As we walk to Chapultepec Park, Mike gets antsy.
"You got us lost again."
"How dare you. I've never gotten us lost."
At that moment we see the entrance to Chapultepec Park.
"I never doubted you," Mike tells me.
"You are so annoying."
"That's not true." Mike thinks about my statement. "You like it."
"Which is it? It's not true or I like it?"
"It's not true." Mike pauses. "You like it."
Whatever. Mike and I walk around the park for a bit and decide to go to the Museum of Modern Art. A lot of the art is outside and it's awesome seeing it in the grass and the trees. Mike takes pictures of me taking pictures of the art. He pretends he's not doing it but he is not subtle.
We get to some wooden sculptures.
"Want a picture with these like those profile pictures with the lamps at LACMA girls have?" Mike asks.
"Yes."
"Oh, I was joking. I didn't think you would say yes to that."
"Well I did. So yes please."
Don't care if he was making fun of me because this is fsho a #profilepic.
Don't like the way that statue is looking at Mike.
We head into the museum itself and look at a few of the exhibits. It's not a large museum. Then we head to the gift shop and Mike, I have discovered on this trip, loves gift shops.
He spends as much time in gift shops as he does the rest of the museum we're visiting.
He went into Frida's gift shop 6 different times to see what mug he wanted before finally making a decision.
He bought one of everything at the Trotsky gift shop. Mike says I'm exaggerating but I don't think by much.
At the Museum of Modern Art, he buys a nice coffee table book.
We leave the Museum of Modern Art and head over to Chapultepec Castle, and it's probably my favorite museum visit of the trip. The grounds are beautiful, having once belonged to Spanish aristocracy and then turned at some point into a military academy before becoming a National History Museum. It sits on top of the hill of Chapultepec, which was a place of special significance to the Mexicana people in pre-Hispanic times.
As we walk up the hill, we start taking pictures. I catch Mike taking a picture of me.
"I'm not taking a picture of you," Mike responds when I ask him. "You're so self-centered."
"Maybe I wouldn't be so self-centered if the world didn't revolve around me."
"Touche."
When we get to the museum itself, we find it focuses on the relationship between the Spanish and Indigenous people of Mexico. The murals are bold and intense and rawly emotional. We see depictions of indigenous people getting baptized. We see rich Spaniards taking over lands. We see maps of Mexico and its territories in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. There's artwork and ceramic from pre-Hispanic times and clothes from different eras post-Hispanic as well. There are cannons and machine guns and rifles and portraits of governors.
Spanish Catholics baptizing an Indigenous person.
Sleeves.
Leisure wear.
There is also this very dope globe from the 19th century. I walk over just as two other Americans check it out.
"Look at this," American #1 says to American #2. "It's a globe from the 19th century."
They are standing right in my way of taking a photo which makes them probably the worst.
"See, this is when Mexico used to have part of the US," A#1 says. "And it shows Texas by itself for some reason."
Ahem. For some reason? I decide if he doesn't know Texas was an independent republic for part of its history then he forfeits the right to stand in front of the globe while I am attempting to take a picture. I do not voice this opinion because there are times when I am not actively looking to fight with a stranger. With enough patience that you might as well call me Dr. Caitlin (zing), I wait for the two of them to move on before I take a picture. Then I grab Mike and show him the globe because it is awesome.
This is not a current map.
"Look, there is Sweden all as one country taking over Scandinavia. And here in southern Africa it's Cape Colony and then just undetermined land. Tripoli in the north. And obviously there's no Poland because it didn't exist at the time."
"Poland didn't exist at the time?" Mike asks.
"Yeah, Poland disappeared during Catherine the Great's reign of Russia and came back with the Treaty of Versailles after World War I. You knew that, right?"
"I vaguely knew it."
"Wow. Here I thought you were a history major."
"Okay. Come on."
"That's almost as embarrassing as not know knowing Texas was an independent republic at one point."
"No it's not! First of all, that's my own country's history. And second of all..."
But Mike couldn't think of a second of all. And he gave me so much shit for not knowing about Hadrian's Wall a few months back (he told his father and his sister I didn't know about the Wall and they both said "well, it was nice while it lasted" and now I can never see either of them ever again) that I was having a good, obnoxious time finally getting to return the favor. A really awesome aspect about dating Mike is being really annoying about knowing details about history that I kind of have to scale back on with other people.
I am trying to defend myself so people don't think I'm the worst and you know it's not worth the effort. I'm annoying and I like knowing history stuff and whatever. I will not call myself a "history nerd" because that is a humblebrag and we all know it.
Mike and I get to a part of the museum that shows gauchos and cowboys.
"Stuff like this reminds me how white-washed Westerns in American films are."
"Oh yeah," Mike agrees. "A lot of Mexicans in the Old West. Not everyone looked like John Wayne."
Mike sees the gift shop.
"What do you think? Should I get something kitschy?"
"It's a gift shop. So."
Mike gets something kitschy.
Chapultepec Park is pretty I guess.
After the castle, Mike and I walk to a restaurant called Muelle 22 for some oysters, sushi, and risotto, and it is an excellent dinner.
Pineapple and shrimp risotto.
Mussels.
"You didn't tell me why you hated umbrellas," Mike tells me over dinner.
"Oh. Yeah. Boston."
"You could have just told me. I had to read about it on your blog."
I try to suppress a giggle. I am 50% successful.
"...do you feel betrayed?"
"No," Mike whines, and that ends the conversation.
Mike and I catch an uber to Arena Mexico for the Lucha Libre show and while we both anticipated it was going to be a bomb show, we had no idea it was going to be one of our favorite things of the trip. Because Mexican wrestling is, if anything, wholly entertaining.
We each get a cubana - spicy Coronas, essentially - and cotton candy. I have to use the bathroom, and walk into a stall before realizing it's a "bring your own toilet paper" affair. I grab a paper towel and then some woman steals the stall I had planned on using which is super uncool but there's another one right next to it so I get by. We have trouble finding our seat but a guide helps us and then he asks us for a tip and we're definitely not at the Staple Center but a tip is no big deal I guess.
Vendors should out their wares - beer, enormous bags of chips, nachos, cotton candy, and Top Ramen. No, seriously, Top Ramen is something you can buy and eat at a Lucha Libre show.
"I think I'm gonna get one," Mike says.
"Absolutely not."
"What? Why not?"
"You're not in college. You're an adult. That's disgusting."
I take another bite of cotton candy.
"Wow. I didn't realize you were so judgmental."
"There's so much salt in those things it could kill your unborn child in its first trimester. You wouldn't even need Planned Parenthood. Just get a value pack of those things."
"Well that sounds great because I don't want to get pregnant."
Mike eventually gets a Top Ramen.
An announcer starts calling the names of the wrestlers. They come out to special songs and walk down a ramp where six girls in what are essentially bikinis dance.
"I'm a little worried about my sexuality because my first thought on seeing those girls is that they're not really dancing," Mike tells me.
There is no place for Mike in Trump's America I guess.
Not the best pic but those are the ladies.
One guy swinging another guy upside down.
Another swinging.
In the ring are six wrestlers at a time, and they're split into teams of three - one team is the Good Guys and one team is the Bad Guys. This is all some of the fakest stuff I've ever seen but it's still really, really fun and the acrobatics and enormous thighs are very entertaining.
The arrivals of these wrestlers are fantastic. My favorite entrance is a guy in a sombrero, artillery rounds wrapped around his chest but no shirt, spandex shorts, and knee pads. He walks out with a rifle in each hand and what must be a six-year-old wearing a white gaucho outfit next to him. His name is Dragon Jr. At the end of the walk he picks up the kid, twirls him around to the music while still holding one of the guns in the other hand, then sets the kid down so he can enter the ring. The kid, meanwhile, walks off with one of the rifles.
He's a Bad Guy and I am so motherloving entertained right now my lungs are about to leave my chest.
He's on a team with Bobby Z (black cowboy hat) and another guy who is just straight-up named Terrible because nuance can go fuck itself - this is Lucha Libra, you stupid jerk. Terrible is dressed in all black and has shoulder-length hair and tattoos and he saunters out to SHANIA TWAIN and I've literally never been more excited about $20 spent in my life.
I think Bobby Z came out to Van Halen.
The woman next to me can tell Mike and I are American and she starts giving me information about the show. "The music lets you know where in Mexico they're from. When it's mariachi, they're from Guadalajara." That's pretty neat.
Then there's a round of just two women wrestling - Dallys and Marcela. Their thighs are so amazing and it makes me wonder what their workout regiment is and I immediately sign up for my classes next week on ClassPass.
"The women are rougher than the men," the woman next to me says, "because they don't spend as much time celebrating."
The men like to gyrate their genitals in their opponents faces after a particularly brutal move. The women don't do that quite as much.
After Dallys wins, another group of Mexican wrestlers come out. Mistico is dressed in silver with a big silver cape and apparently he's a big deal and super famous. It's apparent why - when he wrestles, he's acrobatic and charismatic, even when he's "losing." At one point, the three bad guys do a sort of pyramid thing where the two bottom guys of the pyramid are standing up and the top one kneels on their shoulders, and Mistico jumps from the ropes and grabs the top guy's head with his legs AND BRINGS HIM DOWN. IT IS INCREDIBLE. DAMN WHAT DID I JUST WATCH GOOD GOD HOW DO YOU TRAIN FOR THIS and we have such prime seats for $20.
Mistico is fighting against a guy called Luciferno because Lucha Libre knows why you're here and it's not for the subtle character development.
"Do you see that little guy in the blue gorilla costume?" the woman next to me asks. "It's not a kid, it's a little person. Mistico will defend him from the bad guys. He gets involved sometimes too. Just watch."
I am so uncomfortable with that development so I decide to move on in my head.
The match with Mistico ends and I can't remember who won. Another match follows. A guy named Maximo comes out with a pink mohawk and a shirt that says KISS ME in pink letters on it.
"That's Maximo," the woman next to me explains. "He's gay. When he celebrates a move he kisses the other guy on the mouth."
Maximo is very popular.
Sure enough, there's a montage on screen of Maximo kissing other wrestlers on the mouth. Later in the match, Maximo is fighting with another guy who is oiled up and wearing spandex shorts and Maximo gets the best of him and kisses him on the mouth. The other guy is so distraught about being kissed by a man that he is legit out of commission for a few minutes. Heterosexual masculinity is so fragile, yo. (Also, is this where I bring up the homoerotic undercurrent of the whole affair? Or should I do that later?)
Mike and I walked around for a bit after the show and got a drink at a bar in the Roma Norte district. Anyway great Friday well done us.
So great to read now much you enjoyed the museums.. I have fond of our trip to Mexico City years ago
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