Mexico CIty: Day 3

Sorry this is so late. We've been in Utah all week and while the condo we were staying in had wi-fi internet access, the antenna on my computer was shot. I desperately wandered around the place looking for the transmitter, as I could connect if I was within 3 or 4 feet of it. Alas, I never found it, so I was untethered from the internet for AN ENTIRE WEEK! Talk about withdrawals!

Any, the conclusion of our Mexico City trip: Day 3

On our third day of our trip, we planned on going to the National Museum of Anthropology. We decided to just pop in at McDonald's, since it was on the way to the subway station. We ordered an "Especialle" and it was great! The scrambled eggs had peppers, tomatoes, and onions in it, and it came with two "mollettes"--an english muffin spread with refried beans and topped with cheese, then toasted. It came with fresh salsa to put on it. The food was really good, but I couldn't help but feel totally typically American to come to a foreign country and eat at McDonald's. After breakfast, we hopped on the subway and made our way to the museum. We were supposed to get off on a stopped called Chapultepec. Since I just looked at the map and saw an unpronouncable Aztec word that started and ended with a "c", I had us get off at the Cuauhtemoc stop. When we came up to street level, we asked where the museum was and found out that we were too far away to just walk to it, so we had to get back on the subway--and were out another 36¢! Well, we finally made it to the museum and it was incredible. It was separated into the main groups from Mexico: Aztec, Toltecs, Mayas, etc. They had some amazing pieces of art, pottery, building, etc. Most of the signs were in Spanish, so I would just hop around hoping to find one of the few signs that was bilingual. Our guidebook recommened at least two hours at this museum, but we could have easily spent an entire day there. After a great lunch buffet at the museum (where they served some really colorful jell-o suspended in clear jell-o!) We headed back for some final souvenir shopping. We hit the streets again and Margaret got some shoes and a skirt from some guy under a tarp. We also stopped at the Merced--a GIANT market (claiming to be the biggest in Latin America) It was pretty overwhelming. I took off my backpack and was just carrying it in the front, because I didn't want to tip anything over with it. Some old lady gestured to me to put it back on signing someone snatching it out of my hands and running off. Fortunately nothing like that happened while we were there. It was funny, though, to see little old ladies selling stickers right across from booths selling hard-core pornography. When we finally got back to the hotel, it was dinnertime, so we unloaded our stuff and decided on a restaurant nearby that we'd found in the guidebook. Of course the restaurant was closed for renovations, so we wandered around and found a little local restaurant that was probably like a Denny's to the Mexicans--basic food and cheap. I tried something called a "huarache" that was really, really good--it was a thick corn pancake spread with refried beans and covered in green sauce. After dinner, I asked Margaret to order one of the cookies that they were diplaying up front. We couldn't remember the word for cookie in Spanish, and I told her that it was "biscuit" in French. She thought that the Spanish must be similar, so when the waiter came back, she ordered a "biscuit" and specified the one furthest to the left (since those were the sugar cookies that looked particularly good). The waiter looked really confused and couldn't believe that we were only ordering one to share, but Margaret pressed, and the waiter left and came back with, what else, a buttermilk biscuit! We got a good laugh out of it, and felt obligued to eat the biscuit.

Afterward, we made our way back to the hotel, where we got started packing. Everything fit except the obsidian tomahawk. We wrapped it up as well as we could, and decided to just get a box at the airport and check it separately. Well, the next morning at the airport, the airline said they didn't have any boxes that size and that they didn't have a problem with it being in the cabin. Unfortunately when we went through security, they said that the US security would not tolerate it and we could either go back and try to check it or relinquish it. Knowing that it would have been impossible to find a box at 4:30 in the morning in the middle of the airport, we gave up our cool souvenir. At least we had a couple of pictures of it to remember it by. What kind of paranoia have we reached when we're afraid that an Indian is going to take over an airplane with a tomahawk!