A Nice and Easy Sunday!

Up this morning about 7:30 am after our incredibly busy but exhausting cooking day yesterday. Showered and out to Starbucks for coffee/hot chocolate, croissants and pain au chocolat about 9. Lovely start to the day! What we found really interesting, though, was that Juarez, the street in front of the Hilton and our street, running perpendicular are both totally blocked off! It was wild! R thought there must be some sort of marathon going on, but I’m thinking this may be a normal Sunday procedure! There were people everywhere, running, cycling, walking, skating up and down the street, and it was terrific! Large groups of people attempting to skate – it’s easy to tell people who have never had roller skates on before! Taking a look at Apple Maps showed that a large portion of La Reforma was also blocked off! How do people get around/out on Sunday?? 

At any rate, back to the flat to collect the camera, and out the “other” way onto Avenida Independencia to be able to catch an Uber. This took us directly to the Natural History Museum, and much to our delight, if we were over 60 (and surprise! We are!) no charge today! Yay! 

We were both very pleasantly surprised with the very high quality of the museum! It was built in Chapultepec park, as are many of the Mexico City museums, but it is built in a series of small domes – each one encompassing a different part of nature. The first dome was about the creation of the earth; the Big Bang theory, and it was fabulous! To be honest, there wasn’t a great deal in English, but being lucky enough to have an Astrophysicist with me, I didn’t need too much! 

From there we passed on to animals, starting with dinosaurs. They had several large scale replicas, which were excellent, but then moved into different ecosystems – which included many different “stuffed” animals. And, while I tend to like our stuffed teddy bear on our bed, that does not include full-scale “real” stuffed animals, which I have never particularly liked! (Such as the former “castle” International Wildlife Museum in Tucson…which I think we are all happy to be rid of…)

Looking out over some of the domes of the museum

At any rate, they had some spectacular collections of butterflies, spiders, insects and bugs (brrrr….) which I am sure interested kids tremendously … me, not so much! 

 

Replica of a HUGE flying reptile native to Mexico!

Actual mammoth skull

Some lovely fossils

From there, we passed on to a very interesting special exhibit about the sea! This was a large rectangular room with cushions in the middle and squishy cushions on the floor. Then, projected on all four walls was a movie about the whales in Baja Sur, with a cello player on a small motor boat, with a microphone lowered into the sea, mimicking the whale songs Very interesting, and beautiful! I managed to find a squishy cushion on the floor, and it was lovely – so relaxing, as it was so quiet while everybody watched the movie. 

 

From the whale movie

Definitely the way to watch...

Love mobile at the entry to the exhibit

From there, we decided we had had enough science and were picked up promptly by Uber in front of the museum, and headed back to the apartment for a rest. I decided to take a walk down Juarez, as I wanted to find some toothpaste and shampoo – which I did! – and also was able to take some photographs of people in the park and the stunning Bellas Artes on a Sunday afternoon! It was quite warm by this time - a lovely Sunday afternoon! On the way back to the apartment, I realized that I was beginning to get a migraine – hadn’t had one in probably well over a year and a half! Fortunately, though Dr. Roy had suggested Excedrin Migraine, and it works really well! I took it, lay down for a nap, and an hour and a half later woke up feeling much better! Thank you, Dr. Roy!!! 

 

Monument across the street from our apartment

And the park -- 

with lots of people today!

The always stunning Bellas Artes!

Robert by this time was able to get us connected via Roku TV to the NFL Patriot/Houston Texan football game, which was great – great that we could get connected – not the game itself, as I was rooting for the Texans! Oh well! Fun to be able to watch, even though it was in Spanish! 

Left about 4:45 pm for our 5 pm reservation at Testal, where we had a reservation for dinner. It’s about 3 blocks from our apartment, and our reserved table was waiting for us. As R said, it’s really not particularly a tourist restaurant, even though they did have a menu in English. Not much English spoken in the restaurant though. Our food was spectacular! R had their beef-stuffed chili relleno, which was excellent, and I had their “surf and turf!” That was very thinly sliced beef steak, cooked rare, in a shrimp sauce, with grilled shrimp on top, with pieces of grilled shrimp in the sauce. That was spectacular! There was a complimentary appetizer to start, which was a small taco of some sort, and was also amazing! We’ve decided that we’ll definitely return to Testal on Tuesday night, our last night in town! 

 

Wonderful taco starters!

Lovely room!

My "surf and turf!"

R's chile relleno!

 Back to the apartment about 6:30 pm and R has the Bears/Rams game on TV! Tomorrow will be our second cooking class, which sounds much lower key than yesterdays … we’ll see! 

At any rate, until tomorrow! 

Much love, 

m 

xxx