Wandering around the neighbourhood one weekend day, I passed through a little park, Plaza Rio de Janerio, where there was an Alice in Wonderland themed event going on. People were all dressed up as various characters from the book. There were no formal Alice-related activities, just people having fun dressing up, it seemed.
A quite outlandish Bougainvillea
Another car-free Sunday, another version of zumba.
One of the museums I like to visit whenever I’m in Mexico City is the Jumex where contemporary art is exhibited. Before we go inside, we have to have a look at the always arresting Soumaya museum across the street.
Also outside the museum there is a big sculpture, The Lovers #2 by Urs Fischer.
The first exhibit I saw inside was the work of a German/Venezuelan artist, Gertrude Goldschmidt, known by the name, Gego. She was an architect and engineer in Germany but fled before WW2 as anti-Semitism began to grow and settled in Venezuela where she practiced architecture until she began to focus on her art in the early 50s.
Much of her work are these wire creations in which you can see her engineering/architecture background.
The next three are some of her later works called, Tejeduras (weavings), done with woven strips of paper.
The other exhibit of note there was of Lari George Pittman, a Colombian-American contemporary artist and painter. Pittman is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Painting and Drawing at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.
Other scenes around Jumex
The following are places where people go to worship. The first couple are of the first synagogue in CDMX founded in 1918. By then there was a large population of Jews in Mexico who had fled Europe to escape persecution. This synagogue is no longer functions as a place of worship but is open to the public.
The next bunch are Catholic churches around the Centro.
This one lends itself to all sorts of possible captions. Let’s have a caption contest. The person who comes up with the best caption, as judged by a team of theologians, wins a month of free blogs.
Some random odds and ends
Quintessential downtown CDMX
La casa de la familia Diener
In this upscale part of CDMX, a bike and foot path follow a rail line for many kilometers. Makes for a nice ride.
Stay tuned………
Passing through Chapultepec park the other day, I saw notice of live music on the following weekend. So I went down there, much too early as it turned out and waited for quite a long while for it to start. As they were setting up I could see that one of the musicians was a banjo player. Not what you usually associate with Mexican music in any of it’s forms. Turned out to be kind of punk bluegrass. Banjo and stand up bass. It may have been Atolerable but for the terrible distorted sound system. I didn’t last long there.
Next day was yet another car free Sunday. A slightly different twist on zumba each week.
There was quite an assortment of bikes out
I’m going to leave this post as it is now and start a new one
In what were, and often still are, more affluent neighbourhoods, there are wonderful examples of colonial architecture mixed with art deco and modern and bright colours. The following places I photographed wandering around my neighbourhood.
The jacarandas are just coming in to bloom. A sign of spring in CDMX. They are so lovely
Another layer of the big onion that Mexico City is.
Wanderings Onward 