timxu

So last week, I went to Mexico with the Yale Concert Band. We went to Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, Real de Catorce, and Monterrey and played five concerts. Below is a recollection of this most memorable trip.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Let’s start this one at midnight. At that hour, Criterion Theaters began showing previews. By 3:30, I had taken in Watchmen. At 5:30, with the sun rising behind the veil of clouds, I picked up my laundry from the drier. At 7, I finished packing and went to bed.

We left New Haven at noon on a bus to JFK. I think I fell asleep. In any case, we got to JFK several hours ahead of our departure time, so we amused ourselves with crossword puzzles and other fun stuff.

Checking in at JFK.

The flight itself was pretty uneventful. By virtue of alphabetical seating and an empty last row, I was able to take 3 seats to myself, which was quite the luxury. At around 7:30, I saw Washington, D.C. from the sky. In Mexico, we relinquished our bags to various bellboys, not to see them until they sat outside of our doors at the hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Plaza Florencia, where Alan, my roommate, and I had a balcony with a view of several night clubs and a giant poster advertising “Los Monologos de la Vagina.” Cute.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

There was no concert that night, so it was a day of tourist activities. We went to Teotihuacán and saw its gigantic pyramids. The city is a couple thousand feet above sea level, so climbing the (really steep) stairs up the pyramids was an adventure. But we made a human Y on the Pyramid of the Moon and we hung out and made a human pyramid on top of the Pyramid of the Sun. We also got our introduction to haggling with the somewhat English-speaking peddlers and shopkeepers.

The view from the Pyramid of the Moon. You can see the sun pyramid to the left.

Our human ‘Y’ on the moon pyramid.

We left Teotihuacán and headed to lunch at a buffet-style restaurant. The food was spicy (predictably) but not too terrible. I tried out cactus, which wasn’t bad at all. We were entertained by our first mariachi band and some traditional Aztec dancers and drummers. After lunch, we went to a crafts warehouse, which happened to be on the same street as a Goth Market. Needless to say, there was a continuous stream of Mexican Goths walking past our buses.

It was still mid-afternoon when we returned to the hotel, so I joined a group and wandered around the immediate vicinity of our hotel. We found a pedestrian-only business area, where we saw a McDonald’s, a Burger King, a Popeyes, a KFC, a Starbucks, and a sex toy store in close proximity.

Dinner was at a really nice restaurant with (yet another) mariachi band, singers, dancers, and alcoholic beverages as the set drink when we sat down. Within hours, people were dancing to the Mexican beat along with the dancers on stage. We did our best interpretation of their style.

The traditional dancers at dinner.
(more…)