Gigante Liquado

Monday, Jan. 12, 2015--Mexico City

Like Sundays, Mondays also have their limitations for tourists.  The main one is that museums tend not to be open.  We made the Historico Centro (the historical center of the city) our focus today.  Although most museums were closed, we could enjoy the atmosphere, the architecture, etc.

We walked all day.  Our first stop was a market which our guidebook said had good food stalls.  We picked out one that was popular and was serving nice tortas and where they were slicing beautiful pork.  We each ordered a pierna torta Oaxaca-style.  It had roasted pork, stingy cheese that was melted, tomato, avocado, and cilantro and was about 10 inches long and 4 inches wide (25 cm by 10 cm).  As we ate them, two other customers ordered liquados--blended milk drinks (one strawberry and one chocolate).  As we ate at the counter, we watched the employee make them.  Each was 1 quart in size (1 liter).  We thought they were making them to poor into glasses for serving.  But they handed them over the counter to the two customers--the whole pitcher for each one!  We immediately opened the menu and found the right page for liquados.  We ordered one gigante (the same size as the others) in chocolate.  UMMMM!

The rest of the day, we explored all the historical sites--the Zocolo, the Cathedral, and all the other places that tourists visit in the downtown area that are open on Mondays.  We saw the murals by Diego Rivera in the Ministry of Education building.  We saw the art exhibit at the Banamex Cultural Center in the Palace of Iturbide which included wonderful art collected by the bank over decades.  We walked up and down all the streets seeing the interesting old buildings throughout the center of town.

We stopped at Panadaria Ideal, a place I always go when in Mexico City, on 16 de Septiembre.  It's a huge and very busy bakery--unbelievably huge and busy.  We bought two pastries and took them to Parque Alameda to eat them.

From there, we wandered back to our hotel passing by the Monument of the Revolution and to the hotel.  We had been walking for 8 hours!