CDMX - day 1

Home-made breakfast, Uber to Biblioteca Vasconcelos. This is a unique place, it's an architectural landmark, a gigantic building, and weird way of books, art and modern design in quite an unsual way.

From the library we walked to a Michellin star holding tacos restaurant El Califa de Leon.

Never saw a standing place with a star before. But Taquería El Califa de León has a star since 2024. Amazing tacos with beefsteak and filet. This is also officially the cheapest Michelin star restaurant I ever ate in. Moments of great happiness. Today I discovered that Mexican pigeons are half or quarter of the size of the pigeons we have in Europe and the Middle East. They are cute, they are pigeons, they are really small. Where was I. Yes. After lunch we headed to Plaza Garibaldi, which is probably more popular during the evening when music is playing, but we got the visual part of it at least.

Shakira was about to play at the Zolaco same day in the evening, so the police started closures and security measures including checking bags. Her concert was financed by Corona, the beer. This resulted in thousands of people in the city center wearing yellow paper corwns. Quite an phenomenon. But anyways we checked out the Post Office and Museum, the Palacio Postal. The beautiful building was inagurated in 1907 and is serving as an active post office even today. Exhibitions cover the history of the postal services in mexico, and stamp printing.

Next: The Central Bank of Mexico Building. The Banco de México building in the historic center was originally constructed between 1903 and 1905, not as a central bank, but for the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. It was later adapted to become the headquarters of Mexico’s central bank after Banco de México was founded in 1925. The building, understandably, has very strict security, but it's free to visit. The vault was empty, too bad. The two exhibitions hosted in the building are about the history of money and about the central bank's role. Very impressive building.

Here is a trick about the Palacio de Bellas Artes. There is an excellent viewpoint from SEARS just opposite of the building. Go up to the 8th floor, queue up for the cafe, sit down. Since they are really slow, get up, look at the building from the balcony, and casually walk out since no-one came to take the order. This is what we did. We didn't really plan it like this, but we both timed out.