PHOTOS of my day with Mom and Dad in Chapultepec Park. Click on the title of today’s entry or paste the following address into your browser:
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We used the walkway to the Auditorio metro to cross below the main thoroughfare of Reforma and begin our stroll around Chapultepec Park. First we checked out the interesting sculptures in front of the Auditorio Nacional – a setting for concerts and shows of all types. I went to the box office to buy Ricky Martin tickets for the concert on November 15, but they were sold-out a week before.
By walking around the Auditorium and the street behind, we passed many small cultural centers for dance and theater and food vendors where the students gather to eat. Next to one vendor there was a baby girl in a warm pink outfit, holding a rattle, looking up, expressionless and sitting in a cardboard box, next to a basket full of dirty dishes. Down the sidewalk, there was a boy, about 3 or 4 years old, sitting against the wall, drinking a bottle of Coke and looking up at the older students eating around the nearby stand.
When we completed circling the Auditorium, and walked along one of the lakes, we soon stumbled upon one small gallery with string art, then another with a display of brilliantly colored photos of flowers. In the area in between the two, artists were assembling some papier-mache figures and an “ofrenda” for Day of the Dead.
The park is humungous, 2100 acres, and is divided into three sections; we took a miniature train ride around the first part. After bouncing along the route, our backs ached but we cautiously climbed the hill in another trolley to reach the national history museum, Castillo de Chapultepec that has an extensive 220-year history.
Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez built the neo-classic castle on top of a hill in 1785, clearly with defensive considerations. When the castle housed the nation’s military college, it was the last, but ultimately unsuccessful, stronghold of defense against the U.S. Army during its 1847 invasion of Mexico City. Later, Emperor Maximilian and his wife Carlota lived there in 1866 and tried to re-create a little corner of Europe by spending money on its luxurious salons, flowered terraces and rooftop garden. Soon after, after it became the presidential residence, beginning with President Porfirio Diaz in 1876. In 1939 the castle became a national history museum when President Lázaro Cárdenas disliked the elaborate palace and moved to the more modest residence of Los Pinos.
Today, visitors to the Castillo can view the former living quarters of Maximilian and Díaz, filled with 19th-century furniture, artwork and musical instruments. Another part of the castle houses a museum recounting the nation’s unstable history between conquest and Revolution. An extensive collection of artifacts, documents and paintings of modern Mexican history is displayed in 20 rooms on two floors. There are murals by Juan O’Gorman (of Mexican history), Davíd Alfaro Siquieros (of Revolutionary leaders) and José Clemente Orozco (of Benito Juárez).
We didn’t make it to the third section of the park that is the newest, added only in the 1970s as the city expanded to the west. Besides a few picnic tables by the roadside, it’s full of ravines, meadows, patches of forest and a few caves.
The second section is where we had lunch. From the Castillo, we walked back to the main street Reforma and took a taxi to the restaurant. This part of the park has a children’s museum, complete with an IMAX theater, an amusement park and two upscale restaurants. We ate lunch at Café del Bosque where we had a view of one of the lakes. While the lake is terribly dirty looking, with the soot sitting on top, swimming by are ducks with brilliant white feathers. I couldn’t help but think of these ducks as an example of how one can shine, no matter the environment in which it lives.
