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Mexico City, Mexico
And I’m split in half but that will have to do
On a first trip to Mexico City you can’t expect to see everything, but that doesn’t mean you won’t still fool yourself into thinking that you will. I was actually in Mexico City twice on this trip, on two distinct visits and in three different hotels, all for a reason that will make sense later. At the end of the first trip, I found myself with about four hours available early on a Sunday before I needed to be back at the hotel and back in an Uber headed to the other terminal at the airport. I got up early (but not too early), boarded a 3 line train on the city’s efficient and unimaginably inexpensive subway and found myself ready to explore Coyoacan.
Coyoacan is Aztec for coyote, which explains where we got the word from and why there are coyotes in the fountain. The neighborhood and buildings and parks are quite nice, and almost instantly I wished I had more time to spend there. Even on a limited schedule, I found myself happily on a bench, people watching at the Jardin Centenario, then wandering down Avenue Francisco Sosa, enjoying every minute that I could.
When I hear Coyoacan, I don’t think of coyotes as much as I think of Frida Kahlo, who lived there and, after visiting the neighborhood, it is hard to imagine her living anywhere else. Her home is now a museum, and I briefly considered not going because of their draconian timed ticket policy, where all tickets sell out and if you are there more than 15 minutes late you forfeit your ticket. Compared to every other museum in the city, it is also far more expensive, although that argument falls apart quickly- it’s really that every other museum admission is so cheap more than that this one is so expensive. I decided to buy advance tickets just as it opened on the morning of that day, waited in line with all of the other people, worked my way through her home and somehow found myself outside in her courtyard almost by myself, a rarity in a museum so busy that the standby line never seems to move.
I am glad I decided to go and would recommend it to anyone who can get to Coyoacan. The museum itself had lots of artifacts but was more about her life than her art, and honestly I enjoyed being in the spaces where she lived more than seeing the exhibits. And the courtyard was just wonderful, and having it all to myself, even for just a few moments, was a fantastic experience.
There may be no Frida Kahlo paintings at the Frida Kahlo museum, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any Frida Kahlo paintings in Mexico City. In fact the Museo de Arte Moderno is home to two Frida Kahlos, or more specifically, The Two Fridas.
The Museo de Arte Moderno was actually quite nice and had a lot more inside than just two Fridas. I’ve already said that there are a lot of museums in Mexico City, and the internet appears to agree with me, even if it can’t agree on exactly how many museums there are there. Over 150 museums seems to be a general consensus though. I did not visit all 150 museums (or all 175 museums or all 225 museums, depending on your source), but I did make it to more than 10 in the short time (or times) that I had there.
Speaking of museums, two of them that I visited were right across the street from each other in Polanco. Polanco is a wealthy residential and commercial neighborhood with beautiful streets and parks, high end shops and people walking tiny, well cared for dogs. The more interesting museum of the two was definitely the hard to miss Soumaya Museum, which is free, was founded by Mexico’s richest man (a guy with the cartoon villain name of Carlos Slim) and was designed by an architect who married Carlos Slim’s daughter. He did a good job though despite the nepotism. Inside the collection is all over the place, with a full size replica of David, a carved door by Renoir, a painting by Marc Chagall and even a Diego Rivera mosaic mural all seen in the lobby alone.
Across from the Soumaya Museum is another free museum (Museum Jumex), which is far more organized, notably less popular and housed inside a very nice David Chipperfield building, but even when you’re standing inside the Museum Jumex, it’s hard to miss that it’s the other museum across the way that gets all of the attention.
I stayed in three different hotels in Mexico City. The first night I arrived late, so I stayed at a hotel inside the airport (ok, not actually inside, but connected by interior corridors and bridges to Terminal One). After that I moved to the Hotel Barcelo Reforma, a big city hotel in a great location where I had a room on an executive floor with lounge access, super early check in and super late check out. After leaving and then returning to Mexico City for one last night, I chose to stay somewhere notably different. This is the Real Camino Polanco, which was designed by Ricardo Legoretto and where it feels like I’ve time traveled to 1984 and am trapped in an old Miami Vice episode, and that feeling is absolutely glorious.
This last picture of the Real Camino Polanco features the courtyard and angry fountain, which was designed to be angry during daylight hours and is pretty angry in person. It swirls and tips the water back and forth, as if it was water in a cup being swirled about by a giant, or I guess in this case an angry giant. As far as fountains go, it’s an impressive experience and one that feels right at home at the Real Camino Polanco.
