La Gran Tenochtitlán

La Diana from the terrace of the King Cole Bar, St. Regis, Mexico City. 

It's a nice terrace, but the hotel feels way too corporate and generic for my taste. However, a michelada and a blanket hit the spot just right.

Pulquería La Hermosa Hortencia in Plaza Garibaldi

From the upper echelons of the posh St. Regis, to the lower depths of the now swanky pulquería, which boasts outdoor sitting. Of course, there had to be the one drunk ambassador to Garibaldi who saw us and slurred a welcome in Inglish. There is always one.

At the humongous Mercado de Dulces at La Merced

This is one place where it is entirely possible to walk in and never be seen again. Not because anything bad will happen to you, but because it is an infinte maze of stalls that never end. The biggest sweets and candy market in Mexico City. Here is where all the candy vendors and hawkers, from the guys selling on the street, to the mom and pop stores, come to buy their candy. There are endless stalls of traditional Mexican sweets, like alegrías and pepitorias and candied fruit, and then more endless stalls of fabulous Mexican chazerai. A Borgian (as in Jorge Luis) infinity of sugar, salt and chili.

Then right next to it is the humongous Merced food market, with rows and rows of amazing dried chilies and spices, fruits and vegetables... and even a forbidding aisle of the infamous Catemaco witches, who have these elegant and creepy looking mahogany cabins where they perform limpias (they clean up your bad luck and/or bad vibe) or tell you the future. To be honest, I was scared to take a picture. They are all sinister cons.

A woman performing a cleanse right on the Zócalo.

The Mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, has been doing lots of stuff to turn the city into a more urbane place. There is a limited bicycle program in the colonia Condesa like the one in Paris, with the difference, as a Mexican proudly pointed out, that no one has yet stolen a bike. Half the city is under construction of more bus lanes and on Sundays a big chunk of Reforma Avenue is closed to cars and open to people on foot, bikes or skates. Of course, the motorists nag and complain, but I think it is great that Ebrard insists on showing the citizens of el D.F. that the city is more than a hell of pollution and traffic but a magnificent place they can enjoy together.

La Lupita in the restroom of La Botica. Times have changed.