Food in Mostar: Sadrvan & Hindin Han

What’s up party people! We’re back and ready to talk more about Mexico City! We have so much to talk about because as usual we packed an absurd amount of Activity into our short time there. (Okay other practiced travelers are probably saying ‘no you do a normal amount of Activity for a travel blogger since we need to see as much as possible when visiting a new place’ but you forget how much sleep I need.) As I said in Part 1 of the CDMX posts, we’re breaking up the info roughly by neighborhood to give it at least a chance at making organizational sense. 

In this post, we’re moving south to the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City, where we find the famous blue house of Frida Kahlo, Casa Azul. I mean I guess it’s the famous house of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera but he seemed like a bit of a wanker so I’m going to focus less on him. Just a few blocks away is the Leon Trotsky house, where the Soviet revolutionary/Marxist/politician/Bolshevik/ Communist Party leader/&c lived and died in exile but not before partying with the Kahlo fam bam. I almost used a photo of the Trotsky house as the banner picture for this post but thought that might be weird/get me on lists. Anyway, aside from those two house museums we’re gonna eat great food and then go to a spectacular spectacle that I shockingly loved: Lucha Libre, the crayballs Mexican wrestling extravaganza.

Let’s start with the Commies!

THE LEON TROTSKY MUSEUM-HOUSE

Since I’m American, let’s start with the commies. You know how into all things Russia we’ve been for the past few years, learning as much as we can about the people taking over America, &c (and their language! правда!) so we weren’t missing this. I recommend a visit – it’s pretty quick and fairly interesting. It costs 40 pesos and would not take you more than 40 minutes to visit, so it’s like a peso per minute, a ratio that bothers me much less for museums than it does for theatre, strangely.

Trotsky was kind of a big deal in the USSR in the early 1900s, which is pretty much the time of all the big Soviet leaders whose names you know, like Stalin. Trotsky did not like Stalin. I mean no one ‘liked’ Stalin but he did it to his face. I really want to give him the nickname ‘The Trots’ but he’ll probably haunt me for that so no. Okay, so Leon was big into Marxism as a teen, as all teens are (?) and helped form the South Russian Workers’ Union. Since that sounds kinda nice, unions are good, he was exiled to Siberia, while I on the other hand paid to go there which is hilarious. (It’s not bad.) An enterprising young Trotter escaped to England, changed his name to the one we know now, and met up with fellow Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin, and they drank and argued in all the classic English pubs every night till closing about which of them would be commemorated in the future in every single Russian village and city with a giant and I mean GIANT bust of his head. (It was Lenin.) Mista Trotterrrr returned to Russia in 1905 for the Russian Revolution and was again exiled to Siberia and again escaped. This f-ing guy, am I right?

His radicalism got his azz thrown out of lots of otherwise nice places like Paris, Spain, NYC, and Switzerland (I mean but ‘neutrality’ favors the oppressors so fork you) (I know I know it is bothering me too that that list goes city, sovereign, city, sovereign but that’s how the source material I’m referencing does it ugh) and then he went back to Russia in time for the 1917 revolution. I mean he shows up for the important events, you gotta hand it to him. He was instrumental in the Bolshevik’s successful power grab, and he became Lenin’s secretary of foreign affairs. He did lots of stuff, yada yada yada, learned English from Seinfeld, and seemed to be the successor to Lenin, but as The Death of Stalin taught us, once a leader gets sick all hell breaks out and the succession struggle falls into chaos. When Lenin died, Stalin emerged as leader, and since Trottingham East didn’t like him and in fact openly criticized his polices, Stalin propagandaed him, removed him from his posts, and then exiled him from the Communist Party and then the Soviet Union. After some time in Turkey and a few other Euro stops, Trottingham North was granted asylum in Mexico! Yay Mexico! He and his fam first lived at the Casa Azul with Frida! Did you know! Trotavarius had an affair with Frida, a fellow Communist (Alexander did you know), but like who didn’t (we will get there). I imagine he also ate some amazing food that must have been a welcome respite from cucumber-tomato salad (what I had all throughout the former USSR). After a few years and a few too many fights with Diego (I can imagine what about), the Trotskys moved a few blocks away to their own house, which is now the museum. Despite being probably as far away as possible, Stalin was still mad and prob jealous of the food so he ordered Trotsky’s assassination. The first one, using guns, was a failure, but the last one, with an ice axe, well, the details make it seem like also a failure (I wish I didn’t know the details) but he died the next day from his wounds. 

So the museum! So fun! The entry building has lots of photographs from Trotsky’s life and info about his work. It was fun to practice reading Cyrillic again and to listen to all the Russian tour groups (I think when we were there it was just us and Russian tour groups). It’s not super informative but some of the photos are interesting. The real focus of the museum is his actual house and gardens. It has been kept just as it was when he lived there, which means it’s dark, due to bars and shutters on the windows. That also means some of the interior walls still have bullet holes from the failed attack. In the kitchen, his pots and pans are still out; in the bedrooms, shoes are still lined up; and in Leon’s study, his papers and glasses and books are still on his desk. Out in the lovely gardens is his tomb. 

So, it’s not the most popular tourist attraction, but I definitely recommend a quick visit before the Casa Azul, especially since his relationship to the Kahlos can help you understand them more. 

CASA AZUL: THE BLUE HOUSE OF FRIDA KAHLO

When you visit the Frida house, you buy tickets online in advance. It’s too busy and popular to risk otherwise. But even so, you’ll wait in an endless line snaking around the house, around the block, and several blocks away to enter. Yes, when we arrived in what we thought was good time for our ticketed slot, ticket holders were waiting in a queue for almost an hour. In the SUN, guys. It was rough. If it was for the theatre I would have missed most of the first act and demanded an exchange and better seats.

Is it worth it? I mean I’m not a Frida nut but it’s pretty interesting and, ya know, it’s the big f-ing thing to do. If you really don’t care, then by all means skip it; there’s no reason to set aside a whole afternoon for it. But if you have the time, it’s fairly interesting. You learn a lot about Frida, what she went through, what kind of person she really was. And the house is lovely.

Once you enter, they will try to shuffle you straight into the museum part of the house, where you look at Frida’s and Diego’s paintings with lots of tourists taking selfies with them even though, if I recall correctly, you aren’t allowed to take pictures. Don’t let them manhandle you though – there are no bathrooms until you finish the entire inside tour of the house, so find them first and then go back. It’s a MADHOUSE, wall-to-wall people, and you’ll get agita trying to read about all the works when people are blocking everything. There are some interesting works in these initial rooms, but the better stuff awaits when you see the rooms as they lived in them.

I especially liked the kitchen. I don’t think we were allowed to take pictures but we have this one, so.

Surprisingly, the super long video that’s playing on a deck out in the garden space was incredibly interesting. I usually zone out in museum videos, especially ones that are this long (it’s like a whole movie) but it was great. As we already learned, Frida had an affair with Trotsky, but did you also know she probs had one with…Georgia O’Keefe? Yah. More important than her affairs is the information about Frida’s chronic pain. She had polio as a small child and its effects changed her body forever, leaving her with one leg shorter and significantly weaker than the other, due to muscle atrophy. As a teenager, she would suffer even more after a streetcar accident, which left her with fractured ribs, spine, clavicle, pelvis, leg, a crushed foot, a dislocated shoulder, and an iron railing through her hip and pelvic floor, causing the infertility represented in many of her paintings. They didn’t think she would survive the accident, but she did, and was left with a lifetime of pain.

Her father encouraged her to start painting as she recovered, and that’s how she met Diego. If you’re more familiar with her art than I was, you’ve seen her pain and suffering, as well as her strength, in her works.

In fact, her famous clothing style was a direct result of that: her corsets were really back braces helping her stand up. The square tops of her Tehuanan ethnic heritage could fit over and hide the brace. Flowers in her hair, her famous braids, and other interesting adornment above the neck would lead people to look up instead of down at her broken, withered legs, which were also hidden often by big skirts.

She went through a lot, is what I’m saying. And I knew some of her famous work and some generalities about her life, but I never knew she was disabled. She was an artistic pioneer in large part because of her pain, and it’s worth noting how her disability is largely erased from the popular narrative (and of course the cinematic portrayals). Of course, she still had quite a life – people long thought of her as a victim to Diego’s infidelity, but girl could get it too, and did – but you understand a lot more about her when you know how she was constantly suffering.

Also, she and Diego were Communists. I think it fairly hilarious how much she would despise the capitalist pigs who make endless tee shirts and tote bags with her face on them and how bewildered she’d be by the people wearing them. She’d hate the gift shop on her property selling all kinds of shit with her face. I think she’d hate the Christmas ornaments most of all, or she’d find it all utterly hilarious.

Okay, that’s enough of the serious stuff for today, right? Let’s switch to Arizona trash-bag mode and talk about food and wrestling.

VEGAN FOOD

Coyoacan is a fantastic neighborhood for vegan food. We planned on eating lunch at Aura Vegana (at Malintzin 199), and we stick to most plans, but we were almost enticed away to several other vegan establishments we discovered just as we wandered!

First, we saw Pan Gabriel, a bakery billing itself as entirely vegan! According to HappyCow, it is all vegan, but heads up – inside, we found several products with egg, and several others that reminded me of that one doughnuttery that appeared at the UK Vegan Fest like 9 years ago and told everyone that their giant amazing doughnutty things were vegan even though they looked exactly like another company’s products that were not vegan and then they disappeared from the face of the earth, so, ya know, be wary.

They have a lot of gorgeous bread products, cakes, rolls, sweet empanadas, all kinds of bakery treats that made me absolutely lose my shit and overpurchase in a glutinous fit. However, the actual goodies were disappointing. Everything was very bready, even the things that weren’t supposed to be bread, like doughnuts and cookies and brownies and cakes and well I guess that’s everything. And nothing was sweet enough. Honestly I would skip unless you hear of improvements, or unless you like your treats to be shiny bread.

LITERALLY NEXT DOOR to Pan Gabriel is a restaurant called Temictli, which is billed as ‘Plant-Based’ on the awning but even though I despise the cowardliness of people using that phrase all the time now instead of just saying vegan, they get a pass because they sound amazing and the lady was so nice (also because it’s not in an English speaking country so they can do what they want with words). Temictli’s menu looked OFF THE CHIZZ:

This is not even all of it! We were so tempted to stay put and skip Aura Vegana, but unforch the lady explained that even though she let us in and gave us a menu to look at, they weren’t actually open yet. Oops. Next time Temictli, you sound AMAZ.

So that means we stuck to our plan of Aura Vegana, which was pretty good.

Aura Vegana is a small cafe on the ground floor, right at the entrance, of a larger building with a bar up top and other restaurants inside. They have English versions of their menus, and they have green juice. I was sold before we sat down.

I assume I ordered an ‘Emerald’ juice, which mixed my classic hits like celery, orange, coocoomba, kale, spinach, parsley, and lemon, but I have a slight memory of husbo saying something like ‘you always have stuff like that at home’ so there’s a chance I actually had the ‘Turquoise’, which is celery, parsley, grapefruit, prickly pear, and pineapple. Either way guys, they have various green juices and it’s cool.

Since apparently I share pictures of menus now, here’s one from Aura:

I don’t know why these are called ‘Morning Dishes’ and the next page of the menu – all food from other cultures, like ravioli, various hamburgers, curry, hummus, Vietnamese noodles? – was called ‘Afternoon Dishes’, but definitely stick to Morning because you’re here for Mexican food.

We decided to share an order of enchiladas and an order of chilaquiles. This was baby’s first chilaquiles, which means I didn’t realize what I was getting into: it’s like, fried tortillas with sauces and junk on it, and it’s pretty delicious but was pretty heavy for me. Also, for being called ‘tofu chilaquiles’, there wasn’t much tofu. In fact, there was one piece on top, so, you know. The enchiladas were great, a bit more my speed though it was all heavy, creamy, filling food. We chose the little hogweed and portobello version, although there was not enough little hogweed – I found one strip of greenery which I’m assuming was the little hogweed. Maybe that’s why they said little.

It was all delicious, if heavy, but I should have known that going in. The cashew cheese on top was excellent, as was all the sauciness. Mexican food is amazing.

Outside, we passed a local park that was literally covered in paleta and gelato shops. Paletas are the Mexican ice pops that are made from incredible fruit purees (if you are cool and want vegan ones), which we enjoyed throughout the Yucatan. We decided on watermelon and horchata sorbets from one of the parkside shops, and we liked it, and we loved it.

LUCHA LIBRE

Alright I’m here, she’s here, we all made it to the craziest thing we did in Mexico City, the thing you have to do if you visit CDMX even though it seems ridiculous and if you’re like me you are probably like ‘really?’ but if you are like me you will give it a shot and you’ll be glad you did because it’s HYSTERICAL and SO FORKING ENTERTAINING. On a Friday night after our exploration of Coyoacan and communism and everything, we took the metro to the Arena Mexico for some Mexican wrestling, straight out of the Jack Black movie Nacho Libre but probably not entirely like that but honestly I’ve never actually seen it so shh but it doesn’t matter because now I’ve seen the REAL THING, BABIEEEES!

Lucha Libre is Mexico’s professional wrestling, of the sort you’d see on TV where you know they were faking it but it doesn’t matter. The wrestlers wear masks and costumes and have specific characters to play. The wrestling is as boisterous and raucous as the crowd, and they favor dramatic flips and crashes and bams (I don’t know all the terms) over rule-following and it is RIDICULOUS and it is HILARIOUS and it is AWESOME. I cannot recommend it enough.

When we arrived at the Arena Mexico, there was a line longer than the Frida house line, but it moved. We didn’t have tickets, and neither did the many western tourists in line with us. We had fun talking about our travels and Nacho Libre with the other tourists (I’m really good at lying about movies), and we also bought some amazing swag. Ingeniously, the sidewalks along the side of the building/blocks and blocks where the line travels are filled with souvenir stands. We bought husbo’s brother a Lucha Libre mask, then a few minutes later at another stall we bought him a cape (he’s a fan), then a few minutes later we got t-shirts. It’s like a neighborhood version of the rack by the supermarket checkout.

When we got to the main entrance, we were told there were good 200 peso tickets left for great seats. If you want to spend less, I’m sure you could. The place is freaking enormous, and I don’t think it’s possible for it to sell out, so don’t worry about tickets being available. There were lots of high sections that remained empty.

The only downside to going to Lucha Libre is the venue security, worse than any I’ve dealt with yet. Not only did they take my water – and they didn’t have any free water in the venue, only bottles for sale, which is illegal??? – and my snacks, they took MY GUM. My gum that I can only get in the USA and needed for the plane home so I didn’t vom! Dammit security lady! So so weird.

Aside from that though, it was stellar. Such a spectacle, such a loud ridonk spectacle, and so much fun.

We saw a lineup of 5 matches, I think, including group fights, a random parade of women? I forget, it was bright and loud. But it was awesome. We had recently enjoyed season 2 of Glow so we were jonesing for some well choreographed wrestling that looked painful but wasn’t.

I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this. I definitely recommend it for a touristy but fun cultural experience that you kind of cannot miss. Once we were seated, it ran from about 8:30pm-11pm, about the length of a regular show we’d be at on a Friday night anyway, so it was a new super fun kind of evening entertainment for us.

Here’s my absolute favorite part: all the Mexican babies that are not only up so late but exposed to the UNBELIEVABLE NOISE of this place (bring earplugs if you’re sensitive…not that this baby had any…)

Alright, that’s it for this post! Which of the things that you are probably surprised to have found in this post did you enjoy the most, the Communism or the wrestling?

Oh oh one more thing, found in a shopping mall: