind of person she really was. And the house is lovely.
Once you enter, they will try to shuffle you straight into the museum part of the house, where you look at Frida’s and Diego’s paintings with lots of tourists taking selfies with them even though, if I recall correctly, you aren’t allowed to take pictures. Don’t let them manhandle you though – there are no bathrooms until you finish the entire inside tour of the house, so find them first and then go back. It’s a MADHOUSE, wall-to-wall people, and you’ll get agita trying to read about all the works when people are blocking everything. There are some interesting works in these initial rooms, but the better stuff awaits when you see the rooms as they lived in them.
I especially liked the kitchen. I don’t think we were allowed to take pictures but we have this one, so.
Surprisingly, the super long video that’s playing on a deck out in the garden space was incredibly interesting. I usually zone out in museum videos, especially ones that are this long (it’s like a whole movie) but it was great. As we already learned, Frida had an affair with Trotsky, but did you also know she probs had one with…Georgia O’Keefe? Yah. More important than her affairs is the information about Frida’s chronic pain. She had polio as a small child and its effects changed her body forever, leaving her with one leg shorter and significantly weaker than the other, due to muscle atrophy. As a teenager, she would suffer even more after a streetcar accident, which left her with fractured ribs, spine, clavicle, pelvis, leg, a crushed foot, a dislocated shoulder, and an iron railing through her hip and pelvic floor, causing the infertility represented in many of her paintings. They didn’t think she would survive the accident, but she did, and was left with a lifetime of pain.
Her father encouraged her to start painting as she recovered, and that’s how she met Diego. If you’re more familiar with her art than I was, you’ve seen her pain and suffering, as well as her strength, in her works.
In fact, her famous clothing style was a direct result of that: her corsets were really back braces helping her stand up. The square tops of her Tehuanan ethnic heritage could fit over and hide the brace. Flowers in her hair, her famous braids, and other interesting adornment above the neck would lead people to look up instead of down at her broken, withered legs, which were also hidden often by big skirts.
She went through a lot, is what I’m saying. And I knew some of her famous work and some generalities about her life, but I never knew she was disabled. She was an artistic pioneer in large part because of her pain, and it’s worth noting how her disability is largely erased from the popular narrative (and of course the cinematic portrayals). Of course, she still had quite a life – people long thought of her as a victim to Diego’s infidelity, but girl could get it too, and did – but you understand a lot more about her when you know how she was constantly suffering.
Also, she and Diego were Communists. I think it fairly hilarious how much she would despise the capitalist pigs who make endless tee shirts and tote bags with her face on them and how bewildered she’d be by the people wearing them. She’d hate the gift shop on her property selling all kinds of shit with her face. I think she’d hate the Christmas ornaments most of all, or she’d find it all utterly hilarious.
Okay, that’s enough of the serious stuff for today, right? Let’s switch to Arizona trash-bag mode and talk about food and wrestling.
VEGAN FOOD
Coyoacan is a fantastic neighborhood for vegan food. We planned on eating lunch at Aura Vegana (at Malintzin 199), and we stick to most plans, but we were almost enticed away to several other vegan establishments we discovered just as we wandered!
First, we saw Pan Gabriel, a bakery billing itself as entirely vegan! According to HappyCow, it is all vegan, but heads up – inside, we found several products with egg, and several others that reminded me of that one doughnuttery that appeared at the UK Vegan Fest like 9 years ago and told everyone that their giant amazing doughnutty things were vegan even though they looked exactly like another company’s products that were not vegan and then they disappeared from the face of the earth, so, ya know, be wary.
They have a lot of gorgeous bread products, cakes, rolls, sweet empanadas, all kinds of bakery treats that made me absolutely lose my shit and overpurchase in a glutinous fit. However, the actual goodies were disappointing. Everything was very bready, even the things that weren’t supposed to be bread, like doughnuts and cookies and brownies and cakes and well I guess that’s everything. And nothing was sweet enough. Honestly I would skip unless you hear of improvements, or unless you like your treats to be shiny bread.
LITERALLY NEXT DOOR to Pan Gabriel is a restaurant called Temictli, which is billed as ‘Plant-Based’ on the awning but even though I despise the cowardliness of people using that phrase all the time now instead of just saying vegan, they get a pass because they sound amazing and the lady was so nice (also because it’s not in an English speaking country so they can do what they want with words). Temictli’s menu looked OFF THE CHIZZ:
This is not even all of it! We were so tempted to stay put and skip Aura Vegana, but unforch the lady explained that even though she let us in and gave us a menu to look at, they weren’t actually open yet. Oops. Next time Temictli, you sound AMAZ.
So that means we stuck to our plan of Aura Vegana, which was pretty good.
Aura Vegana is a small cafe on the ground floor, right at the entrance, of a larger building with a bar up top and other restaurants inside. They have English versions of their menus, and they have green juice. I was sold before we sat down.
I assume I ordered an ‘Emerald’ juice, which mixed my classic hits like celery, orange, coocoomba, kale, spinach, parsley, and lemon, but I have a slight memory of husbo saying something like ‘you always have stuff like that at home’ so there’s a chance I actually had the ‘Turquoise’, which is celery, parsley, grapefruit, prickly pear, and pineapple. Either way guys, they have various green juices and it’s cool.
Since apparently I share pictures of menus now, here’s one from Aura:
I don’t know why these are called ‘Morning Dishes’ and the next page of the menu – all food from other cultures, like ravioli, various hamburgers, curry, hummus, Vietnamese noodles? – was called ‘Afternoon Dishes’, but definitely stick to Morning because you’re here for Mexican food.
We decided to share an order of enchiladas and an order of chilaquiles. This was baby’s first chilaquiles, which means I didn’t realize what I was getting into: it’s like, fried tortillas with sauces and junk on it, and it’s pretty delicious but was pretty heavy for me. Also, for being called ‘tofu chilaquiles’, there wasn’t much tofu. In fact, there was one piece on top, so, you know. The enchiladas were great, a bit more my speed though it was all heavy, creamy, filling food. We chose the little hogweed and portobello version, although there was not enough little hogweed – I found one strip of greenery which I’m assuming was the little hogweed. Maybe that’s why they said little.
It was all delicious, if heavy, but I should have known that going in. The cashew cheese on top was excellent, as was all the sauciness. Mexican food is amazing.
Outside, we passed a local park that was literally covered in paleta and gelato shops. Paletas are the Mexican ice pops that are made from incredible fruit purees (if you are cool and want vegan ones), which we enjoyed throughout the Yucatan. We decided on watermelon and horchata sorbets from one of the parkside shops, and we liked it, and we loved it.
LUCHA LIBRE
Alright I’m here, she’s here, we all made it to the craziest thing we did in Mexico City, the thing you have to do if you visit CDMX even though it seems ridiculous and if you’re like me you are probably like ‘really?’ but if you are like me you will give it a shot and you’ll be glad you did because it’s HYSTERICAL and SO FORKING ENTERTAINING. On a Friday night after our exploration of Coyoacan and communism and everything, we took the metro to the Arena Mexico for some Mexican wrestling, straight out of the Jack Black movie Nacho Libre but probably not entirely like that but honestly I’ve never actually seen it so shh but it doesn’t matter because now I’ve seen the REAL THING, BABIEEEES!
Lucha Libre is Mexico’s professional wrestling, of the sort you’d see on TV where you know they were faking it but it doesn’t matter. The wrestlers wear masks and costumes and have specific characters to play. The wrestling is as boisterous and raucous as the crowd, and they favor dramatic flips and crashes and bams (I don’t know all the terms) over rule-following and it is RIDICULOUS and it is HILARIOUS and it is AWESOME. I cannot recommend it enough.
When we arrived at the Arena Mexico, there was a line longer than the Frida house line, but it moved. We didn’t have tickets, and neither did the many western tourists in line with us. We had fun talking about our travels and Nacho Libre with the other tourists (I’m really good at lying about movies), and we also bought some amazing swag. Ingeniously, the sidewalks along the side of the building/blocks and blocks where the line travels are filled with souvenir stands. We bought husbo’s brother a Lucha Libre mask, then a few minutes later at another stall we bought him a cape (he’s a fan), then a few minutes later we got t-shirts. It’s like a neighborhood version of the rack by the supermarket checkout.
When we got to the main entrance, we were told there were good 200 peso tickets left for great seats. If you want to spend less, I’m sure you could. The place is freaking enormous, and I don’t think it’s possible for it to sell out, so don’t worry about tickets being available. There were lots of high sections that remained empty.
The only downside to going to Lucha Libre is the venue security, worse than any I’ve dealt with yet. Not only did they take my water – and they didn’t have any free water in the venue, only bottles for sale, which is illegal??? – and my snacks, they took MY GUM. My gum that I can only get in the USA and needed for the plane home so I didn’t vom! Dammit security lady! So so weird.
Aside from that though, it was stellar. Such a spectacle, such a loud ridonk spectacle, and so much fun.
We saw a lineup of 5 matches, I think, including group fights, a random parade of women? I forget, it was bright and loud. But it was awesome. We had recently enjoyed season 2 of Glow so we were jonesing for some well choreographed wrestling that looked painful but wasn’t.
I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this. I definitely recommend it for a touristy but fun cultural experience that you kind of cannot miss. Once we were seated, it ran from about 8:30pm-11pm, about the length of a regular show we’d be at on a Friday night anyway, so it was a new super fun kind of evening entertainment for us.
Here’s my absolute favorite part: all the Mexican babies that are not only up so late but exposed to the UNBELIEVABLE NOISE of this place (bring earplugs if you’re sensitive…not that this baby had any…)
Alright, that’s it for this post! Which of the things that you are probably surprised to have found in this post did you enjoy the most, the Communism or the wrestling?
Oh oh one more thing, found in a shopping mall:
