Here is my day 2 journal! Be warned, from here on out the entries will be fairly lengthy! Enjoy!!
DAY 2
At about 6am, which is luckily exactly the time my alarm was set for, I heard knocking at the door. I checked my phone and didn't see any messages telling me Manuel was there, so I almost thought of ignoring it. Luckily, I didn't ignore it. I checked the door and it was him! Apparently he had some problems getting a second key (later we found out they don't give 2 keys) and to top it off, his phone was not getting any service in Mexico even though he had paid for the service already. At that point, we both got ready and quickly headed out. The hotel provides breakfast, which was a simple scrambled eggs, ham and beans with coffee and orange juice. We both opted out of the ham and I didn't touch the beans for fear of it having lard. I didn't really know how to ask that and I was still recovering from waking up to care enough to figure it out.
We wanted to head to the venue to gather our bearings, so that's how we started our journey. On the way there, we saw a churro stand. Manuel really wanted to get some but the seller was gone. He amusingly proposed leaving 200 pesos at the stand and taking some, which we didn't do. It was a very straightforward walk, so we walked all the way south until we hit the big circle. This was interesting because we had to travel under the circle to be able to get to any of the corners of the circle. We followed my gps to the point where the venue should have been, but we couldn't figure out where it was exactly. It was at that point that Carlos, a fellow fan with whom I had briefly communicated with online, ended up finding me. I guess I must have been easy to spot. Not only was I likely the only Indian in Mexico, but probably the only one that looked completely lost and confused. He was extremely kind, and showed us exactly where the venue was. It seemed really small and was down a pretty small street, but then I remembered that C-ute operates the best in live house type of environments. It's unfortunate it wasn't at a bigger venue because then more people could attend, but at the same time I looked forward to the much more personal experience this would entail. I started having really pleasant memories of the Lovendor concert I went to in Japan, which was also in a live house and was the best experience I had ever had.
At that point, we waited to meet up with some more people so we could grab our tickets from J'Store and then do some sightseeing. Tiffany and Hector ended up finding us within ten minutes and we all headed to the J'Store via subway with Carlos being our awesome guide. The subway was just as simple to navigate as Japan or New York, but with the environmental feel of New York. At J'Store, we met up with Jorge and a couple other fans with whom I was not familiar and got our tickets. It was a multifloored building with a lot of Japanese goods like anime stuff, gaming stuff, TCG tables, etc. The ones I was not familiar with ended up parting ways, but Manuel, Tiffany, Hector, Jorge, Carlos and myself all decided to head to the historic district to eat then do some sightseeing. Walking down that street we saw a lot of beautiful buildings with clear European origins. A lot of stone work. Another thing we noticed was that the ground was uneven across the whole city. Carlos was the one who informed us that the city was actually built on a lake, which explained a lot. Now forgive me, because I don't remember the name of anything or any place, so I’m not going to be able to name anything. We first stopped by a restaurant that was attached to a small department store.
It was a pretty restaurant, and like everything else we'd seen, the prices were really attractive from a US Dollar perspective. Everything pretty much costs about half of what it would cost back home in the USA. Hector had recommended this chicken soup-like thing that came with these fried tortilla-like things. The soup was especially good because it had avocados in it. With it, I ordered a fresh strawberry/orange juice. It was all very tasty, and I was extremely thankful for the really good recommendation. After enjoying the food, we headed across the street to an ice cream place we had discovered earlier that we wanted to try. Everybody else got some pretty standard flavors, but I noticed they had a flavor that was like those Mexican (and Indian) tamarind candies you can buy. I decided to go for that, which ended up being more of a sherbet than an ice cream. That being said, it was really tasty and I was extremely glad I took the leap.
With our appetites sated, we went to the main plaza, where there were still some decorations up from Mexican Independence Day. It was at that time that I noticed a lot of the cops were walking around with assault rifles. While I know Mexico has many crime problems, I must admit that in Mexico City I never legitimately felt unsafe. Not in the day or in the night. To top it off, I only saw one bum the whole entire time. Something I'm not used to back home. I see them reasonably often back home.
Anyway, we headed to the left where we saw a cathedral (which was actually in active service). It was a beautiful building and the sermon (or service, I don't know what it's called) was being performed in an area with a huge sparkling gold dais. The craftsmanship of everything was phenomenal. There were these giant organs as well, which was really cool to see. The sermon/service was in a central area, while the outer edge was a tourist area to check out the sites. After walking around and seeing it all, we exited the cathedral and to the left we noticed there were some ruins.
We discovered it was actually the ruins of some Aztec pyramids, which we could check out and there was also a museum there as well with excavations. It's actually an active excavation site, so we saw people at work as we explored. Interestingly, the pyramid/temple had actually been raided long ago and had left the temple in ruins. We only got to see one of the innermost layers of the temple. It was really interesting seeing the architectural work of the Aztecs though. Lots of skulls, eagles, snakes and people along with blocky designs. I especially like the artistic direction they took for their animal sculptures such as the snake heads outside. Right before we entered the museum, Manuel's service started working finally. Totally excited, we sat outside resting from all the walking while Manuel got caught up with his internet connected addiction. After that, we checked out the museum which was fun. We saw a lot of artifacts, things recently dug up and all sorts of neat things like carved stone tablets, statues and more. It was definitely an educational experience that helped give me an appreciation of how ancient Aztec culture and styles got integrated into current Mexican culture and styles.
Getting a little late, and getting a little more hungry, we set out to an area near Tiffany's hotel. It was starting to get dark and then it started to rain. Maimi was making her presence known. We noticed a sex shop, to which everybody but myself and Hector decided to check out. After that, we saw a Mexican restaurant that looked pretty good, but some of the people with us thought it was too expensive. We decided to go to KFC instead, which was across the street. Funny enough, the prices were about the same. I ended up getting a huge chicken sandwich with some fries and a soda. Something I noticed about the chicken in Mexico was that the meat was a bit softer and more delicate than back home. It was the same at McDonald's that I had gone to the day before. It was still tasty though, so I enjoyed every bite. For a few hours, we sat around and chatted and had a good time. Finally, with it getting reasonably late, we headed home. Luckily at that point, the rain had ceased. The night ended quite nicely, and we clocked out in anticipation for the concert the next day.