Tlacoyo Near the Home

I walked out of the condo and got a Tlacoyo on the street for breakfast. The stand was just up the street from the condo near the Walmart. I’ll describe the Tlacoyo in a future post.

Diego Rivera Mural Museum

In the afternoon we went back to the Centro Historico. Lots of museums and stores were closed since it was New Years day, but there were still a lot of tourists out walking around. Andy really enjoyed taking photos of the other tourists walking around.

Near Alameda Square we wandered into the Diego Riviera Mural Museum. It mostly existed to house a single Diego Riviera Mural, which used to be on the wall of a hotel in Mexico City, but after an earthquake the hotel had to be demolished. Luckily the mural was able to be saved by extracting the piece of wall from the hotel before it’s demolition.

The mural depicted numerous figures and events from Mexico city all standing together, as if for a group photo. I’ll point out two things that stood out to me.

Diego Riviera painted himself as a child together with his wife Frieda Kahhlo as an adult. Maybe this was a thing or maybe it was just him painting stuff. Who knows.

A second point of interest was that he included a little section on the inquisition. In the section a jew is being killed wearing a pointy hat, that reminded me of a dunce cap one might have worn in the old times as a punishment for answering a question wrong in the class. I only knew the Inquisition as the force that kicked the Sephardic Jews out of the Iberian peninsula, but the Inquisition existed throughout the Spanish Empire.

Mexican National Art Gallery

After leaving the Mural Museum we wandered on the streets of the Centro Historico, until we stumbled into the Mexican National Art Gallery. It was soon going to close, but since it was free on Sunday we decided to go in anyways and see what we could.

The first section we went into contained mostly sculptures from the Renaissance Era, depicting classical themes, mostly greek mythology. Lizy pointed out a statue of Hermes playing the flute to Argos. She did not know or remember the myth so I briefly summarized it for her,

" Zeus really wanted ot have sex with this beautiful woman, but did not want his wife, Hera, to find out, so he turned her into a cow. Hera saw the cow in Zeus’s field and suspected he was having sex with the cow. So she went to Zeus and asked for the cow to put in her field. Zeus resisted her request, so she said, “Why is there something special about this cow?” To which Zeus was forced to respond no, or else his ruse might be put to light. So Hera took the cow and got Argos a creature with 1000 eyes to guard the animal.

“Since Zeus still lusted after the cow he commanded Hermes to steal the cow from era. Hermes plan was to play the flute to Argos to lull him to sleep, so he could steal the cow back.”

“Men are gross,” responded Lizy.

Afterwards, we walked through a section with 20th century paintings. Lizy’s favorite painting depicted carrots contorting their bodies in human like ways. She told me they were fighting their lust.

Walking Between Squares

Back on the street outside the museum we met up with Andy again. He had spent his time photographing people on the street. He wanted to walk up to Gibraldi square, but I wanted to walk along the main street and up to the square that had been the second market in Cortez’s era, so we decided to split up. The square I walked to had fallen into disrepair.

Lizy and I tried to meet up again, but accidentally walked past each other, so I doubled back to the square I had started at.

A late lunch

Back at the square I suggest we get a quick bite before heading back to the condo, since I was hungry from walking back and forth. The was a street vendor at the edge of the square consisting of people cooking at a big griddle and there were many little chairs huddled around the griddle. They had already begun to clean up, since they were closing at it was already the late afternoon. There was a guy scrubbing plates to the side of the huddled chairs, but they were still running the griddle and we could still get food.

The most common order was a hurauche. A hurauche is sort of like a big tortilla that is football shaped, instead of round. It’s thicker than a regular tortilla and contains chunks of beans inside, sort of like a tlacoyo. The name come from it’s shape. Huruache in spanish means sandal, which I guess is a more common shape than american footballs in Mexico. A man would heat up the hurauche on the griddle while grilling up your choice of meat. He’s scoop the grilled meat onto the huruache with some lettuce and cheese. Then you could put salsa and pickled cactus on the hurauche from containers beside the griddle. I scooped a lot of salsa on my huruache and the people sitting across from the containers, started laughing at me, “So spicy.”

Lizy was slightly grossed out that they were cleaning up the space, as they cooked the final orders. In the end she relented and got a gordita. But after she sat down to eat with us, someone moved an umbrella to clean up, and a bit of water from possibly the drain above her fell on her head. That was the final straw. She told us she was done with the restaurant and left.

Andy and I finished our huruaches sitting together on the small chairs. They were quite delicious.

Hanging out at the Condo

We all took an Uber home together. Andy started watching the Incredibles and since we only had one room, the rest of us sort of fell into an Incredibles marathon. I ate a bit of the soup from yesterday, but wasn’t that hungry since I had just eaten the big late lunch. I continue reading House of Spirits. I was practically asleep in bed when Lizy shook me awake to see some New Years fireworks. I didn’t get out of bed, but I saw the dazzling displays through the bedroom window.