Today is May 5th. Cinco de Mayo, a big cerebration of Mexican culture and heritage in the United States. It reminds me of my trip to Mexico last summer. I never had a chance to post these photos, but I thought today was the perfect day to share them with you...
So safety concerned me the most about this trip. I was taking my boy to a place unknown to us, and we didn't even speak Spanish. And just like my clueless father in Japan who thought Los Angeles was a lawless war zone from watching "LAPD 24 hours" whenever available on television, I thought Mexico was full of crimes. Don't get me wrong, but you know...drug cartels, police corruption, kid nappings, etc. So I was nervous. I at least needed to know if we could get by without speaking their language. I know a number of people who traveled to Mexico without speaking Spanish. And one of them told me "It would be no problem because EVERYONE speaks English!" Wrong! Well, I think it might be true in the resort towns by the coast, but no one spoke English in Mexico City. Just a few we met did. So I was glad I did some homework, borrowed grandpa's Spanish dictionaries, and mostly trusted my son's skills after taking one year of Spanish class.
The hotel was just a 15 minute cab ride from the airport, but the views from the cab window made me more nervous as we passed through the slums. Besides, the driver was not friendly and drove like a maniac. We arrived at our budget hotel and found out that our room wasn't exactly what it looked like on their website. Okay, enough to disappoint us so far, but we took a walk to explore around the hotel to lighten up a bit. The streets were over crowded with cars, cars and more cars. No, I mean honking cars. It sounded like there was a law to honk all the time. Very chaotic. And how were we supposed to cross the streets, even when the light was green? It was very challenging. We were amazed no one was hurt. The muggy weather didn't help us lift our spirit either. We walked by the first landmark, Angel de la Independencia just a few blocks away from the hotel. Gray clouds over the Angel...well, this wasn't really promising...
Cars, cabs, and police were everywhere...I didn't take any photos of the police because I didn't want to get in trouble by doing so, but seriously they were EVERYWHERE. So we felt pretty safe there :-)
You just have to be bold to cross the streets...
No idea what it says, but maybe encouraging people to ride more bikes?
Street vendors were everywhere too. This national flag vendor was mobile and walked around the town to sell flags.
A snoozing guy at a flower stand...his turquoise bike/cart was very cute.
The city has this rent-a-bike system, obviously to ease the traffic congestion. I thought this was a genius idea and any big city should steal this idea. You pay with a credit card to unlock the bike from any bike stand around the town and return it at any stand.
And city workers moved bikes from stand to stand depending on where its inventory was low.
The Angel under the beautiful blue sky...okay, we got our spirits high again as we got used to the city a little bit. And the sky was blue. This helped...
On Sunday, the city was different. We didn't wake up with crazy honking cars down below on the streets. It was very nice. The street nearby was closed to automobiles and open for folks to enjoy the Sunday activities.
And it happened to be the City Marathon that day.
We walked all the way against the runners to the day"s main event, visiting The Museo National de Antropologia, The Museum of Anthropology.
Among the marathon watchers was this dog named Paco. We missed Dash a lot and wondered what he was doing with Grandpa and Grandma...
It was a beautiful and relaxing walk through the park to the Museum...
A mother and son annual trip started to be very promising...to be continued...
