No one can visit Mexico City and not spend quality time with two of Mexico’s most famous personages and artists: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
Cortés first settled and built his home within the neighborhood of Coyoacán. But is not Cortés which draws visitors, but the neighborhood’s most famous residents:
I follow travel blogs and podcasts enough to know there is little originality in lists.
For decades, I have wanted to visit Mexico City. Though I traveled several times to the Yucatan and along the west coast of Mexico, I never made it to the “big city.” I’ve had connecting flights at MEX, enough to realize its air quality ranked somewhere beneath LA in the best of times, or Beijing about any time. I had a week free this month, so I invited a friend to join me in a few day’s exploration.
So, though I generally eschew travel lists, here are the things I loved, and a couple I disliked, about Mexico City.
Love road trips. Even rural areas of Iowa look good when driving free and easy down America’s “super highways.” I recognize a lot of cities and towns; family roots appear around many corners and corn fields. My favorite finds were:
“We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races…What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?…Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier…And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekelys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkey-land….” – Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula
I really have no desire to leave lovely Budapest. A cafe and beer along the Danube beckons. But, for someone who loves fortresses and medieval castles, a trip to Visegrádis a must. Just 25 miles north of Budapest, at the very center of the Danube Bend, lies King Matthias’ Royal Palace. An ambassador of the Pope was visiting the King and wrote “From Visegrad, from an earthly paradise.” Well, I’m not so sure. (more…)
