Paul and I just got back from a quick trip to México City. (Distrito Federal or D.F.) We had a blast.

Our son and his wife live in the Condesa area, a very cool area populated mostly by hip young people. There are two huge parks in the area, Parque México and Parque España. Of course, with these wonderful parks nearby the area attracts people with dogs. It’s a wonderful place to walk the dogs or even get them trained by the talented dog trainers that work with 10-15 dogs at once. It’s an amazing sight to see all the dogs patiently lying down in a “stay” while the trainers work with a few dogs on other tasks. Adam and Martha’s dog Xochitl took lessons for three months and was transformed into a sweetheart on or off leash by these guys. Here are Maggie and Xochitl, below:

The area is kind of like San Francisco in that you have your pick of tons of wonderful restaurants. We ate Cuban food at La Bodeguita del Medio and were entertained by wonderful Cuban musicians. We drank mescal. We ate pizza. We drank many cups of coffee. I wish I could remember all the names of the restaurants and bars, but I will say that walking all over and eating and drinking and of course staying up late made me feel young at times and old at others! Below is a picture of a wonderful French restaurant where Martha, Paul and I ate breakfast while Adam did some business.

Mexico City recently changed the smoking laws so that smoking is only allowed in the outdoor area of restaurants. This has created some funny scenes – I tried unsuccessfully to capture – of huge groups of people hanging about outside restaurants and bars. Really funny.

One day we went downtown to the Museo de Arte Popular and saw their wonderful exhibit of Méxican folk art. That’s where the picture at the top of this post came from – a truck full of birds! We had lunch at the Cardinal restaurant and enjoyed a fabulous meal and wonderful music again. Adam had left the car in a parking garage and it was an amazing system they had for retrieving cars…if you enlarge this photo look in the background where the man in the yellow shirt is being lifted by a conveyor type contraption to the upper floors of cars. Hilarious.

We also went to the Mercado San Juan where we bought a wonderful retablo of the devil.

Mexico City has some wonderful stencil graffiti, too. If you look a little closer, though, you’ll see that some of the pictures below are what they call “guerilla marketing” by Vans, the shoe company.

México City has a wonderful transportation system. The subway is efficient, and there are local busses and a great looking longer distance bus system too. The Metrobús rides in its own lane on the freeway – passengers pay to get inside the area and then ride without the need for the driver to collect fees. Seems very fast, clean and modern.

Tomorrow, a bit about our trip to Tepotzlán.