Today our morning activity was a family photoshoot -- I was quite impressed with how professional the setup was - our photographer even had a second assistant who carried around the portable light umbrella. I can't wait to see the results! Here's one preview:
I thought an hour would be way too long but it actually went by pretty quickly. So many combinations to get through. 😆
We rewarded ourselves with some more churros afterwards. This time in ice cream sandwich form!
It was almost noon so we decided to do some street tacos as well. The tacos here were all coated in the meat oil so they were more like wet burritos. Conclusion: not as good as some of the others we've had. Not bad certainly, but not one of our favorites.
Today's afternoon activity was boat rides in Xochimilco. All of the boats were so colorful. Watch out if you're coming that 1) it's quite a long ways away, in hindsight we should have come earlier in the day to avoid traffic. 2) the motorcycle touts trying to convince you that the dock is under construction and you can only go with them to a different dock are incessant. You have to just instruct your Uber driver very firmly to ignore them (they will stay with your car for like 10-15 min trying to convince you).
Maybe also check that you're going to Embarcadero Nativitas...not Xochimilco downtown. One of our ubers may have been sent to Xochimilco city by mistake...but moving on!
L, R, and Jiuma were kind of obsessed with the dogs running along the banks. Here's a photo to remember them by:
Xochimilco is a UNESCO national heritage site for the chinampas that remain from the historical times. We didn't visit the heritage ecological section though -- we were told that would take a good 4 hours to get to. Instead, we did the party boat version: beers, quesadillas, and elote. Happy to report this street corn was MUCH better than the Coyoacan attempt.
Armed with some snacks and a bucket of beer, we were off on our 1.5 hour float!
We passed by a lot of locals, some of whom were large groups that booked multiple boats and tied them together. Here is a group of 6 boats with a mariachi band in the middle for entertainment.
It started raining a bit while we were out but the little raindrops were actually kind of nice...creating a lilies on the water painting kind of vibe.
We didn't have enough time to go to the real Island of the Dolls but we did pass by this miniature one. Even this was enough to give off spooky haunted vibes.
There were lots of the normal taco and elote floating vendors, but we also saw flower vendors, pulque vendors, and an eagle and his keeper as well - 150 pesos to pose with the eagle!
All in all, we enjoyed the boat ride experience, but wish it hadn't taken so long to get there/back. I think for other travelers, you should really strongly strongly consider adding it combined with something else (like a trip to Puebla or Coyoacan). Since we could only fit it in here, it was fun, but felt the drive "cost" was a little high. We went straight from the boat ride to our dinner reservation at Masala y Maiz -- our fourth Michelin experience of the trip. It was a little bit odd because their kitchen actually closes at 6, so we were a little rushed in the ordering. But since they offered to choose our menu for us, that worked out okay.
Here are the appetizers -- an heirloom tomato and cucumber salad. Very good, though after so many days of heavy meals, we may have been overly biased towards a dish of vegetables.
Peel and eat shrimp - this was very very good. I liked the sweet and buttery dipping sauce too.
Twist on tuna tartare - you break the tortilla chip on top and then scoop up the fish underneath with them. I enjoyed this, but as before, it's hard to make a tartare I don't enjoy.
This was the potato fritter, with some peas mixed in the base and lamb on top. I recall thinking it was okay, but not extremely memorable.
And of course no Indian fusion meal could happen without a twist on a samosa. I thought the beef version was quite good, would recommend.
And they started us off with these boiled peanuts. Laoye always enjoys a good boiled peanut but they weren't as flavorful as the ones we are used to in China.
Moving onto the mains - this was their Chile Relleno -- we were a little torn on whether the pepper skin was meant to be eaten. It came with tortillas to be made into burritos. I personally didn't care for this dish, it was a little bitter and not very flavorful otherwise.
The chicken on the other hand I really enjoyed. I wish we had gotten a third order. The dipping sauce was also quite good. And the orange sauce underneath was also super yummy with the included bread popovers.
This is how R looked when we were forcing her to try some new things.
This is what the expression was specifically caused by, some very tasty mussels. Not as good as the Quintonil mussel dish, but still decent.
We also got two desserts -- neither of these were favorites for anyone. The chocolate was too bitter and the rice pudding like dish was a bit bland.
After dinner, the more cultured of us had tickets to go see the Ballet Folklorico. We walked about 10 min from the restaurant over to the Palace of Fine Arts for the performance. Along the way, there was a night market of sorts where L and R finally got to pick up some Spanish books.
It was nice being able to see the Palace lit up at night against the dark sky.
Even before the show started, there was a pretty cool light show using the glass curtain -- I'm told it's made of thousands of Tiffany pieces!
I regret not taking a photo of the drummers and almost Hawaiian or Taiwanese-like first dance performance. It was a pretty cool way to start. Definitely did NOT seem like classic Mexico folklorico dancing. But most of the other acts were more traditional. The staging and lighting and so on were top notch.
I must admit I lost the plot a bit not being Mexican. At first there were nods to revolutionaries which I sort of got. But then at some point these folks with crazy heads came out...as well as a devil? And a she-devil? And then there was a deer-like animal being chased and killed...
At the end it went back to traditional dancing. Such amazing colors!
I didn't expect so much of the show to be focused on the musicians -- the singers had several pieces focused just on their singing and the musician/orchestra/band also had quite a few numbers where they were the stars. I think my favorite act all night was the dueling harps! Who knew that was even a thing!
Grand finale where everyone was taking their bows. Only the front two rows are dancers. The next two rows are the choir/vocal performers, and then the last row are the orchestra/band performers.
I'd recommend visitors coming to Mexico City to see the show once -- I do kind of wish it had been about 10-20 min shorter at the end (90 min, no intermission) but we were all highly entertained.
It was quite late by the time we got home. Immediately to bed -- tomorrow is our Puebla day!
No comments:
Post a Comment