Window Shopping Part One

Oh hi! Mexico City, Puebla and Oaxaca have all had the most amazing window displays. Pretty much like the markets, it doesn't matter what is for sale, presentation is nine tenths of the law. I have marvelled at these. There are so many brilliant examples to capture. I'm not sure how many more Wij really wants to look at, so I'm going to include a variety in the Blog so that I can work through this fixation in my own time. Enjoy, with me, my special guests Adam and Fenner. Mwahx Mwahx.

Mexico City. Plastic fantastic, soon to be found on a beach near you.


Mexico City. Underwear circa 1970.


Mexico City. Pound shop styliee.


Mexico City. Lots of cabinets displaying the work of the dentists inside.


Oaxaca market.


Oaxaca market. Chocolatey Mole?!


Oaxaca, Zocalo. A very typical shoe shop display. The sheer choice could induce an epileptic fit.


Mexico City seemed to only sells white underwear-on mass.


Mexico City first class bus station, pastry fest.


Mexico City. Plenty of shops selling medical equipment of all kinds to the public, if you fancy your own oxygen tank, crash cart or uniform..?


Puebla. Sweet shop and foreign film namesake.


Oaxaca market. 'THE' tinned chillie stall.


To be continued...

Mercardo de la Merced

Oh hi! The markets in Mexico are one of the places that I was most looking forward to visiting. Mercado de la Merced in Mexico city occupies eight whole blocks dedicated to the buying and selling of every item you could possibly imagine, it really is mind blowing. It does not matter what type of product or produce is involved it is always displayed in the most aesthetically pleasing manner. The market is divided up into sections such as fruit and veg, kitchen and household, textiles, dried spices...So much care and effort is taken to make each stall attractive, its not only a visual feast, it really hits all your senses. We were the only tourists there it seemed.
Say it with a fruit basket, Mexican style. What exactly are you saying wth a fruit basket? Probably "I love you" if you gave one of these. That totally covers your five a day love.

Sexy nutty sweets and glace limes stuffed with coconut.

Mexican Mole. Check the mahoosive containers, pile it high.

Oh god! There was a whole meat section! It had single duvet size pieces of tripe, as well as everything a meat lover could possibly wish for, not to mention all the bits that go into sausages and burgers...yeah in their original state mmm tasty. The smell was something else, warm, pungent and off. It turned Wij's stomach and he was hot footing it off. Sadly for me, this coinsided with the realisaton that I was on the menu. "Alright love, fancy a portion?"

Why are these chicken legs so yellow?

Big Jugs of juice. And O´ natural- best way.

Pinata frenzy.

H&S hell (One for you Dellus!).

Mr Sheen my onions.

One of many exits.

Oh hi!

This man had a massive dried fish. Yum. "Ala carte Island of the Dolls".

Which Lime to buy for my Sol..?

Hey lovely lady show me how to make a Tortilla! Sausage of dough under the plastic...

press the handle down...

Hey da darrrh! She was actually very smiley and happy for me to take photos, but didn't want to smile in them.

Wiji eats a "Town Cafe" Mexican style. Yay!! They loved him.

Teotihuacan

So after a couple of days in the centre of Mexico city exploring utterly massive markets and possibly the best museum I've ever been to (Anthropological Museum - Mexico must have one of the most complex multi-layered histories of anywhere in the world) , we decided to make our way to Teotihuacan, a vast (the word does not do it justice) city built around 150 - 200 AD.

It's located about 50 miles north-west of mexico city, and we got there by bus, which proved to be a pleasure of its own. Every time the bus stopped, various traders would hop on to punt there wares. After about 15 mins, 2 cheerfully hairy musicians hopped on and proceeded to seronade us for the next half an hour. Strangely they decided to face the Japanese couple next to us, who pretended to be asleep for the entire time they played. The music was fantastic though, and really made the journey for us.

Once we arrived we began to see the scale of the place that we were in. Its quite hard to describe what it was like, so here's set of choice pictures:

"Hmmm...big innit"


Pyrmaid Del Sol, apparently since found out to have nothing to do with the sun, but actually dedicated to the rain.


Ahh...aren't we pretty...and a bit hot and sweaty. It was seriously hot out there.


Clair didn't fancy climbing the 248 mahoosive steps up to the top of the Pyramid del Sol. So I took a picture of her walking round the base.


Another piccy from the top of the biggest of the 2 pyramids showing the Calzada de los muertos (Avenue of the Dead). The main drag that runs for up to 5km through the city. All the bits to the side are actually apartment complexes where the people of the city (upwards of 20000 inhabatants) lived.


Walking up the Avenue of the dead to the Pyramid of the Moon.

"Yeah Hi".... a picture taken by yet another cheerfully helpful mexican on the pyramid of the moon, as the steps were nearly vertical, so it was just me up there.

There's Clair in the middle of that plinth below.


And here she is by one of the unbelievably large agarve plants growing all around the site.


All in all a really stunning day.

Island of the Dolls

Oh hi! to everyone! OMG I am really loving Mexico.

This is my first blog entry, how mad that I am bothering to sit in front of a computer-its not really my natural habitat.

Thanks to Ed for sitting so thoughtfully at the Crown and taking the time to remember the name of the place he went to, just south of Mexico city. It is called Xochimilco and is 180km of beautiful Aztec canals, no really.

By accident and our obvious lack of Spanish, combined with huge enthusiasm having made it to Xochimilco by metro and a hairy chicken bus, we went on a four hour Gondola ride... woops! It was beautiful though, and we didn´t have anything more pressing to do. I did feel sorry for the man ´rowing it´.

We went to see the ´island of the dolls´. The Lonely Planet only hinted at the visual gem that was to follow...'Whatever festive mood you may have set out with will turn to dread approaching this remote spot'. This was where an artist filled his small island home, garden and sheds with masses of plastic dollies hanging everywhere in various states of decay. He wasn´t totally mad, but did it as a tribute to a girl who died on the canals. Really eerie and totally odd. Wij was really freaked out and I loved it, well I did until I needed a wee and realised that through the thin wooden slats of the toilet shed was our host, possibly needing a lot more fibre in his diet, just a quick hover for me then.

Here is a selection of the pics that I took.

The fantastic colours all in glorious gloss paint.






Floating hedge.


Apparently the artist fished all the dolls from the canals, whatever.




Nothing unusual here.




Shrine to the artist.


Oh hi!




This was a total find! An actual dried out fish from the canal and dolly head ensemble. Yeah weigh that beauty down, so it don't get away!! AAAAAARRRGGGG!


Thats it from me for now. Moo ha ha xx.

Off We Popped

Hello Everybody! This is brill. Comments and we haven't even written anything yet.

Well we're finally on our way. The flight was a whopping 11 hours! Didn't actually have any idea how long it was going to be but managed to squeeze 3 films in (Darjeeling Ltd - Wes Anderson, relatively funny, Stardust - Actually rather entertaining fairy tale nonsense and Ratatouille - Which I loved!).

The flight was via BA, and was suprisingly ok. They even laid on a very nice sausage and mash for me (they must have known it was our last english grub for some time). Clair's veggy meal was even half decent (if fairly cheese based).

Here's me about to tuck in:

The whole time difference thing was quite bizarre as we left at 12.40 lunchtime from old blighty, and arrived at 8pm local time in mexico, so the whole 11 hours was in daylight, and it only started to get dark once we landed. Mexico city airport is right in the centre of the city, so we had some amazing views of it flying in. It is a truly vast city.

Once landed and luggage collected we rang the hostel we were staying in and fortunately, they spoke perfect english and let us know a car was on its way. We then went to the exit to meet it and were greeted by what we now know to be standard Mexican driving. We were there for literally 30 seconds before a car skidded almost 180 degrees in front of us in an attempt to avoid a rambling taxi. This was in the dropping off/picking up area outside the airport. 10 minutes later and we saw our first crash again right in front of us. Alright, it was only a minor scrape, but quite comedy none the less.

Our ride soon arrived and we were whisked off wide eyed through the teeming city to our absolutely lovely first hostel right smack in the middle of the historico centro of Mexico city. Here's a piccy of it we took as were leaving:

It was a genuinely gorgeous old colonial building that had been restored in a really nice way. Our room was the top left one with a slightly scary but lovely balcony from which we could look over the Zocalo, the city's main plaza. Bloody lush.

Right that's about enough for now. Will try and be a bit more to the point in future.

Just to respond to a few previous comments:

Rob and Hazel - Cheers for that, good luck to you guys. Keep in touch!

Jep - There was a bag with the adapter and cables in, but don't know if the lads picked it up or if I put it elsewhere, it might be stuffed in with the keyboard. If they've had a look and can't see it you'll probably need to get another.

Kevster - Too right you funny bugger.