Mexico City   All the internal flights in Mexico have been in small planes, but they and the airports have been very modern and comfortable. The planes have three seats across, one single to the left of the aisle and a double. We flew low into Mexico City and I was surprised that I was able to very easily recognize right below us Chapultepec Park with its castle. My hotel, which I didn’t spot from the air, is just north of Chapultepec Park in the west. The airport is to the east of town, and so the flight crossed all of central Mexico City. Fortunately, between the last time we were here, and now, they’ve built the Metro, which I took back across town to my hotel and settled in. It was a drizzly day, and I used the first of five days to stay in and catch up on online work on the laptop. However, the remaining four days were perfect weather; it was springtime in January, shirtsleeve weather in the low 20’s C, or low 70’s F. Also keep in mind that I had been at high altitudes in the Copper Canyon, and Mexico City was once again in the mountains, at 2238m/7343ft, which also had a cooling affect on the weather, even though we are well south of Florida.

I was talking to a Brit earlier who pointed out that he lived in Baltimore for a year some time back, and he remembers visiting New York before the World Trade Center was even built. I commented that, as the years go by, it becomes easier to make statements like that. I, too, remember lower Manhattan before the WTC, I remember crossing the Channel before the Chunnel, Lisbon before its big bridge was built, Berlin at the time of the wall, and on and on. Also, when we lived for three weeks in Campestre Churubusco way down at the southern end of Mexico City in 1967 studying Spanish, it was time-consuming to get downtown. I remember reading about the Mexico City Metro being built a few years after that, and finally I’m able to take advantage of it. It has many lines, goes everywhere, is easy to use, and incredibly only costs two pesos a trip, about 20 cents. (You buy a tiny ticket that the turnstile eats.) 20 cents is a quick reference number; actually the peso is worth 9 cents, so a Metro trip really comes to 18 cents. Using that as a guide, it’s easy to figure prices here. If something is 150 pesos, just move the decimal point and it’s $15—and just a bit less, like the Metro.

I see Parisian influence in the Metro here. Some lines seem to run on regular tracks, but others run on rubber tires, like some new lines in Paris. The tires run along a flat piece of metal, and, to keep the main wheels in place, there are smaller horizontal wheels running along their own vertical track on the side. Other Parisian influence shows in the no-entry corridors that are used just for exiting passengers.

New York’s is the only subway system I know of where you don’t decide on a line to take, but on a train, say the 1 Train or the A Train, and take it uptown (north) or downtown (south). You usually pay little attention to the last stops. Announcements on the trains will be like “This is a Brooklyn-bound F Train” or “Queens-bound N Train” or “Bronx-bound 4 Train”. In the outer boroughs you to toward or away from Manhattan. It is different maybe because it has both local and express trains, which later on separate into different tunnels. You can refer to, say, the Lexington Avenue Line, but after a while, the 4, 5, and 6 trains that run along it turn elsewhere than under Lexington Avenue. Rule of thumb: in New York (the biggest subway system in the world) don’t look for a line, but rather a train, which will be going either up- or downtown, often further connecting to the outer boroughs. [Note: it still riles me calling the ex-City of Brooklyn an outer borough.]

It is different everywhere else, including here in Mexico City. Lines are lines, and tunnels are tunnels. A train in Line 1 runs only back and forth like a shuttle in its own tunnel between its end stations. One line does not run into another line’s tunnel. My local station, Auditorio, is on Línea 7 (orange on maps), whose end stations are El Rosario and Barranca del Muerto. Even if I have no idea where these places are (and I don’t) it doesn’t matter. If I want to go to the Zócalo one blue Línea 2, and the two lines intersect at Tacuba, the map indicates that I take my line toward El Rosario and change at Tacuba. All signage at transfer stations is very clearly marked, under the word “Correspondencia” (just like “Correspondences” in Paris), with the connecting lines and their end stations noted.

[Note: Barranca del Muerto above must be a very common Mexican name, since it shows up in almost all the old cowboy movies from years ago, remembering that the Westerns took place in territory that had once been Mexican. You don’t recognize the name? Let’s take it apart. We saw in Barrancas del Cobre/Copper Canyon that “barranca” means canyon. Now think of an antiquated word for canyon in English. You may recognize “muerto” as referring to a dead man. Put it together, and Barranca del Muerto is either “Dead Man’s Canyon”, or, as expressed in those old Westerns, “Dead Man’s Gulch”.]

All subways and buses nowadays have a few seats put aside as priority seating, and you’re asked to surrender your seat for those that need it. I just like the way the sign is done in Mexico City using icons. I’m referring to those round-headed icons of a man and woman always seen when indicating restrooms. In the Metro, under the word “Reservado” it shows four pictographs. One shows an icon-man on crutches. The next shows a bent-over icon-man leaning on a cane. The third shows an icon-woman holding in her arms the cutest little icon-baby, round head and all. I’ve never seen an icon-baby before. But my favorite was the last pictograph. It shows the side view of an icon-woman, about as pregnant as you can imagine an icon-woman could be. I KNOW I’ve never seen a pregnant icon-woman before.

I’m dwelling on the Metro for several reasons: it was the first thing I came across on arrival; it’s great, and wasn’t here on my last visit four decades ago; and, of course, I like trains. I have one more Metro story.

Beverly has said that we must have the word “Information” printed on our foreheads, because over the years, people would always ask us directions. It happened again last summer in Hamburg. Maybe I look like I know what I’m doing (I’d like to think that), or maybe it’s because I often have a map in my hands. Anyway, sitting on the Metro, just one stop short of my station, the Zócalo, the man of an American couple leaned over to me and said ¿Habla usted inglés? No one ever asked me in Spanish before if I spoke English, so I was intrigued. They were looking for the airport (odd, since they didn’t have any luggage). First he asked me which stop is for the airport. I pointed out on the yellow Línea 5 the station “Terminal Aerea”, and you don’t need much Spanish to know that’s the Air Terminal. Then he asked how to get there. My station was coming up and I looked quickly at the map. It would be a rather inconvenient connection from where we were at the moment, changing three times, and I quickly sketched it out for him. But I didn’t have time to ask them if they had figured out to do a Correspondencia. As I got off, I wished them luck.

No one is more in favor than I am of independent travel. But don’t you need just the slightest bit of planning? Why would you get on the subway without knowing first where you were going? Why were they on this line, in this direction, when planning in the first place might have made an easier route? Why didn’t they check at their hotel what to do? As I walked upstairs to the Zócalo, the song I quoted in Boston recently came to mind, with apologies to the Kingston Trio:

One needs just a few parameters to understand what Mexico is all about, both the country and the city. To begin with, non-Mexicans make a distinction between Mexico and Mexico City, as names. This is not done in Mexico. Of course the country is called Mexico, but so is the capital. If you’re taking a flight to the capital, it will say you’re going to México, and everyone understands it as being the city, even though you’re in Mexico, meaning the country. But since you’re already in the country, it’s clear that “going to Mexico” makes sense to refer to the city. Only in extreme cases would you say “Ciudad de México”. There is also a state of Mexico to complete the trio of locations using the same name.

Also, Mexico City is not located within the state of Mexico, but forms a special district, similar to Washington. It’s called the Distrito Federal/Federal District, so México DF corresponds to Washington DC. The state of Mexico does surround the city on three sides, but to the south of the city is the state of Morelos.

To properly understand what one is seeing, it’s necessary to understand the historical breakdown in Mexico. This is not meant to be comprehensive in any way, just introductory.

As of 50,000 BCE (Before the Common Era) settlement occurs across the Bering Strait from Asia. From about 1800 BCE to about 1500 CE (Common Era) is the time of the flourishing of the Indian Civilizations, the Aztecs in Mexico City, the Mayas in the Yucatan, the Olmecs in between, and others.

1511-1521 is the period of the Conquest. What eventually became Mexico City was the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán, which was founded in 1325 on a largish island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The lake is now gone. Leading contemporary figures on both sides of the Conquest were Hernán Cortés (Cortez), Moctezuma (Montezuma—note the difference in the name in Spanish—that’s not a typo), and Cuauhtémoc (kwow.TE.mok, E as in café).

1522-1810 is the Colonial Period.

1810-1821 was the War of Independence. This is not much after the US War of Independence, and this time span is curiously almost exactly 300 years after the time span of the Conquest.

1822-1877 is the period of an Independent Mexico.

1877-1910 is the time of El Porfiriato. General Porfirio Díaz sets himself up as dictator. In 1893, to urge Britain to recognize his government, he actually goes ahead and cedes part of what had been Mexican territory to Britain, first known as British Honduras, and which is now the independent Belice (Belize in English).

1910-1920 is the period of the Mexican Revolution (see the railroad-building discussion earlier). Leading figures were Emiliano Zapata and Francisco “Pancho” Villa, both of which were eventually assassinated. In 1917 a new Constitution guaranteed new liberties. (The last Metro stop on green Línea 8 is at the street called Constitución de 1917.) From this period on is the period of Modern Mexico.

Do note these two points: the American Revolution and War of Independence are essentially the same thing, but in Mexico, the War of Independence preceded the Mexican Revolution by a century. Much more striking is the frequency of major events taking place in Mexico in the second decade of a century: in the 1500’s it was the Conquest; in the 1800’s it was the War of Independence; in the 1900’s it was the Revolution. One only hopes the second decade of this century will be calm.

I was pleased years ago to note—quite some time after we had been there--that a Michelin Mexico had been published. I assumed that’s what I’d use on my next visit, that is, now, and I am, but with a slight variation. The English version is now out of print, whether temporarily or not, I don’t know, so I bought the Spanish version, which has worked out fine. It didn’t have a huge amount to say about the Copper Canyon, but is extremely helpful with Mexico City.

I will also point out that I’m not going back to every point I had seen around Mexico, and that’s equally true in and around Mexico City. One of the major world-level sights is Teotihuacán, north of town, which includes the Pyramids of the Sun and of the Moon. It’s similar to going to Giza near Cairo to see the pyramids. Yet Beverly and I have hiked up to the top of the (larger) Pyramid of the Sun (whew!), and I see no reason to repeat everything. This is equally true of the floating gardens of Xochimilco, south of town.

There is another point to be made in comparing ancient and modern civilizations. If you visit Greece you see in Athens traces of Ancient Greece surrounded by Modern Greece. It’s the same civilization. In Rome, too, ancient leads to modern within the same civilization. Egypt is different, although no one will tell you so, certainly not there, and rarely elsewhere. In the Middle Ages the Arabs invaded North Africa, including Egypt, which had had a long, ancient civilization. There are two different civilizations, the Ancient Egyptian, followed by the Arab Civilization afterward. I doubt that there was any great mixture of peoples, yet contemporary Egyptians consider themselves the inheritors of the ancient civilization. True, it is their heritage, but there is a break between Old and New there.

In this, Mexico is both similar, yet different, from Egypt. In Mexico City there was the old Aztec civilization, and the colonial Spaniards essentially replaced it, yet the two cultures intermingled, resulting in modern Mexico. (I suspect the situation was similar in Peru between the Incas and colonial Spaniards.) I will come back to this point later regarding la Plaza de las Tres Culturas.

Let’s visualize the layout of Mexico City. The interesting area lies in an east-west strip running across town. Remember that the old Lake Texcoco was doughnut-shaped around the center city. The airport is where the eastern shore of the lake was, followed by a neighborhood on the site of the eastern half-doughnut of the former lake.

Proceeding west in the center city comes the ancient area around the Zócalo, followed by the colonial area around the Alameda (park). Then come the boulevards, particularly Paseo de la Reforma, which would have been where the west doughnut-half of the lake had been. Finally, on what would have been the western shore of the lake is Chapultepec Park, and adjoining the park to the north is the Polanco neighborhood, where my hotel was. These are these main areas on the west-to-east line:

I stayed in a “W” Hotel free on Starpoints. It was ultra-ultra, but with pluses and minuses. The room was a plus. It sounds funny to say so, but the only window was in the bathroom, and that’s what made it marvelous. Let me explain.

On entering you’re in the bedroom area, including large desk area, and oddly, the sink. The color scheme of the hotel is white and deep maroon, the ceiling and a wall or two being this deep red. The whole end of the room, at the picture window, is the bathroom. The toilet is on the left, behind a partition—but with a view. The humungous walk-in shower, with three shower heads, is really the right third of this room—with a view. The entire center is sort of a large toweling area—with a view. And the oddity of this bathroom is the huge white-mesh hammock diagonally across it—with a view. They included a daily copy of Reforma, a good local paper with some good articles, and I also got the Mexico City edition of the Miami Herald, something I hadn’t known existed.

The huge desk area, the shower, the hammock, were great. However, the restaurant, bar and lobby overdid the contemporary pounding music, and had too many red lights shining down on you, keeping with the red theme. I was also nickel-and-dimed. As much as I liked the room itself, I wouldn’t stay at the hotel again. This “W” was trying much too hard, and misfired. The “W French Quarter” in New Orleans was a charmer I’d go back to in a heartbeat.

I had five days, and it all worked out perfectly, even though I had only roughly sketched out what I wanted to do. The day I flew in I did have half a day left, but it was the only drizzly day there, and I had plenty of online work to take care of the rest of the day, so I didn’t leave the hotel. The other four days were perfect shirtsleeve, springlike weather, with the birds literally singing in the trees. My first day out was dedicated to the Zócalo and the Alameda. On the way to the Zócalo in the Metro is when I encountered those confused Americans.

Say the word “SO” and you’ll say the beginning of Zócalo right: SO.ca.lo. It was so unusual to have the Metro to zip right over there. The Zócalo station had a mezzanine with large models of how the Zócalo had looked in Tenochtitlán times, in colonial times in 1824, and in 1900. I came up to street level and sat down on a railing way over on the side. There it was again after 40 years. El Zócalo.

It’s a HUGE open square, possibly the largest in the world. It has the cathedral and sacristy on the north, the Palacio Nacional/National Palace on the east, in front of which I was sitting, and other historical buildings on the other two sides. It has a humungous flagpole in the center with a huge Mexican flag flying. Beyond that, the Zócalo is totally barren, and somewhat sterile in its lack of decoration beyond the buildings surrounding it. Its size might only be a few blocks by a few blocks, but the empty barrenness of this large, treeless paved area is impressive. The vast open space is just breathtaking, and I enjoyed just sitting on that railing as a spectator. This has always been the center of the city and the center of governmental power, since Aztec buildings flanked it, followed by colonial and other buildings later.

Here I need to insert two stories about illumination, that took place six years apart.

In October 1961, Beverly and I had just crossed the Atlantic on the Liberté to our first stop in Paris and then were to continue to Germany for our year’s study in Mainz. It being fall in Paris, it was jacket weather, and was rather overcast. We had been walking all day, as always was our wont. We had just come from the area of the Louvre, and had walked through the Jardin des Tuileries/Tuileries Garden. At the western edge of the garden we had sat down to rest on a bench, in an area where the garden was raised a bit overlooking the Place de la Concorde.

It was dreary and close to 5 PM. The obelisk in the Place looked gray. The buildings looked gray. The view across the Place down the Champs-Élysées looked gray.

Paris is known as la Ville Lumière, the City of Light, and, as we rested on the bench, we felt it would be nice if the illumination of the Place would come on before we continued on our way. As a joke, I snapped my fingers.

At that instant, POOF! the illuminations came on and the gray Place de la Concorde became the golden PLACE DE LA CONCORDE. It was magical, and we laughed at that snapping of fingers for years.

About six years later, in July 1967, we were studying in Mexico City. We had visited what we had wanted to, including the Zócalo. However, for many, many years, we were strongly into photography, especially travel photography. We took reams of slides on trips to show family and friends. Finally, in retirement, we culled most of them to discard. The slides that remain are on a shelf, and I don’t even have a slide viewer to see them with. I also haven’t owned a camera for years. My philosophy now when traveling is to live for, and enjoy, the moment, and forget about recording for a disinterested posterity.

However, in 1967 we still photographed. We also came back at night to take time exposures of illuminations, and I remember our coming back to the Zócalo in the evening to do so. We slowly took 3-4 time exposures, always without a tripod. We either held the camera very still, or supported it on a fence or leaned it against a lamppost. We did good time exposures, including that evening in the empty Zócalo.

We had just finished, and were pleased with ourselves for working so slowly and carefully. Right after the last picture, we turned around for a last look and POOF! it was 9 o’clock, the illuminations suddenly and totally disappeared, and the golden ZÓCALO became the gray Zócalo. If we had known we would have just barely made it, we would have felt pressured to hurry our picture-taking. We felt so lucky we didn’t have to come back again. Those were my thoughts this time just forty years later gazing across the Zócalo in the daytime.

But our “luck of the Zócalo” continued this time in two ways. First, by pure chance, this day I was walking around the Zócalo and beyond to the Alameda to the west happened to be a Sunday. How perfect, because the street life was the best one could have hoped for. There were Indians doing their dances in costume. There were political protesters. There were Indian shamans dusting people with branches and incense. There was a tarot card reader doing her thing on a blanket on the ground. There was an organ grinder. There were families milling around. Yet there was still plenty of room, since the huge Zócalo couldn’t have been a quarter filled.

The official name of the Zócalo is Plaza de la Constitución. No one calls it that. Even the Metro station just says Zócalo. The Zócalo in Mexico City is so well-known, that the word has become generic within Mexico to refer to the main square of any city or town. I’m sure if I had asked back in El Fuerte where the zócalo was, I would have been directed to the Plaza de Armas.

[It’s amazing how official government usage so frequently tries to struggle with common usage. The official Plaza de la Constitución remains the Zócalo. In New York, the official Avenue of the Americas remains Sixth Avenue. In Munich, the official Karlsplatz remains Stachus. In Paris, the Arc de Triomphe is now officially on Place Charles de Gaulle, but most people still call it Place de l’Étoile (Star Square), most obviously because of all the avenues radiating out from it. Maybe you can’t fight City Hall, but City Hall also shouldn’t try to fight common public usage.]

I felt I knew the Zócalo, but Michelin showed me up on something I hadn’t known, and it was a language point at that: the origin of the unusual name Zócalo.

There is presently a statue of Carlos IV/Charles IV on horseback on a square near the Alameda. However, for a century and a third, from 1706 to 1843 that statue was on a pedestal in the center of the Zócalo, where the huge flagpole is now. Santa Anna, however, had removed the statue, planning to build a monument to Independence, so only the pedestal of the statue remained for quite a while in the center of the square.

I never realized it, but “zócalo” is the Spanish word for “pedestal”. It’s as simple as that. As soon as I saw that, I remembered that “Sockel” in German means the same thing, and is clearly a related word. But what an unusual word to have caught the public imagination, and to have caught with the importance it now has. I wonder if the English-language version of Michelin Mexico also explained the origin of the name Zócalo.

Construction on the Baroque cathedral on the north of the Zócalo started in 1573. You keep on coming across astonishing ancient dates like that in Mexico City. On entering, it was a surprise that, aside from the many chapels on the side, which are common in cathedrals, here the first quarter of the nave was given over to a chapel. You had to walk around it to come across the main part of the church, filling the remaining three-quarters. A mass was going on, with people standing in the aisles. Two people were vigorously signing over on the side for the deaf.

The smaller Sacristy stands to the right of the cathedral, and its red brickwork makes it stand out from the stone of the cathedral. It being a Sunday, an awning had been set up in front of it for waiting families, since dozens and dozens of child baptisms were going to take place. At the end of the line, it was fun to read some of the rules in Spanish: These baptisms were for no one older than six years! A birth certificate must be presented! Don’t ask for any exceptions!

I was preparing to move on when I noticed guards letting people into the Palacio Nacional back on the east side of the Zócalo. I had never been inside, and I didn’t know it was even open to the public, so I walked over. They asked for my passport as an ID, I said I’d left it in the hotel. He asked me where I was from, and I said Nueva York. I got in.

This has been the center of government since Aztec times, and the building dates since colonial times. It has a huge patio with a fountain in the center, and going up the main staircase on one side, there is a very famous mural on the wall by Diego Rivera covering Mexican history. It was interesting to walk around, and here I realized that I had had my second instance of “luck of the Zócalo”—just getting in. I tried to leave the front way, but it was already closed. I wonder for how short a period it had been open.

Being directed to leave by a side entrance, I entered in a different world, highlighted by the fact that it was a Sunday. The side street was brimming with sidewalk vendors, some roasting whole ears of corn, others preparing fillings for tortillas. One was selling valentines. One woman had taken a supermarket cart and had installed a grill in it to cook her food. The amount street activity and street life was very impressive.

Sidewalk sales such as this were almost as intense elsewhere. Everyone is selling, selling, selling, including in the Alameda and in Chapultepec Park. Some had a blanket out selling books; I remember one entrepreneur who specialized: his blanket had all sorts of large, flat rubber sink stoppers, and on the side—rubber door stoppers.

I walked past an area of Aztec ruins near the Zócalo and through some typical neighborhoods and streets. Off one street was the very narrow, one-block long, Callejón de la Condesa/Countess Alley. Legend has it that once, during the colonial period, two noblemen in their carriages entered it from opposite ends. They couldn’t pass each other, and neither would yield. After they sat there for several days and nights, the mayor finally arrived and had each one back out to where he had come from.

Right beyond that is the famous Palacio de Bellas Artes/Fine Arts Palace, built in the first third of the 20C, covering styles from art nouveau to art deco. Years ago we had seen the famous Ballet Folklórico there, but it’s also famous because of the amount the building has sunk into the soft ground. Around much of the building you have to go down steps in order to then go up steps into the building.

Facing this is the Alameda Central the main public park of the old city. On a Sunday it was brimming with activity. There were street performers and a revivalist. Over on one side there was recorded latino music, and crowds were watching large numbers of couples dancing, just dancing. It was an outdoor latino ballroom.

Michelin had me cross a main, busy boulevard from the Alameda to find a tiny, hidden quite refuge of a plaza surrounded by two churches and museums, with bubbling fountains. This refuge was a great end to my walk in the Zócalo and Alameda areas.

But—my day didn’t end there. I had researched in advance and found some restaurants I wanted to try, and what I wanted tended to fall right in with the area I was touring each day. Just a couple of blocks away from the Alameda area was the very reasonably-priced Café Tacuba, which dates from 1912. It has a colonial-era atmosphere and serves traditional Mexican food. In the evening, traditionally dressed musicians stroll around and play on different-sized guitars and mandolins. A nice end to my first touring day.

It can be interjected here how popular Mexican food has become in the US. I don’t mean just visiting the many Mexican (or Tex-Mex) restaurants, I mean eating, in an otherwise non-Mexican atmosphere, corn chips and doritos. There is now more salsa sold in the US than ketchup! Tortillas, especially flour ones, are now so popular, that most delis and sandwich places will make you a “wrap”. I like that word, because it’s an obvious attempt to low-key the fact that you’re having your sandwich not in standard bread, but in a tortilla. How times do change.

Let’s vary this discussion by talking about some street names. In Polanco, the neighborhood just north of Chapultepec Park where a string of hotels were, including mine, the streets have interesting names. My hotel faced on Campos Eliseos. Do you recognize anything about that street name?

As a hint, I’ll translate it into English, although that might not help too much: Elysian Fields.

You have to think French. Putting Campos Eliseos into French you get Champs-Élysées. This Mexican street was just a regular avenue, though, not like the broad Parisian boulevard.

But when several newer Mexico City neighborhoods were laid out, streets were given related names in a group. Most of Polanco’s streets are named after international authors, philosophers, and scientists. Streets near my hotel were named after Molière, Seneca, Ibsen, Goldsmith, Edgar A. Poe, Galileo, Hegel, Schiller, Cervantes, Dickens, Goethe, Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Descartes. Some Spanish names were just slightly different from their English equivalents, yet recognizable: Homero, Horacio, Aristoteles, Platón, Arquimedes.

I particularly enjoyed the treatment of first names. For instance, Alexandre Dumas appeared as Alejandro Dumas, Jules Verne was Julio Verne, and Alfred Lord Tennyson was Alfredo Tennyson, whose street intersected Campos Eliseos at my hotel.

After the first half-day in the hotel, the four remaining touring days worked out so nicely. After the first day at the Zócalo and Alameda areas, the second day covered the area just westward of that, but before Chapultepec Park, the Paseo de la Reforma.

In Spanish “pasear” means to stroll, so a paseo is a strolling area, implying parkland. A paseo is also the stroll itself. In Spain and many Spanish-speaking countries, in smaller towns it’s an evening custom to take a paseo around the main square, greeting friends and neighbors. This is also an opportunity for teenage boys and girls to meet, as groups of each take a paseo.

Michelin tells me that in 1864 when Maximiliano was in charge, he ordered that a road be constructed to connect his residence, Chapultepec Castle, with the area near the Alameda. This oldest part of the Paseo was laid out then, and was given the name Paseo del Emperador/Emperor’s Paseo. However, typical of so many Mexican names, it was renamed patriotically as the Paseo de la Reforma, in honor of the Reform in Juárez’s time separating church and state. It is one of the most famous avenues in the world.

Of the many major streets, another one is worth mentioning, Avenida Insurgentes (in.sur.KHEN.tes) which also has many restaurants and boutiques. Its name sounds so violent, like there’s some sort of insurgency going on, but understand it this way. The insurgency being referred to is the War of Independence, and the people involved in that are referred to as the Insurgents, after which this avenue was named. I would say the Insurgents are exactly the same sort of thing as the US Founding Fathers, except that the Mexican designation just sounds more, well, activist.

In some ways these two boulevards duplicate one another’s directions. In the center, Reforma runs at an angle from about 2 o’clock to 8 o’clock, while Insurgentes crosses it running from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock, routes that are very similar. However, Insurgentes then runs way north and south; but the old, central part of Reforma has since been extended northward, with its southern end then going westward, cutting through the northern part of Chapultepec Park, and then on to the western suburbs, including the upscale Lomas de Chapultepec/Chapultepec Hills. Reforma is 15 kilometers long.

True to its name, on either side of Reforma’s broad central roadway, there are wide park areas for strolling and sitting, and outside of each of those, there are a couple of additional lanes for local traffic, so Reforma is a very wide boulevard. At major intersections there are glorietas, or large traffic circles, usually with a major monument in them. One is the Fuente de Diana Cazadora/Fountain of Diana the Huntress, and the major one is known officially as the Monumento a la Independencia; on top of a high column is the statue of a winged victory, which gives the monument its everyday name of El Ángel/The Angel. El Ángel is the very famous symbol that in practice represents Mexico City, just as the Eiffel Tower does Paris.

I hiked for hours up Reforma. I passed the glorietas with the monument to Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor, and the one to Columbus. I moved from the oldest part of Reforma to somewhat scruffier northern areas, but I had a destination in mind. I wanted to go back to the Plaza de las Tres Culturas.

Forty years ago, Beverly and I had come here, considering it a curiosity we wanted to tell Spanish classes about. There are quite a number of exposed Aztec ruins, to one side is a church from the colonial era, and the whole area is surrounded by modern apartment buildings. The theme here is that you can see evidence of two older cultures surrounded by contemporary Mexican civilization. We liked that concept.

But I was glad I returned this time, since I really got deeper insight. I had never wondered why there should be Aztec ruins this distance north of the Zócalo. It still would have been within the island Tenochtitlán was on, surrounded by Lake Texcoco, but what was its significance?

I now found out it was an outlying village, called Tlatelolco. Not only that, after the fall of Tenochtitlán itself, it was the site of the last stand of the Aztecs (under Cuauhtémoc, mentioned above) against the Spanish, which I consider particularly poignant and significant.

I particularly liked the monument stone put up there, which I don’t remember seeing that last time. I liked what it said (in Spanish) and copied it down verbatim, with my own translation. You must be aware that the word “mestizo”, which has no negative connotations in Spanish, would correspond to the English word “half-breed”, which unfortunately has very negative racial connotations in English. Only slightly better would be the translation “mixed-blood”. I will therefore leave the word mestizo untranslated, for you to accept the Spanish meaning, which carries no baggage.

For one to really understand Mexico today, one has to fully comprehend the history at Tlatelolco, which tells in a nutshell what happened a short distance south around the Zócalo in Tenochtitlán. It explains all the hard-to-pronounce words of Aztec, and other Indian, origin one encounters in Mexico, including in this paragraph, and explains the very uniformly nut-brown faces and sharp noses one sees sitting calmly in the Metro riding across town.

I popped back into the Metro to ride back down to the older area of the Reforma, specifically for dinner in the Zona Rosa. Picture where Reforma and Insurgentes cross sharply like a pair of scissors. Now picture the wedge-shaped area just south of this intersection. This wedge is the center of the area of restaurants and hotels called the Zona Rosa/Pink Zone, a somewhat Bohemian zone whose name I am told is based on the color of many of the buildings there.

My goal was a Zona Rosa restaurant I had read nice things about, the Fonda El Refugio (“Refuge Inn”), dating from 1954, meaning it had just celebrated a half-century of business. It was on Calle Liverpool (!!). It was tiny and congenial, and had a large fireplace decorated with copper pots and pans. It would have been nice to have some cold weather, to be able to enjoy the fireplace, but I suppose I had had enough of that in the Copper Canyon. Actually, my table was right in front of the (fireless) fireplace. The restaurant is both elegant and informal. There was a variety of contemporary Mexican foods, and the napkin-covered basket of warm, fresh tortillas was replaced periodically with still warmer ones. It was another nice end to a day of touring.

You will note from the restaurant being on Calle Liverpool that Zona Rosa streets are named after cities, including Berlín, Oslo, Oxford, Dublin. But those are easy. Try these, which have just minor differences from English: Tokio, Praga, Hamburgo, Dresde, Sevilla, Florencia, Londres, Berna, Estocolmo, Belgrado, Genova, Copenhague, Roma, Viena, Lucerna, Atenas, Brúselas, Nápoles.

Here are the hard ones, in order of toughness, but with hints: Niza (France); Burdeos (France); Varsovia (Poland); Lieja (Belgium); Amberes (Belgium).

They are Nice, Bordeaux, Warsaw, Liège, Antwerp. How’d you do?

On the north side of the Reforma from the Zona Rosa the streets are all named for rivers, including Hudson, Po, Mississippi. Here are a few with minor differences from English: Elba, Nilo, Danubio, Eufrates, Rin, Amazonas. How about these two: Sena, Támesis?

If you said Seine and Thames, you’d be right.

The third day involved just a short walk from my hotel over the Reforma to el Bosque de Chapultepec. There is a certain style of referring to a park as a forest, bois in French and bosque in Spanish. Two major parks to either side of Paris are the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes, and so calling this park Bosque de Chapultepec follows a long-standing tradition.

It’s very large, surrounded by a wall, and in contrast to the more urban Alameda, it is indeed forested to an extent. It has a large zoo and many interesting fountains. I watched a brass band rehearsing, and really had a long, quiet springtime stroll. There was a Canadian totem pole from British Columbia given in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Mexico’s independence in 1960. There were lakes with fountains. It was very pleasant. There were a number of specimens of Mexico’s national tree, which can grow more than five hundred years old, the ahuehuete. All the E’s are as in café, but can you pronounce it? Even specimens that died recently maintain their plaques. If you said ah.we.WE.te, you’d be right.

Returning, I walked along Reforma as it runs through the park. Probably the single most important museum in Mexico City is here, the Museo Nacional de Antropología/National Museum of Anthropology. It’s just a fancy way of saying that it has the best collection of pre-hispanic art here, all sorts of Aztec statues, including the famous Aztec Calendar Stone, a copy of which sits next to my bathroom sink in New York, brought back all those decades ago, Olmec statues, Mayan artifacts. One should not miss it. I purposely skipped it, since forty years ago, when the museum was just three years old, we went to it with our art teacher at least twice, and discussed what was in it in class in addition. However, I did stop to see an “old friend” outside.

There is a fountain facing Reforma, and set in its middle is a monumental statue of Tláloc, the Aztec rain god, that had been discovered in some little town nearby some years ago and had been contributed to the museum. What I liked about the statue was the story that goes with it—that, when Tláloc the rain god was being transported through to streets of Mexico City to its new home in front of the museum, the whole city suffered a huge downpour of rain. The story may or may not be true—but it’s a good story nevertheless.

On my fourth and last touring day I decided to go south, “home” so to speak. We had lived in the part of Churubusco called Campestre Churubusco, and had visited nearby Coyoacán. Both these areas would have been on the south shore of Lake Texcoco when it had existed, and today, both are just southern neighborhoods of Mexico City. At the time we lived down there, it was bothersome to get downtown, but now a Metro line went down to each. I took the Metro to Coyoacán first.

Turning off a busy boulevard, a side street plunged you into the past. First was a little stone bridge over a creek, next to an old chapel. A (very) long walk down a charming street led past old houses and restful plazas to the pair of main squares, with the requisite church. It was peaceful and quiet. I walked to some other squares, to the covered village market, and to the north of the village up to the Frida Kahlo museum, where she had lived with Diego Rivera. I knew there was one more thing I wanted to look at again from the outside, and Michelin declined to mention it, so I had checked online in advance before leaving New York.

Coyoacán had always attracted notables, such as Kahlo and Rivera, and when Leon Trotsky fled Russia into exile, it was to Coyoacán he came. He lived there from 1937 to 1940, when Stalin had him assassinated, in the very house which is now the Museo León Trotsky, still in the midst of a comfortable middle-class neighborhood.

Of course, the info sign must have been illuminated on my forehead, since while walking a few houses down the street away from the museum after I had left it, a car stopped and someone asked in Spanish where the museum was. I laughed and said “Dos casas más, señora, quizás tres (Two houses more, señora, maybe three)”, and we both got a laugh out of it.

I got on the Metro again and had to go partway downtown again before changing lines down to Churubusco. After forty years—and we only lived there for three weeks—even my good sense of geography was fuzzy. I knew we lived with Señora Estela Olvera on a two-block curvy street called Cerro de la Juvencia, but remembered little more. After all this time I had no plans to even try to find anything more than the street, so I took the Metro to the last stop of this line, which was in Churubusco. Perhaps the map in each station, the Plano del Barrio, could help me.

Could it ever. I couldn’t believe it. The map showed the station in Churubusco at the intersection of two busy roads. Very clearly across the north-south road were the wavy streets of Campestre Churubusco (Countryside Churubusco). And the very first wavy street was Cerro de la Juvencia.

I did not remember that there were major roads nearby, but of course, in forty years they may have become more major than they were then. I turned down “my” street, and was plunged into the quiet, middle-class neighborhood I remembered.

But that was the extent to which my lying mind’s eye helped me. I remembered a wider street. It was rather narrow. I remembered detached middle-class houses with tiny front lawns. The houses were middle-class, all right, but were all attached and came right up to the sidewalk, European style. Also European style was the way that the houses were not street-friendly, but turned in on themselves, perhaps to an inner patio or atrium, with only a grilled window or two facing the street. I had a little chat with a security guard in his booth, but that was the extent that I was able to re-bond with “my” street of 1967.

In closing the discussion on Mexico and Mexico City, one final language point should be made, referred to when talking about the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. Mexican Spanish, especially place and people names, are different, and the reason is simple—they are often Aztec and other Indian names. We discussed the X situation in Mexico, and when discussing the hui- and hue- spellings that are common to Spanish throughout, it is obvious that they are much more common in Mexican place names than elsewhere. But one last thing that is typically ultra-Mexican: TL-.

Most languages have all sorts of combinations with L, such as PL-, BL-, CL-, GL-, FL-, and others. But TL-? That seems to be typical of only Aztec words, at least at the beginning of a word. But let’s analyze it.

-TL- in the middle of a word can occur anywhere, in almost any language, such as in “Atlantic”. Two Metro stops here are called Popotla and Cuitlahuac.

-TL at the end is rarer, apparently appearing in Aztec words (examples below), but also, surprisingly, in English, as in bottl and battl, whose standardized—but misleading--spellings are bottle and battle.

TL- at the beginning, as far as I can see are uniquely Aztec, such as in the last-stand town of Tlatelolco and the god Tláloc, both mentioned above.

So it’s not Spanish names that are difficult for outsiders in Mexico, but the Aztec names. We’ll end with a few special ones.

The highest mountain in Mexico, which I’ve never seen, is called Orizaba, but is also called by its Aztec name, Citlatépetl. It’s 5747 meters/18,851 feet high. Try saying the Aztec name, noting both the medial and final TL: sit.la.TE.pe.tl.

But the two very famous volcanic mountains right south of Mexico City, which I didn’t see this time, but did see years ago (the first one still steams volcanically) are:

In these names, you have plenty of chance to practice your final –TL and your WA.

But I will be merciful and tell you that Mexicans usually call the bigger one Popo and its little sister Iztac.

Tampa to New York   On February 1 I continued by flying from Mexico City via Miami to Tampa for the month of February at my condo in Paradise Lakes, at the end of which I took Amtrak’s Silver Star on March 1 overnight, arriving in Penn Station New York the following day.

At Tampa’s Union Station (TUS) I had time to reflect on our experience with that building over the years. We first arrived in Tampa in 1990 by rail, only to find that the windows and doors of that beautiful building were all boarded up. Amtrak used instead, behind it and near the tracks, a temporary building, which was usually referred to generically as an Am-shack. We wondered if TUS would ever have a renaissance.

TUS had been built in 1912 in Italian Renaissance style for the two railroads serving the city then, but with the decline in rail travel, the building had been closed. In 1998 TUS was fully renovated, I believe by private means, and in 1999 it was turned over to the City of Tampa. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. I understand plans are afoot to renovate a Pullman car presently parked behind the station as the start of a rail museum to adjoin the tracks Amtrak uses.

When Tampa Union Station reopened, Beverly and I attended the reception that was held to commemorate the reopening. Under the cream, green, and white ceiling, a jazz band was playing, and we all danced in the middle of the main hall. There were original architect’s plans on display so you could compare the accuracy of the restoration. The restoration was quite perfect, with one obvious change. The main hall we were in originally had a fence down the middle, dividing it into two waiting rooms, one marked “White” and one marked “Colored”. It was a poignant reminder to think about while enjoying the reception.

The arrival in New York ended what was originally planned as a loop rail trip starting in mid-January out of New York to New Orleans, El Paso, the Copper Canyon, Mexico City and Tampa, only overflying the Gulf of Mexico, but which ended up, because of the change in the GrandLuxe rail schedule, and my subsequent dropping of GrandLuxe, having several more flying segments than originally intended. As much as I would have liked to have done it all by rail, I think it turned out better this way.