January 19, 2023
Our Lady of Kibeho at Stratford East: Super Interesting Story, Super Uneven Toneby Randi / October 24, 2019What’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:
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It’s Yucatanfastic: Merida, Uxmal, Mexican Chocolate, & More Cenotes
Welcome back to Mexico Central (not to be confused with Central Mexico), at least for the next few weeks! After our wonderful but brief trip through Valladolid and our visits to Chichen Itza, Ek Balam, and our favorite cenotes, we’re ready to continue through the Yucatan – which is, as you saw above, Yucatanfastic – via Merida and Uxmal. And not only are there more cenotes to come, there’s also a museum…of chocolate. It’s all my favorite things, babies! And then a real museum, which as you know is usually not my favorite thing only because for some reason in museums I tend to turn into Dug from “Up” seeing a squirrel , but this museum held my attention. IT’S ALL GREAT. Let’s get to it.
Once we saw all the wonders of Chichen Itza, on that amazing first full day in Mexico, we drove about two hours towards the west coast to Merida (it could take you less but remember we left Cheechee at closing time (5pm), so we were living it up during rush hour! On a Monday! So fun in every country!). As we saw in Valladolid and as I warned you would happen in every town in the Yucatan, our evening arrival was commemorated with half of Merida dancing in the street outside the main square, and the other half watching. It’s so fun and lovely; I love that there are still legit communities out there in the world. Meanwhile we don’t even know our neighbors (but one of them has a Leave (Brexit) sign in their window so we don’t want to know them, obvs). Honestly I can’t even believe there are Americans who don’t want Mexican people to be their neighbors. THEY’RE JUST GOING TO DANCE IN THE STREET AND MAKE YOU AMAZING FOOD, what is your problem?
Now that we’re in Merida, it’s time for our favorite travel segment:
Merida, along with being the heroine of the most disappointing “Disney princess” movie (seriously all she does is turn her mother into a bear and we’re supposed to appreciate the “feminism”? she’s a “strong female role model” because she “decided” to turn her mother into a bear? how many “quotes” can I “use”??), is the capital and largest city of the Yucatan state. It’s also one of the most popular destinations in the Yucatan because of its prime location as a perfect jumping off point to start negotiations explore the surrounding sites, and also because it’s one of the most beautiful cities. It’s been named the American Capital of Culture a few times by smart people who know that ‘American’ doesn’t just refer to USA. Merida is indeed a cultural gem, with interesting architecture that mixes its Mayan roots with European influence, and with strong museums, amazing food, and the aforementioned dancing in the Plaza Mayor. Having the largest indigenous population of any Mexican city means its Maya heritage and history are at the forefront.
So in the 1500s, there were three men named Francisco de Montejo and they were all Spanish conquistadors AND they were all related so it got super confusing but there wasn’t much they could do because there just weren’t that many names back then. To make it easier, they used cute lil nicknames: the oldest was “The Lieutenant” (“hello lootellaaaann” – South Pacific), his son was “The Boy”, and his nephew was “The Nephew”. Cute for you! Obviously these were in Spanish because they spoke Spanish because they WERE Spanish! which means they arrived in Mexico and saw indigenous people just carrying on living their lives and the lootellant, the boy, and the nephew – or just The Boy, actually; I think it was just The Boy but then why did I have to hear about all three of these bozos? – were like “LA LA LA I DON’T SEE ANYONE ELSE I MAKE MY CITY HERE. HERE’S A GOOD SPOT.” Merida was built on the site of the ancient Maya city of T’ho, and stones from T’ho’s/those buildings were used to build the Spanish colonial buildings of downtown Merida, including the cathedral.
For a few centuries, Merida was a walled city, needing such protection because SOME Maya people had the BIG IDEA that the Spanish and their descendants shouldn’t have just up and taken the land so there were some revolts. Modern Merida has since expanded well beyond those old walls. I don’t know much about the treatment of the indigenous population today, but considering they are the majority, I hope they are running things.
I’m going to share Merida hotel and vegan food info in a separate post because there is just SO MUCH to talk about! You may recall we only spent 1 night in Valladolid (and did so much I’m honestly just so proud of my lazy butt) but we have 3 in Merida, so we have a lot of ground (food, really) to cover – as well as a beach day in Progreso! It was not as exciting as it sounded! But you’ll see! In the separate post!
After our first night, we slept in a little because, well because I hadn’t been able to sleep in for like at least a week and I can’t function like that for too long because I have a SYNDROME and the only cure is MORE COWBELL sleep. Also, we had to be ready for another gigantic day! This day was going to be packed with a trip to the site of the ancient Maya city Uxmal, more cenotes, and a surprise chocolate museum that literally took 3 hours and yet was great.
UXMAL
After about an hour’s drive, we got to Uxmal at 11:30am, which is a terrible, no good, very bad idea. See, this was summer, in Mexico. It’s hot. At almost noon, the sun is, like, ready, and boy oh boy it felt like we were in a sauna while we explored the extensive grounds of Uxmal. It was about 102 degrees (Fahrenheit, obvs; see last post for my rant about systems of measurement it’s totally worth it) and we were positively baking. (You’ll be like THEN WHY ARE YOU WEARING A SWEATER IN THESE PICTURES but it is not a sweater it’s like the thinnest material ever made and it just protects my arm skin from burning.) Entry into Uxmal is 413 pesos (about $20) and, like the other sites, a portion of that is a federal fee that has to be paid in cash so you just need to be prepared to pay in cash.
Like pretty much every site we’ve seen so far in the Yucatan, Uxmal is an ancient Maya city and one of the most important archaeological sites in Maya culture. It’s on the Ruta Puuc, a long grouping of roads that lead to endless Maya archaeological sites and ruins. If you are in the market for an entire day of endless ruins, just drive down the Ruta and see however many you have time for, ensuring you end with Uxmal since it’s the grandest and most important. If, like us, you’ve already seen lots of ruins and you don’t want to get burned out to the point where you don’t appreciate them any longer, start with Uxmal, spend a significant amount of time exploring this site, and then treat yo self to a hilarious afterparty/museum.
While everyone visiting the Yucatan will put Chichen Itza at the top of their to-do list, we were impressed with Uxmal and I think we both agreed it was our favorite site in the state. It’s an enormous site like Chichen Itza, but it’s much less crowded, and it’s also much more interesting topographically. There are so much areas to explore and it seems like they’re all on different levels, like various earthen platforms rising in unexpected ways so there’s all this surprising variation in elevation as you explore. This made our exploration of Uxmal much more exciting and fun. Also, there are ZERO touts, whereas Chichen Itza has tons of stalls all around the interior grounds, which I get and it happens at most important sites around the world, but it’s nice to find one that isn’t all commercialized inside.
actually we made about 1000 of these new frens. they are EVERYWHERE.
Despite its popularity and general fame, Uxmal has not actually been studied enough as an archaeological site. I’ve been calling it an archaeological site and I’m going to keep calling it an archaeological site because calling it old ruins sounds like I’m being a bitch to her, but there hasn’t actually been much archaeology going on. Very little excavation or research has been done because I guess archaeologists are too busy in Egypt still? I don’t know where are they? People think that it was founded about 500 AD and was the capital of the Maya state from 850-925 AD before invaders took over. During its height, it teamed up with Chichen Itza to dominate Mayan society; the two together were like Helene Bezukhova, the queen of society, beautiful, barely clothed, plump bare shoulder and much exposed neck, round which she wears a double string of pearls! okay I’m getting sidetracked by musical theatre again (PIERRE THE CUCKHOLD SITS AT HOME PIERRE THE CUCKHOLD SITS AT HOME the poor man).
Like all good ruins, Uxmal featured a enormous f-ing thing that you have to climb. Well you don’t have to, but we always feel compelled to climb whatever is climbable, even though my FOMO (fear of missing out) is regularly outweighed by my FOFO (fear of falling off). Uxmal’s expansive grounds include lots of highly climbable structures, but the highest building, the grand temple, is the Featured Climb. As always, it probably looks like an easy climb in the pictures but it was g-d terrifying to come down. I mean the climb up wasn’t a picnic in 102 degree heat when you are sweating buckets even without moving but I almost panicked to a halt coming down. No I definitely did panic-halt a few times. At the top, we met a really nice English family who were taking a year-long tour around the world. They had a son of about 7 years old and the two of us literally talked each other through the descent. We both went down on our bottoms (as the English say) for a part of it, but I felt better standing and going sideways. Guys it was legit terrifying. It’s so steep that you are basically looking at a sheer drop; the stairs are almost on top of each other and even for my small-ish feet they are TINY. I felt bad leaving my new child friend as he took longer but his parents were waiting for him at the bottom and like, didn’t seem concerned and I had to GET THE F OUTTA THERE before I froze again. Ahhh these descents are scary! I mean I get extra scared because I fell down a similar thing once (okay it was stone stairs at college not at an ancient archaeological site BUT STILL) but it’s definitely not a breeze to do for anyone. (Also not a breeze? The lack of breeze.)
At many of these ancient sites, amid the enormous temples and structures for sacrificial rites and residential buildings and smaller temples and everything, would always be an open field called the ‘ball court’. Some, like at Chichen Itza, are ‘Great Ball Courts’. I honestly saw all these signs for ball courts and thought ‘well it’s nice they also had leisure activities and sports.’
We’ll put a pin in that ball court discussion until we get to the Mayan Museum at the end. REMEMBER!
Surviving the descent of that temple was definitely my favorite part, but my second favorite part offers some stiff competition. Like I said (a lot) (yay complaining), it was hot as the balls they used in the great ball court’s non-basketbally game of basketball. When we exited the grounds back into the ticket/welcome building with the toilets and a few shops, we saw THE BEST THING EVER:
ICY DRINKS! PLEASE AND THANK YOU! We shared a mango one and a coconut one and because it was so sweltering out, they were amazing. Icy drinks have never been better. HUZZAH FOR ICE.
What a great place.
After our just-under-two hours at Uxmal, we were definitely ancient-ruinsed out for the day. I mean, all we’d really done so far in Mexico was tour these sites, so continuing further down the Ruta Puuc would have probably made us bitter. Instead, we went across the street from Uxmal to…the Museum of Chocolate.
CHOCO-STORY: ECOPARQUE MUSEO DEL CACAO
We thought the Chocolate Museum, or “Choco-Story” would be a nice little air-conditioned diversion to regroup after our exhausting (but awesome) time at Uxmal, before getting back on the road to find more cenotes. But it turned out to be a HUGE cacao plantation, where they grow and harvest cacao beans and also have an entire museum about the history, growth, use, everything to do with cacao. It was INSANE. We thought it would be like 30 minutes tops and we were there for over 2 hours. But it was SO fun, and so interesting. The museum is spread through the endless grounds in numerous thatched huts, with each hut covering one topic. I fancy myself a chocolate connoisseur and I never imagined there could even be so much information about it.
We learned what healthy beans look like, as well as a lot of (too much) information about all the different kinds of diseases your cocoa beans could catch (omg it was actually very sad). We learned how the very special beans were used as currency in ancient times, and how much they’d be worth. We learned how the Maya would use cocoa beans in their sacrifices to the gods. And we learned about the cocoa gods the Maya people would pray too, like this fine one below who is appropriately but oof sadly covered in cocoa bean…lesions?
90% of what we learned in the Yucatan was about human sacrifices. I mean I’m all about respecting other cultures BUT DAYUM
We ALSO learned – too late – that it wasn’t just a cocoa plantation, but also a sort of animal sanctuary. When I first came upon the cages, I was like OH SHIT OH SHIT IS THIS SOME SORT OF F-ING ZOO? But there are signs all over the animal areas saying WE ARE NOT A ZOO! and explaining that the animals living here have been rescued from abuse, and wouldn’t be able to survive in the wild. Now I’m no wildlife expert, and I’m sure there’s a strong argument that we still shouldn’t interfere with wild animals even if they face certain death remaining on their own. But there’s not much I personally am mad about if this place is giving these animals a nice life that otherwise would have been over long ago.
Another thing I thought this place did well was reinforce the respect that cacao farming deserves, and how we should treat chocolate as something special and not something we are entitled to. And of course, we have to be careful where we buy from and what kinds of practices we support.
My favorite part was that one hut was for learning how to make traditional Maya hot cacao drinks, complete with making and enjoying your own cup! The cocoa on its own is extremely bitter, so there is a bowl of sugar for making it palatable, plus the traditional spice additions of cinnamon, annatto, allspice, and hot pepper. I added everything!
I also really enjoyed the sign on Chocolate & Health. We had a pretty good laugh at how ridic this was.
It was pretty cool but kind of awkward when we were ushered deeper into the forest (it’s like in a forest, it’s nuts) for a traditional Maya cocoa ceremony. Awkward just because we were uncomfortable with these guys performing for us white tourists and we were just like eeeek thank you I really appreciate this but eeeek, but it was interesting.
Obviously, my favorite part of the Chocolate Museum was truly the gift shop. IT WAS ALL CHOCOLATE! and like, things for making chocolate? and soaps and shampoos made from chocolate? The flavors of their bars sounded incredible, but it was so hot and they would all immediately melt before we made it back to London (in like, another week? no chance!). We limited ourselves to two awesome flavors, both with some sort of pepper.
OH NO! HOLD THAT THOUGHT. My actual favorite part was the additional information inside the main building, near the gift shop. There was a “Chocolate Timeline”, and it included such shade, such absolute, gorgeous, sensational shade, thrown at the king of fuckery, Mr Christopher Columbus. Behold the glory:
I CANNOT handle how excruciatingly perfect this is. In so few words it’s basically announcing what a f-ing asshole Columbus was but without saying anything objectionable. SO GOOD. WHAT AN ASSHOLE.
Choco-story was a really fun surprise! It took over two hours to tour, and the toilets are only outside the ticket area (had to do a few reentries), but I’m glad we went.
After the chocolate, you know what it’s time for.
CENOTES
Another day in the Yucatan, another swim in a cenote! We followed our GPS as best we could towards the middle of nowhere for X’Batun Cenote, which eventually led us down a dirt road. We were like, is this right? Where TF are we? We drove through this amazing, quaint little villages with a single small church and like a cow on the side of the road, wondering if we were going in the right direction. Eventually, we saw a small sign up on a big porch, with a few guys sitting in chairs. They were selling tickets and giving directions! They also had toilets!
The men sold us a joint ticket for two cenotes located across the road from each other, X’Batun and Dzonbacal. It’s 80 pesos for both. Unfortunately, X’Batun was closed because of heavy rains earlier that week – the rains made the water too dirty to swim in. We had a peek at it though, and it was very similar to Dzonbacal, where we still could swim, so it’s fine.
We still have to get there though! This ticket porch is still miles away from the actual cenote! They directed us to drive to the end of this road, turn right past a certain tree, and then drive 3 kilometers down a random suuuuper dirt/off-roady road till there’s a split in the road, indicating the two cenotes. We peeked at the one and then drove to the other, where the parking area had toilets (!) and a shower stall. The toilet was the foulest one I’ve seen yet in the country, and still no hooks were to be found (Mexico like doesn’t do hooks in toilet stalls), so changing in it without letting any of my stuff touch the gross floor was A CHALLENGE. We rinsed off with the shower stall/bucket as you should do (really as you should do not just with natural swimming wonders of the world but in public pools omg the gross men at my London pool don’t shower beforehand even though it’s IN THE RULES and they all reek of cologne HOW MANY EMAILS DO I HAVE TO SEND BEFORE THEY ENFORCE THE RULES) and then we enjoyed this cenote! It was beautiful, like half in a cave half outside.
Such a great cenote. There are decent signs advertising X’Batun, so you shouldn’t have a hard time finding it (or at least finding the right village) if you include it with your trip to Uxmal, which you should do. Hopefully for you X’Batun won’t be too dirty to swim in!
Since we were already in wet bathing suits when we got back to our hotel, we enjoyed our hotel pool after our cenote time. Double swimming days are the best. But more on that in the next post!
Aside from our beach day in Progreso, we have one more sight to share from our time in Merida, and one of the most important: The Mayan World Museum of Merida, or the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya.
GRAN MUSEO DEL MUNDO MAYA
The Mayan Museum is the big thing to do actually in the city of Merida. It’s off one of the main expressways of the city leading north out of it (so it makes sense to visit the museum first and then continue north to Progreso for a beachy day trip, if you are planning things for yourself). It’s a huge, modern, shiny building with a gigantic, new, shiny, modern parking garage underground. It costs 80 pesos to park in it, which is $4, and worth it to keep your car out of that sun.
When you get to the huge shiny lobby of the museum, you’ll be (I was) happy to see water dispensers for refilling your enormous water bottles! Honestly my favorite part.
It’s 150 pesos per ticket, about $7.50 which is not bad considering how much this museum has. The exhibits are great, but there isn’t very good signage, at least in English, which was a little disappointing. Still, you can learn a lot from what what signs there are and from just looking at the displays with a modicum of critical thinking.
There’s tons of information about indigenous cultures, their ways of life, and what they were like in ancient times, in every aspect. There’s tons of archaeological finds, including ancient statues and all kinds of pottery.
But you’re here to finally learn what the big ball courts in all the ruins sites are about. All over Mesoamerica, these ancient cities have these huge ball courts, and like I said before, it’s not just for old-fashioned forms of basketball. Archaeologists believe that the game was played by hitting the ball with one’s forearm, or a bat-like device, to try to pass it through those rings we saw above, in Uxmal, on the side walls of the playing field. Hitting it with your forearm sounds like it would hurt, because the balls were HEAVY. Yikes! That’s probably as bad as it gets, right? Pain-wise? Noooope. Scenes carved on walls of the spectator benches show players wearing protective gear as well as carrying tools that could be used for striking the ball, so who knows what the right way to play is. It shouldn’t concern us too much, though, because REGARDLESS can we just ALL AGREE as a society NOT to play this game? Okay so after you play and try to get the ball through the hoop, there would be a winner and a loser, as there are. Seven players on each side would parade toward the center of the field, and the captain of the defeated team would kneel. Then the captain of the winning team would DECAPITATE THE LOSER. The winning captain/murderer would hold his knife and the severed head of his friend up before the probably cheering crowd. This, like almost everything else in these ancient cities, existed as a way to offer human sacrifices to the gods but in a more communal and fun way, I GUESS. And I thought football sucked.
I won’t leave you with ‘horrible sports gone wrong’, though. Elsewhere in the museum, there was an interactive screen display that, if you entered some personal information about yourself, would tell you sort of your Mayan fortune – what your personality is like and what jobs you’re equipped for. I’m sure it’s a way for the government to collect private details about its guests but we really wanted to know what it would say so we did it anyway.
As you can see, my color is black and my direction is west, so I’m kind of like a Kardashian in Mexico. I’m like IN AWE of how accurate this is. I DO live between day and night (like most people…because they just mean like…daytime, right?). I am GENEROUS with my ADVICE (/extremely judgmental and bossy). I TAKE TO THE ROAD IN BOTH HAPPINESS AND SORROW! this is amazing. Although apparently I should be a road guide or a…a marriage spokesman?? what job is that and how do I get it? LOVES IT! WORTH THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT HAVING MY EMAIL ADDRESS!
So that’s it for Part 2 of our trip through the Yucatan, but there’s much more to come. Like, the hotel (and its pool) and all the vegan food, plus a beach that I did…not…love. So fun! Stay tuned.
Moscow, Russia: A Bustling City of Landmarks, Police, and Barricades
I honestly still don’t know how I feel about Moscow. We spent four days there, and saw all the things we wanted to see in four days, and I just feel like I don’t have a handle on the city. There’s a lot going on and every area feels like a different city or even country. The center is really fancy, with every high fashion design house and jewelry company represented on polished streets. But 10 minutes outside the center, and by the train stations, it looks like how we’d imagine Russia at the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s all very incongruous, and not being able to grasp the correct mood of the city made me feel uneasy. Although, it could just be because of the P.O.S. hostel we stayed at!
We left St. Petersburg Wednesday night at 11:55pm on the famous Red Arrow sleeper train, Train #001, for Moscow. This was our first real leg of the Trans Siberian (or Trans Mongolian…or Trans Manchurian…we’re going to Mongolia & China so it’s like both/all/I don’t know). Oh we met some older tourists earlier that day or the day before who were Russian but lived in Miami. They asked what we were doing in Russia and we said “We’re doing the Trans Siberian Railway!” and the Russian Miami lady said “Oh is that a Jewish thing?” Like first of all what. Second of all what Russian person doesn’t know about their train system? Thirdly who says anything like that to 3 strangers who are combined only 1/6 Jewish? Was so weird! Who doesn’t know what the Trans Siberian is when you are IN Russia? So now every time we are faced with any sort of new thing we go “Oh is that a Jewish thing?” Amazing. So anyway, on our St. Petey-Moscow sleeper, we were in second class but it was the fanciest darn train I’ve ever seen. (What on earth is first class like!) I boarded with my teeth already brushed, my face already washed. I hurried to the bathroom in the train-provided slippers to take out my contacts and put on my pajamas, and then I was ready to snuggle into my clean white-sheeted bottom bunk when…our stranger cabinmate arrived! Second class means cabins of four beds, and we were three people, so we had a STRANGER! His name was Ivan and he was a Russian man, mid-30s I’d say. He was super nice and friendly and spoke enough English to get by with us, but that meant he was up for chatting AND he had a friend in the next cabin who came in and sat with us! On our beds ughhhh. It was after midnight and I wanted to sleep and I was so tired from all we’ve been doing and these two Russian guys were drinking and chatting for hours with the two American boys while I did the head-conk sleepy thing I used to do in Statistics. I mean trying to stay awake so strangers can drink and talk in your room after midnight when one of them isn’t even supposed to be there and in the best case you can only get like 6 hours of sleep and you have a HUGE day of sightseeing to do the next day isn’t exactly my idea of fun. But I’m weird like that.
Still, it was a beautiful train and a great experience – one which really spoiled me for the subsequent train journeys this trip, but we’ll get to that later. On this fancy train, they gave slippers and toothbrushes and little water bottles and breakfast cookies (not for me but still). Even though we didn’t get enough sleep, we were excited enough by our arrival in Moscow to charge through a whole day of stuff. We arrived at the train station which is in one of the not-nice areas and I was like oh hot damn, we’re not in Kansas anymore. We made our way to our hostel, which was luckily centrally located in the nice part of the city, so its location was 100% responsible for its high online rating. 7 minute walk from the Bolshoi Ballet, 15-20 from Red Square. The location was responsible for all its internet points, because it was a p.o.s. The teenagers ‘working’ there, and I use that word loosely, barely did anything at all. It was an ordeal to get them to do their job, like put toilet paper in the shared bathrooms. One of the guys working a few night shifts I think was just hanging around because he was the boyfriend of one of the actual employees. It was all very ridiculous and unprofessional. Speaking of those shared bathrooms, one for each sex, they each had one communal hand towel by the sinks. Those towels were not changed more than once in our four day stay. Husband said the men’s remained on the floor in a puddle the whole time. Worst of all, they didn’t have a water cooler or purifier like the last hostel did. We aren’t supposed to drink the tap water so we had to buy sooo much plastic. Ugh. All of this doesn’t even compare to how rude the other guests were. Loud talking all night, music, hell one guy was playing his ukulele at all hours and even though I really like the ukulele I think he put me off the ukulele for the near future. What a shame. But the winner was the guy who was skyping for three hours one night, seated at the small desk right outside our door. He had the loudest voice I’ve ever heard in my life and was a ridiculous person, talking about his views on Ukraine and how he wanted to protest something while in Russia and I was like omg you really are an idiot. When it got past midnight and we were still clearly hearing every painful word of his through our closed door, I went out and was like ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING ME? He moved to a standing wander outside the men’s dorm which I think went over with them equally well. I’m so glad to be done with that place (although I’m writing this from a tiny tiny train cabin shared with two strangers and what I would give for that private room right now.
The first thing on our agenda was to see Red Square, but Husband missed being away from work for so long apparently because the first thing we actually did in Moscow was meet his colleague at the Moscow office of his firm for coffee lololol. Really nice guy! I had two bottles of law firm water for free!
Red Square
GUUUUM
After dropping our bags, we immediately set out for Red Square. That’s the big f-ing thing to see, right? We wanted to see it straight away! (Look how British!) But the politzia had other things in mind. The entire area surrounding the Red Square was barricaded off and black sedans did what seemed like speed tests back and forth in front of the Four Seasons. People who spoke a little English said it was because that day marked an important day in Russian history, but I don’t know how the fake car chases help to celebrate it. With the entire central region cordoned off, it meant we could not get to the Red Square, St. Basils Tomb, the State History Museum, the Kremlin, Lenin’s Tomb, GUM (the department store that was the subject of literally every practice sentence in our first semester of Russian – “Where are you going?” “I’m going to GUM!” “Where can I buy souvenirs?” “You can buy souvenirs at GUM!” – so it was what we were most excited about in all of Moscow, I think. Pro tip, you can’t actually get souvenirs at GUM; it’s a super swanky mall now with every expensive designer you can think of represented, plus endless ice cream carts. We’ve never seen so many people constantly eating ice cream as we have in Russia). Our entire Moscow list was suddenly unavailable to us! So we decided to use that unfortunate turn to go out to the burbs to pick up the rest of our train tickets from the company we used to book them. (You can book them yourself, but we are on such a specific schedule, and it’s summertime so the routes fill up, so we didn’t want to risk it. Also, so far all our trains have been full, so it was worth it.)So at least we got that over with, but we still hadn’t seen really any of the city yet!
State HIstory Museum
Later that afternoon, we decided to try again, but nope, barricades everywhere you turn. Luckily, one of the guards at the barricades (you at the barricades listen to THIS! no one is coming to help you to fiiiiiight you’re on your oooown you have no frieeeends <– literally the meanest lyric in all of musical theatre) was able to communicate to us that Red Square itself was now open, but the gates remained all around – except for in one roundabout area which we directed us to. A little more walking (we’re walking like 10 miles a day erma my po po feet)and we finally made it to what we came for.
Mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
The Red Square is impressive, mostly because of St. Basil’s Cathedral, the famous onion domes you know. It’s a lot smaller than we expected, but super gorgeous. We went inside immediately, and it’s surprisingly not a big hall like most other churches but is made up of tiny chapels and little staircases and alleys connecting all these disparate parts. I didn’t care much for the inside, especially after being blown away by the inside of the Church on Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg, but it’s still St. Basil’s and so famous and important so go if you want. The outside is where it’s at though.
One entire side of the square is GUM, one is the State History Museum (which Husband went to when I needed a morning off from museuming which was the best decision maybe I ever made), one is Basil’s, and one is the walled off border of the Kremlin, plus Lenin’s Tomb. We wanted to go to Lenin’s Tomb right after Basilypuddy but for some reason it was closed off. The guard said just ‘closed today’ and open tomorrow. The Tomb has very specific, short hours – just 10-1pm – so we were upset that we would have to fit it in another day. Guess what. It took four days of trying before it was actually open. “Historical days”, “Graduation”, more “Graduation” – guards over the next three days had all kinds of excuses ready for us as to why it was closed when it wasn’t supposed to be. So frustrating. When we finally got in, on our very last day, it was an hour and a half wait! 90 minutes in line just to see an embalmed body?
Not Lenin’s tomb but at Lenin’s tomb
Weird stuff inside guys
Oh that’s right, Lenin is literally displayed in a glass case (of emotion) like it’s an open casket at a funeral. He looks like he just died. They are embalming the crap out of him. It’s sooo weird. I knew he was like mummified somehow but I didn’t expect it to just be like ‘here, it’s a body like normal, except dead for decades’. I made several emoji faces during our hurried walk around the glass case (the many guards usher you along quickly (also no pictures allowed of course, would be too weird)) and I think the guards were laughing at me. It was so weird. I wonder if this was Lenin’s wish or if it was decided after he died. I hope his ghost isn’t like freaking out over being a tourist attraction. So weird.
Guarding Moscow’s Eternal Flame outside the Kremlin. Strangely this is a popular place for newlyweds to take photos – and indeed we saw some doing just that!
Inside the Kremlin – Cathedral Square
Another day was dedicated entirely to the Kremlin. Okay guys, if you are planning to go to Moscow soon and visit the Kremlin – which you should if you are there – know that it is an absolute shitshow to get in. Well, first of all, we had to change our designated day for visiting that due to “Graduation” a few times too! Moscow was entirely a city of barricades and police activity, always unexplained to the populace. I think it’s just the goings on of a police state, like they are constantly reminding the citizenry that they don’t have free reign, that the police are the ones with power and have the control here. It really seemed that way to me. Everywhere we went, we encountered barricades and had to replan. It was really annoying and one of the top reasons I wouldn’t want to live in this city. It was a constant onslaught of police activity and being told you can’t do certain things.
Senate building (maybe)
Garden in Kremlin
So, when we finally got to go to the Kremlin – it requires a whole afternoon – we were relieved, before we realized what it took to get in. First, you wait in the longest line for the ticket hall. Guess what, the main tickets are sold at separate windows from extras like the Diamond Fund (the crown jewels, which you want to see), so once you go through the entire line, you have to get in another line to get the extra bit tickets. This happens a lot. Luckily, I went to scope out the inside situation when we were still a good 45 minutes away from being inside the ticket hall (who knows how long from a cashier) and I noticed almost-empty ticket machines in the corner. We of course used those for the main tickets and we saved a good hour. Why was no one using the machines! Crayballs. And someone said you could buy Diamond Fund tickets at the actual building inside, so we hoped they were right. Like most big attractions so far in Russia, once you wait in the line to buy your tickets, you have to wait in another line to get in the attraction. This one was even worse than the ticket line, not because of length but because of tour groups pushing and shoving. It was another absolute shitshow. Russian queues make British people turn to dust. They just push and crowd and have no regard for anyone who may have been there first. So we forgot everything we learned in London and pushed right back. We made it to the severely backed up metal detectors and noticed that most of them were going unused as people just went through the central ones, causing most of the backup. Peeeeopleeeee.
CANNONBALLLLL
Luckily, once you’re in, it’s fine, as long as you stick to the specified walking paths – the guards mean BUSINESS. Anyone who stepped off the path or crossed streets not at a designated crossing had loud whistles blown at them until they got back on the straight and narrow. There were constant whistles.
now that’s a cracked bell
Kremlin just means fortress, not government building, but Moscow’s famous government fortress has made the word stand for it as well. It’s a huge expanse of land behind those walls, with various Senate buildings, Congress halls, monuments of tanks and cannons…and like 8 cathedrals. It’s different to have most of your government grounds be cathedrals! But that’s what we’re here to see! Endless cathedrals! They were the things you can really go inside (of course you can’t go in like the Senate) so hooray for them.
We also were indeed able to buy tickets inside the actual Diamond Fund. These were some crown jewels, man. So beautiful. Of course no pictures allowed here either, but I distinctly remember my favorite thing besides the super giant diamonds. They had this brooch that was a bunch of flowers, made of diamonds and gold and jewels, that was so pretty. But the audioguide told us what made it even better – it was hollowed out inside so it could be filled with water and fresh flowers could be placed inside! I was cracking up. Can you imagine Catherine the Great wearing a flower brooch pinned to her dress that actually had water and fresh flowers inside?! I like to imagine that she bent over to pick something up and the water spilled out and some court man slipped on it.
Because you’ll be spending a lot of time here, it’s important to bring snacks. They have a few carts of various Russian foods like pireshok, I think, and I was able to grab a trail mix bag. But you can find better snacks on the outside. And bring plenty of water! It was a hot day. Actually every day so far has had moments of heat interspersed between mostly freezing temperatures and then incredibly strong rain storms. What is this weather.
outside Kremlin
Even though I’m already museumed out, it’s literally like the #3 thing we will be doing this trip besides seeing cathedrals and taking trains so I geared up for the Tretyakov gallery. They have a main building and a new annex that I thought sounded like it would be small but it was literally the biggest single exhibit I’ve ever seen. It was 20th century Russian art, charting every new movement that happened, and it took 3 hours to go through. When we were finally done, it let us out to a stairwell that led us into…another exhibit. JFC I was about to scream. It was worse than Caesar’s Palace for keeping you in and not letting you leave! I was in a Bunuel movie and I was NOT AMUSED. It was a decent gallery but come on that’s a lot of museuming.
On our walk to the gallery ahhh
On the way to it though, we found this huge fake ship statue of Peter the Great. This memorial is kind of hilarious and awesome. It’s so big! Its champion was the former disgraced mayor of Moscow so there are rumors that it will be removed but come on, you can’t get rid of this. It’s so fun.
One of the funniest things we did in Moscow was go to the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games! It’s a very happening hipster joint with tons of old arcade games from Soviet times. They are so sad you want to cry but it’s really adorable. They gave us English instructions and a bag of tokens and we tried to play them. Most were super glitchy and frustrating but it was so cool to try them out!
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Moscow also has some gorgeous metro stations. We walked mostly everywhere but Husband made a point to find the most beautiful ones. Our Russian teacher told us about them when she went between semesters. They were pretty cool!
The best part of Moscow was the Bolshoi Ballet, which I’ll write about in another post (theatre reviews! never stopping!) and a mostly vegan restaurant called Fresh that I’m obsessed with (food in another post too). Looking back, we did do a lot of fun things in Moscow, but it was all in this overwhelming sense of unease. It’s a city in a time of change, for sure, and it’s unclear what direction would be best for it (you don’t want that fancy center part to take over and price all the citizens out, but you also want it to grow financially). I definitely felt this unease and it prevented me from enjoying Moscow as much as I thought I would. Maybe it was all the police and barricades, maybe it was the city itself, maybe the hostel, maybe because I was surrounded by people eating ice cream and I couldn’t have any and it was so sad. I think some places you gel with and some you don’t, and that’s fine. Onto the next!
