Arrived in Mexico City

Yeah, at 5 a.m. Somebody tell me why we would book a red-eye flight that is only 3.5 hours for the first flight of our trip. I have no idea, and it's turned us into walking zombies for most of the day. First we had to wait an hour or so in the airport for the sun to come out. Not really had to, but after only hearing DANGER, DANGER about Mexico we figured we'd better not venture around in the dark right away. We eventually took a taxi to our hostel, stored our bags away, and proceeded to pass out on the couches in the lobby for a couple hours, sleeping through breakfast. We woke up just in time for the free walking tour of a few of the better markets in town. Turns out they didn't have enough to go through with the tour, but the guide was really nice and drew us out a map so we could go on our own. Our hostel is located in the historical part of town, which is centrally located, so we were able to walk to the first market - the meat market. They had a bunch of fruit and veggie stalls as well, but the real draw were the meat stands full of all kinds of exotic and not-so-exotic (but still interesting) meats. They had loads of fresh fish, plus sharks, octopus, and just about anything else you can pull out of the ocean. Then there was the whole barnyard available for purchase freshly slaughtered - literally piles of small pigs, goats, whole chickens, and lots of cow parts that I doubt would make it into dog food back home.

brains!!

ALL the little piggies went to the market

Next we took the subway/metro to the largest market in Mexico - something like 3 or 4 full city blocks plus more spilling into the surrounding side streets. Despite all this space and the abundance of different stalls, there wasn't that many different things. Sure there were fruit stalls, veggie stalls, candy, meat, food, grains, beans, pinatas, fake flowers, dog food, even bulk jello mix stalls, but there were many multiples of each. There were literally about 50 stalls that sell the same fruit and veggies. Talk about competition. Anyways, we browsed around for a while, picked up a box of 8 packs of Orbit gum for about $1.50 US (score!), and eventually decided to get some tacos. You would think this would be easy. We could not for the life of us figure out how to order a simple taco. We finally settled on a little stall with 3 old ladies, cooking tortillas on a little stovetop. I tried my best to say "taco pollo", pointing at the tortillas. She acted confused for a minute then seemed to suddenly figure out what I wanted. So, she turns around, grabs a big bowl, plops a boiled chicken leg in it, and filled it with some sort of broth. "Oh no, I'm getting soup." It wasn't exactly bad, just really salty with chickpeas and rice in the bottom. Can't complain though - a big bowl of soup (with chicken leg, don't forget) plus a bottle of Coke for only about $3 US. Needless to say, Steph didn't eat much.

bulk cereal

bulk jello mix!?!

lunch

After the market, we decided to go to Chapultepec Park, which is a giant park in town with a zoo and a bunch of museums. The National Museum of Anthropology is supposed to be really good, so we decided to go check it out and get some background info for our trip to the pyramids tomorrow (spoiler alert). This is where the no-sleep-last-night thing really bit us. When you're dead tired you don't exactly have the energy to read all the little blurbs in the exhibits, so we just wandered around taking pictures of all the cool sculptures and stuff, plus a little nap on a bench in a garden... 

Tonight we're just hanging out in the hostel, trying to catch up on sleep. Tomorrow morning we go out to see the pyramids of Teotihuacan - so we're looking forward to that!