I messed up. haha. This day was originally missing and day 6 was labeled as day 5, so here it is: the lost day; Day 5 part 2: the day-ening. I’m glad I noticed this because it was a really fun day and pretty easy to write about.
We started the day with an Uber to La Condesa, a fancy neighborhood in Mexico City. We ate breakfast at Maque, a fancy bakery in a fancy neighborhood. I had a fancy pastry and the fanciest chilaquiles, and of course an almond milk latte.
Maque, La Condesa 
An almondy pastry 
Chilaquiles
Hipodromo
After breakfast, we walked around Hipodromo, an area within La Condesa. Rachael stopped into a shop selling leather bags and chatted with the shopkeeper while I snapped a few photos of the neighborhood. I loved how diverse the architecture was and how much greenery there was.
OuHipodromo 
This trellace wrapped around the outside of the park and provided some nice shade 
This was a larger loop that took us about 40 minute to walk around stopping every now and again 
As we walked around the loop, we saw these little houses on either side. Each one was dramatically diffeent from each other and ranged from colonial to modern to art deco
Chapultepec Castle
From La Condesa, we traveled to Chapultepec Park. The park itself is huge and has several museums, a lake where you can rent paddle boats, and some other fun attractions.
Our first stop there was at Chapultepec Castle, a castle turned military academy turned presidential home, turned museum. None of the signage was in English, so I was glad the price of admission was only a few dollars. The castle is quite large and we could have easily spent a day there. The first floor had several rooms with beautiful floor to ceiling murals that wrapped all the way around all four walls.
The castle was divided into two wings with one site mostly devoted to those large murals and some exhibits of early Mexican currency and period costumes. The other wing had stately rooms decorated how they would have appeared in their heyday.
Chapultepec Park 
Chapultepec Castle 
The castle had these massive paintings in each room. 
I really liked looking at the old currency and took a bunch of photos 
More currency 
The courtyard of Chapultepec Castle 
Carriages in the carriage garage 
Opulence 
Beautiful stained-glass 
A fancy living room 
This watch tower was built when the castle became a military academy
The castle sits on a hill on an already high part of Mexico City, so the view from the castle’s verandas and gardens gives you a great vantage point over the city. However, Mexico City has a pretty big smog problem, and so our view was quite cloudy. For the most part, any view of the sky during this trip was quite grey.
This is one single mural wrapping around every wall of this room floor to ceiling 
The smoggy skyline of Mexico City 
The upstairs courtyard of Chapultepec Castle with the watch tower in the center
The artwork from Chapultepec Castle was really fascinating. I took some photos of a few pieces that caught my eye.
I thought this painting was really neat. It’s loopy designs on a black background for most of it, and then realistic hands and a face. 
This reminded me of Return to Oz
Anthropology Museum
After the castle, we walked across the park to the museum of Anthropology. I don’t think we really did this museum justice. We were quite dehydrated from all the walking around and didn’t realize there was a museum cafe. We ended up speed walking through the museum of anthropology trying to see the highlights before finding some water to chug down. When I return to Mexico City, I’d like to visit again and maybe spend a day there.
Rachael mimicking art 
I thought this would make a great meme 
A monument in Chapultepec Park 
The Museum of Anthropology 
This person was sketching the sculpture and they caught my eye
Porco Rosso
There’s this anime by Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, called Porco Rosso about a pilot that is turned into a pig and his adventures as a pig pilot in the Adriatic Sea. Near our Airbnb, I found a BBQ place that shares the same name and Rachael and I stopped in for some American-style BBQ.
Shredded pork, mac n cheese, stuffed jalepenos, and buffalo cauliflower 
Cowboy fries (actually potato chips)
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