(This is another installment in my Mexico City series. You can check out the rest of the Mexico City posts by searching Mexico City in the blog or clicking here.)

Lesser Known Museums & Things to Do in Mexico City

Most museums are closed on Mondays, so we figured this was a good day to explore some “off-the-beaten-path” venues. We are starting our 3^rd week in Mexico City, and we’ve already hit most of the “Top 10”or “Top 20” Mexico City sites, so we have the luxury of time to visit some less famous ones.

Museo Del Estanquillo

One of many quirky private collections in beautiful old buildings. This one, in the building that was originally the home and shop of late nineteenth century jeweler La Esmeralda Hauser-Zivy, houses the collection of writer, Carlos Monsivais. He was a collector of photos, miniatures, drawings, cartoons, etchings and more. He’d collected some 20,000 items before a group of wealthy patrons came together to fund exhibiting them in a museum. It’s a 5-story building in the historic centre of Mexico, and has a little café on the rooftop, from which you get a delightful view of the neighbouring buildings and the street below.

They have a special exhibit on now about La Lucha Libre, and particularly wrestling star, the Blue Demon. We’d been hearing people talk about La Lucha Libre since coming here. There seem to be fights every night of the week. I gather it is a fun time, if you are into being in a crowded arena full of drunken emotional people shouting, spewing Covid germs, and glorying in apparent violence. (“Apparent” because it is heavily choreographed.) Not really my kind of thing.

It seems to have been a precursor to WWE – wrestling as choreographed extreme story-telling. It got its start in Mexico in 1933. The masks worn by the wrestlers are an integral part of the story. Particularly famous in Mexico is the Blue Demon. He was a luchador for 41 years and never removed his mask. He was even buried in it! He was the main rival to El Santo (the first famous Lucha Libre star). El Santo wore a silver mask and fought for nearly 50 years! (I’m thinking the masks were so nobody realized how old they were.)

Although I have no interest in watching it live, the exhibit was fun, and they have a little ring set up so you can get in there and give it a try. Of course I whooped his ass, having had my lesson from the Blue Demon!

Afterwards we tried to visit the Palacio De Cultura Banamex, which is supposed to be open on Mondays, but wasn’t when we tried it. We also popped in to Mumedi, a little art and design museum and shop. They had some lovely jewellry but I restrained myself.

From there we headed to check out some markets.

San Juan Market

The San Juan Market is a genuine working class market in the centre of Mexico City. If I were braver and didn’t have allergies, I would have loved to try some of the food stalls there. Many were full with locals sipping soups and eating tacos (and variants thereof). The market has everything, from fruit and veg to mechanical parts. Apparently there are stalls there selling exotic meats (e.g. crocodile, skunk and lion) but we must not have ventured far enough in because mostly we saw chicken – lots and lots of chicken.

A little further down the road we wandered into a less crowded market. Oddly, Google also shows it as being a Mercado San Juan. This one seemed to be the one where they take the tourists. It was calmer, and every aisle was uncrowded, neat and pretty. The visitors were much whiter. We didn’t stay.

La Ciudadela – Mercado de Artesania

A sprawling arts and crafts market, it ranges from high-quality, hand-made clothes to junky knick-knacks. Give yourself the time to wade through it to find the good stuff (of which there is quite a lot). DH almost bought a shirt that matched the jacket I bought on Saturday at the San Angel market. If we had grandchildren, we definitely would have bought them some of the adorable little outfits we saw.

One thing we’d underestimated in Mexico City is how long it takes to get from one district to another, whether on foot, by car or bus. This place really is huge. We are experiencing the reverse of how we felt moving from Toronto to Edmonton 22 years ago. Then, we kept showing up everywhere a half-hour early, assuming it would take us much longer to get anywhere than it did. Here we tend to underestimate the time impact of challenges like crossing 10-lane streets, or finding one of the very few entrances to the enormous Chapultapec Park. Bikes are sometimes faster than cars but the way they are priced, it is normally cheaper for the two of us to take Ubers, and when you’ve already been on your feet touring for hours, it’s easier to slip into the back seat of a car than to have to pedal and walk some more.  

So, we’d tried to visit the Ciudadela twice before, but both times we were there in the early afternoon and getting too hungry to start touring yet another place. If you aren’t comfortable eating a local food stands, the area near the Ciudadela is a food desert. We gave up each time and took an Uber back into the area where “las fresas” hang out: Roma Norte and Condesa. (“Las Fresas” or “the strawberries” is what the locals call the yuppie types, who want everything pretty, uncrowded, clean and Instagramable.)  

We seem to have slipped into a pattern here of having a late lunch (2 or 3 p.m.) and not bothering to go out for dinner. We keep some fruit, cereal and eggs in our Sonder apartment. (If you aren’t familiar with Sonder, check it out. It’s a Canadian company that is expanding rapidly. It has taken a more explicitly corporate approach to what AirBnB has evolved into. Like AirBnB, you can get an entire apartment in a convenient location, for less than the price of a hotel room. These lack the quirkiness and individuality of AirBnB rentals (for better and worse), because Sonder will typically own an entire building or manage multiple similar units in a newer condo complex. By standardizing the décor and services, they are able to offer consistent high quality at a reasonable price. Where we are staying here, at the Taman Condesa, they manage 50 of the building’s 200 units. We also stayed in a Sonder building in Montreal last fall. In both cases, we’ve been quite happy.)

Today we had lunch at MUX, which was on the Eater list of best restaurants in Mexico City, but we worried when we showed up and it was nearly empty and the walls looked, well, kind of greasy and dirt-splattered. But we were hungry and tired so we went in. Turned out to be a lovely meal.

The walls were an unfortunate design choice: what looked at a glance like grease and dirt were actually flecks in the paint. And, although they weren’t full, they had a steady turnover of tables, including several that came and went quickly because they were foodie tour groups that had pre-booked their meals.

I’m hoping to prevail upon DH to write a guest blog post when we are done here that lists and reviews all the restaurants we’ve tried. We’ve mostly had great experiences with the food. Not cheap, but excellent quality and presentation.