Mexico City WOO!

Mexico City is nothing like I thought it would be! I had imagined a dirty, polluted, dangerous and ugly city (from what I've read and what other travellers have told me), but in fact it's quite the opposite! There are really nice buildings here, in the city centre and in some parts of the inner city area, and where I'm staying is really safe (I don't know about the rest of the city). I haven't noticed much of the pollution, although there are a lot of cars here. It's not as evidently smoggy as LA, perhaps that's the problem. It's not thick black smoke, lol.

I'm staying with a friend of Fabiola's (Fabiola and Christian owned the farm I was working at for the last 3 weeks), she offered her apartment when I said I was going to the city for a few days, and she's asking another friend in Oaxaca (where I'm planning to go next) if I can stay with them. What nice people! Patricia (the woman I'm staying with) lives in the inner city area, really close to the centre (if you count the presidential palace and the Zocalo as being in the centre), and is walking distance to all the major museums and galleries. It's very convenient!

So I arrived yesterday, and I went to the National Museum of Anthropology today. It is a ridiculously huge museum! There are 24 rooms in total, and they're all pretty big, with lots of displays and some bilingual captions. Needless to say, I spent the entire day there. I could've spent more time, but I was freezing! When we arrived yesterday, it was hot. Today, it was overcast, windy and raining a bit, it was a complete flip in weather! It's like I'm in Melbourne again. I'm wearing 4 layers of clothing as we speak. Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of warmth in the museum, I just had a light jacket, so I was absolutely freezing. In between unsuccessfully trying to stay warm and trying to absorb the information presented to me (half of which was in spanish), I nevertheless was able to pick up some bits of information. The Aztec and Mayan rooms were really cool. I didn't know this before, but they were really big on blood sacrifices. They'd sacrifice animals, people, even children to whichever god who needed it at the time. They also built huge pyramids and temples. It was pretty cool.

On the food note, I've been eating lots of street food lately. I love street food, it's the best food you can get in any country! If only Australia had enough history to have good street food. I know enough spanish (and names of Mexican foods) to know what I'm ordering, and to get it without cheese! Seriously, everything has cheese and/or chilli here. You can get all fruit salads with chilli powder, salt and lime juice, same with corn on the cob, except they put cheese and mayonaise on that too! Regardless, I still love Mexican food, it's awesome! Oh, and they have blue tortillas! They're made from a blue variety of corn, unsurprisingly. They have a million varieties of corn here (ok, not that many, maybe 40 or 50). I thought Ecuadorians were obssessed with corn, that was nothing compared to Mexico! There's always at least one thing made of corn in every meal, most likely tortillas. Anyway, I'm trying lots of different foods, I just get whatever is vegetarian in the stall and ask for it without cheese, and then wait for the surprise. So far I haven't been disappointed!