Written on Saturday, July 28
These past few weeks have been amazing and eventful! For my Culture and History of Mexico class, we took three trips: Centro Historico Prehispánico, Centro Historico Colonial, and Xochimilco. For the first trip, we visited the Templo Mayor, which was the main temple of the capital city of Tenochtitlan. Afterwards, we visited the Museo Nacional de Antropología, and there we saw many artifacts including the Aztec calendar stone. It was an absolutely unreal experience seeing it in person. It was so much bigger than I had imagined, and no photo from any high school textbook could prepare me for its magnificence in person.
This is the Aztec calendar stone we saw at the Museo Nacional de Antropología
For our second trip, we visited the Palacio Nacional, located in Mexico City’s main square, the Plaza de la Constitución. There, we walked the halls of the Benito Juárez Museum and saw the incredible murals by Diego Rivera. My favorite was the History of Mexico mural in the main stairwell. Later that day, we visited a couple more museums and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. It was a tiring day, but we saw so many amazing sights from beautiful artwork in museums to intricate gold designs in churches.
This is the History of Mexico mural by Diego Rivera located in the stairwell of the Palacio Nacional
Yesterday we went to the Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino where we saw more Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo art. There were even peacocks and hairless dogs! My favorite part of the day was when our class went on a boat ride in Xochimilco. It was such a fun experience. There were vendors on boats selling everything from tacos to flower crowns. We even received a beautiful performance from mariachi musicians passing by. It was overall an absolutely amazing day.
From our boat ride at Xochimilco
After these incredible past couple of weeks, I’m looking forward to our field trip to Oaxaca this Thursday!