Album: Camino Real Hotel
the Camino Real Ciudad de Mexico Hotel where we stayed was designed by the Mexican Architect Ricardo Legorreta and opened to the public on July 25, 1968; the exterior, including the courtyard, and the public rooms are beautiful as sculpture and architecture, and the spaces are amazingly both grand and comfortable; we had some problems with the accomodations, but that story may be for another post

Video by Jari Haanpera, projected above gallery visitors to a show of Finnish artists called "Heavy Snowflakes" ("Pesados Copos de Nieve"), at a space called Ex Teresa Arte Actual; Barry wrote that the beautiful video described the "creation of electronic music, using computers and machines meant originally for science, not art" and that it contained this great line: "technology won't take control as long as man can misuse it"

evening at the Zocalo, with the muncicipal buildings in the distance and food vendors just beyone the foreground, a few feet from the central Catedral

interior of the ancient and excellent Cafe Tecuba, 10:30 at night, while we awaited supper; the building was built as a house in the 17th century and the restaurant has been there since 1912

the beautiful Mexican kids are better dressed than 95% of adult norte Americanos - and much happier and much better behaved

Sunday in the Park with very happy baby [Chapultepec Park]

In the Franz Mayer Museum, a tender Madonna and child, colonial Mexican, carved polychrome wood and "estufado", which we always translated as "mixed media", to account for the metal crown here and the materials used to fashion armor or other accoutrement in other works

late in the afternoon, just before sunset, an honor guard leaves the Palacio Nacional to lower the enormous Mexican flag which flies above the Zocalo all day

goose-stepping in perfect order, the honor guard leaves the 16th-century government palace to lower the flag in the center of the Zocalo

steps of the [mostly ruined] central Aztec temple, the Templo Mayor, adjacent to the Christian cathedral and the Spanish viceroy's governmental seat, now the Palacio Nacional, which was built on the exact site of Moctezuma's own palace

carved wooden sculpture by German artist Stephan Balkenhol shown at Galería OMR in Colonia Roma; the figures and their bases were hewn from one piece of wood

another sculpture by German artist Stephean Balkenhol at Galería OMR in Colonia Roma, this one perhaps addressing issues about the manner and fact of the Spanish conquest which are still unresolved today

yes, the headlights are quite blue, although the very white Bug here looks fairly blue as well, since it's the evening, the "Hora Azul" in the seductive Colonia Roma

the main interior courtyard of the Palacio Nacional, the building which was once the residence of Cortes and which today houses the offices of the Mexican President; the famed Diego Rivera murals are on the inside walls of the second open arcade level, to the left and behind the camera

detail of one of Diego Rivera's murals, showing market traders selling a huge variety of wares in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, which was to become Mexico City

detail of a second panel of Rivera's murals in the courtyard, this scene also pre-Cortes

also a detail, this is Rivera's representation of the Spanish while they were still in Veracruz, in 1519, before the conquest of the Aztec capital [the ashy-complexioned, weak-chinned, syphilitic character is supposed to be Hernando Cortes; I love the sad-eyed donkey]

the Palacio Nacional, in a view from inside the main courtyard, showing the flag which flies behind the belltower which holds the bell rung every year on the anniversary of the day in 1810 when it first heralded the independence of Mexico

magnificent ceiling of the semicircular Chamber of Deputies within the Palacio Nacional, the seat of representative government in the middle of the 19th century