The Red Pencil Box: international trip

Showing posts with label international trip. Show all posts

Our final day in CDMX came way too soon, as these things always do. I had originally planned to spend our last morning driving out to Xochimilco, but the beautiful architecture of the main city had caught our attention. We instead decided to grab coffee again, and set out to walk around exploring. I had searched online for a few buildings that were must-see architectural gems, and the first one I came across was Palacio Postal.

This insanely gorgeous post office (that is still completely functioning!) was like stepping into something super bougie. It was built in 1902 and has been functioning since, amid multiple earthquakes. The architectural classification has been somewhat of a mystery, and has been described as art nouveau, moorish, venetian gothic revival, baroque, neoclassical, Spanish renaissance revival, and more. The post office was the brainchild of president Porfirio Diaz, which since H and I have been listening to a podcast on the Mexican Revolution, makes total sense. He was a man of grand tastes.

After exiting Palacio Postal, we stumbled upon a building with a beautiful tiled exterior. The building, aptly named La Case de los Azulejos, or Tile House, is described as a novo-Spanish baroque building. It was created in the l700's, and served as a house for a very wealthy family. Now, it houses a chain restaurant. Interestingly, in the time between it was a house and now, it served many other purposes. At one point, it was a World Worker's House before being bought out and made into a restaurant. Somewhat of a sad and anti-climactic ending for such a beautiful building, but here's hoping it'll go on to one day serve a more illustrious purpose.

Walking down the same avenue where the Tile House was on, we popped into many of the churches and cathedrals on the street. The interiors of many of these were even more magnificent than the grand exteriors and absolutely worth ducking in to.

Part of a large organ inside a cathedral

One of many churches in the Historic Center of the city

As the time for our flight drew closer, we had to start wrapping things up and seeing our last buildings. The eye-catching Palacio de Bellas Artes was a must, and the interior was an art-deco dream. Unfortunately, most of the building was closed off to visitors, so we had to settle for just gaping at just the lobby. We then headed across the street to Sears where we got a tip from a friend that we would be able to get a better view (thanks, A!). On the 8th floor of the building was Cafe de la Gran Ciudad that served both a fantastic mint Mexican hot chocolate and a fantastic view of Palacio de Bella Artes.

Following hot chocolate, we walked to an area of the city center that was not super jammed with traffic so we could hail a ride and be on our way to the hotel to pick up our bags. In doing so, we ran into Barrio Chino, or Chinatown. Walking through the small neighborhood was an unexpected but fun way to end the trip, and served to remind us that there was so much of the city we hadn't even touched. It reaffirmed what we had already decided on day 1 of the trip: we will definitely be back.

Barrio Chino

mexico city 2019: day 3

Friday, March 22, 2019

The breakfast area of the hotel

Day 2 of CDMX was our busiest day because it was our only full day in the city. After getting a bunch of rest the night before, we woke up pretty early to get started with the day. We began with eating breakfast in the cafe area of the hotel which was the perfect blend of minimalism + lots of sunlight thanks to the giant window above. After pastries and fresh nopal juice (I am embarrassed to admit I didn't enjoy it as much as I was hoping), we headed out. The first to do before tackling our to do list was coffee. Fortunately, we found a coffee shop less than a 5 minute walk from our hotel, Caffe Biscottino.

Outside Caffe Biscottino

After getting my sweet, sweet coffee fix, we headed towards the Frida Kahlo museum (about a 30 minute drive from the hotel). I was mostly expecting to not actually be able to get into the museum, but had held out some hope and wanted to atleast stop by to check. Unfortunately, I was right, and the lines were massive. General admission tickets were sold out for the day already (and actually already had been for almost 1 week prior), and the only tickets left were for a bus tour + general admission. Even the lines for that admission were incredibly long, so we decided to forgo the museum and save it for another visit. Just a few blocks down was the Leon Trotsky museum, so we took the opportunity to finish our coffees as we walked over there.

The prettiest blue exterior of a home on our way to the Trotsky museum

The courtyard of Leon Trotsky's home

The museum building is separate from Leon Trotsky's actual home, but the two are side by side. Included in the museum admission (which is itself very tiny) is a walk through of Trotsky's home, which I felt like was the highlight. Besides the historical significance, the home is beautiful and features a gorgeous courtyard. Much of what was kept in the rooms is preserved very well, including furniture and books. The walls of the home also have multiple bullet holes from when he and his family were attacked and assassinated in 1940. The ashes of both Trotsky and his wife are in the courtyard.

The exterior of his home

A bedroom in the home

Trotsky's study

After wrapping up at the museum, we headed to the beautiful Biblioteca Vasconcelos. The natural lighting + size of the library + seemingly floating bookshelves was every bit as breathtaking as I imagined from the photos I had seen online. The library was one of my favorite things we saw on our list in CDMX, and a highly recommend checking it out if you're ever in the city. The geometric almost puzzle-like layout is kind of like an optical illusion that you can walk through.

The interior of Biblioteca Vasconcelos

After the megalibrary, we (mostly me) got hungry and opted to head over to neighborhood of Roma Norte (which was exciting after just having watched Roma the week before) to check out places to eat per friends' recommendations. I also felt like another intake of caffeine was already in order for us, so we stopped at Panaderia Rosetta (the smaller location) for coffee and carbs. Neither did the cute interior nor the food and drink disappoint. Thanks for the recommendation, H & U!

The cozy interior of Panaderia Rosetta in Roma Norte

Caffeinated and carbo-loaded, we walked around Roma Norte and took in the neighborhood. To say it was picturesque would be an understatement. The abundant greenery + warm winter sun made for a beautiful sight and a good chance to kind of wander aimlessly before we began part two of the day, which involved more museums (of course).

The streets of Roma Norte

One of the many small parks situated around Roma Norte

After our fill of walking outside, we switched to more indoor walking, and headed over to Museo Soumaya. The exterior is equally as beautiful as the interior, featuring 16,000 hexagonal aluminum tiles. There are no windows except for the very top of the building. The inside of the building is completely white and is organized similarly to the Guggenheim in NYC. The entire collection is owned by Carlos Slim and features the world's largest collection of works by Rodin outside of France. Other artists in the collection include Monet, Degas, Renoir, Da Vinci, Van Gogh, and of course, Rivera. If you don't get a chance to check out the museum, I would highly suggest atleast stopping by the outside to marvel at the architecture.

Museo Soumaya

On the way to the top floor of Museo Soumaya

The Museo Soumaya lobby

After Museo Soumaya, because we just hadn't gotten our fill of museums for the day (kidding), we decided to check out another one- Museo Jumex. Located just diagonally to Museo Soumaya, it was hardly a 2 minute walk and just small enough to not feel too overwhelming. It, like Museo Soumaya, is a private collection, and features works by Warhol, Twombly, Hearst, and more. The museum features a cafe on the bottom floor, multiple floors of art, and a balcony featuring a beautiful view of Museo Soumaya.

The cafe inside Museo Jumex

An interactive exhibit in Museo Jumex

After Museo Jumex, we headed back to the hotel for a much needed nap before continuing the night. With all that CDMX has to offer, it is impossible to squish so much into the trip without forgoing other things. After only the first day and with two days left in the trip, we had decided at that moment that we would absolutely need to come back to the city. For the time being, we resigned ourselves to a snooze with a continued night exploration to follow afterwards. We decided on La Zaranda for dinner (thanks for the recommendation, A!), eagerly seeking fish tacos. Before dinner, we stopped by Cafebreria El Pendulo, which had been another location on my list.

The inside of Cafebreria El Pendulo

Named after the giant pendulum inside, this place really is, as the Atlas Obscura page describes it, part bookstore, part cafe, and part forest. Featuring two floors of books, it is incredibly easy to spend quite some time here. An overwhelming majority of the books, however, are in Spanish (which was unfortunate for H and I since neither of us speak Spanish). Nonetheless, the place was a marvel.

The patio outside La Zaranda

The view from our table at La Zaranda

Dinner at La Zaranda featured various tacos, my favorite of which were the fish tacos. Combined with a tangy lemonade, it made for a fantastic meal after a very long day. The view and nightlife outside of the restaurant didn't disappoint either. Last on our list for the night was dessert, and what better dessert when in Mexico than churros? We wrapped the evening up waiting nearly an hour for churros at El Moro, which was totally and completely worth it.

Outside the churreria

mexico city 2019: day 2

Friday, March 1, 2019

Hotel Busue

After coming back from Pakistan, I was experiencing serious post-travel blues. Getting to explore a culture and way of life different from my day to day life was incredibly refreshing, even if it was my own culture, just in a different country. With a long holiday coming up and a bit of searching on the internet, I was able to find a good deal on flights to Mexico City and immediately sprung for it. Our plan wasn't too hashed out other than the following: spending time exploring the museums, neighborhoods, and food at our own pace. I'd drawn up a list of things I was interested in seeing/doing, but with no particular pressure that we had to complete everything on the list since we already knew we'd plan to come back to CDMX in the future.

Day 1 was Saturday. Our flight got in in the late morning, and by the time we'd made it to our hotel, it was about 12:30 pm. We stayed at Hotel Busue in Polanco- a splurge and certainly pricier than other available places to stay, but I felt a little less guilty about it because we'd found a great deal. We'd gotten to the hotel before our room was available, so we dropped off our luggage and went out to explore the surrounding area. First stop was brunch, and we just went for whatever was available (having eaten about 7 hours prior and running on 4 hours of sleep). We ate at Maison Belen, a little cafe close to the hotel. We spent time afterwards walking around the Saturday market in Lincoln Park (and immediately regretted not seeing the market first and eating the numerous fresh street tacos available).

Lincoln Park's Saturday Market

A candy stall (that gave us free candy!) at the Saturday market

We continued to kill time waiting for our room to be ready and walked around the park as well as some of the streets in Polanco. By now, the weather had warmed up considerably (70's), and we were ready for a nap.

A home in Polanco

A restaurant in Polanco

After our room became available, we ducked in and caught up on sleep for a bit. We then headed over to the incredible Museo Nacional de Antropologia, which was just a 30 minute walk from the hotel. We spent the rest of the afternoon there until the museum closed, which was easy to do since the museum was huge. We ended up racing through a lot of it in the last hour before it closed, so I would definitely recommend having atleast 3-4 hours if you would like to really get to see the museum.

The courtyard of the museum

The museum at sunset

Following the museum, we headed back towards the hotel. Because of the long and exhausting day, we didn't try to go too much out of our way for dinner and basically found whatever was near and sounded good. We went for Greek food at Estiatorio Mythos in Polanco, and quickly called it a day after dinner.

mexico city 2019: day 1

Friday, January 25, 2019

This year, H finally convinced me to visit Pakistan, and I in turned convinced my brother to join us. The trip spanned about 2 weeks (3 for H) in December, and we travelled as a pack of 7 (my in-laws, me + H, and my brother). We flew into Karachi and visited Lahore during our trip. To call the trip life-changing would be an understatement for me. My brother and I hadn't been back in 16 years, and hadn't spoken to a lot of our family since then. Additionally, this was my first time meeting much of H's family in person. With countless family visits, introductions, parties, weddings, and sightseeing trips, the trip is probably best summarized in the video below!

pakistan 2018: the highlights

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

After taking the ferry back from Hvar to Split, the plan was to drive from Split to Dubrovnik for the last city on our list (kind of). I had added Mostar in Bosnia as a maybe on our list if we had the time and weren't super tired. We didn't have the time, were super tired, but still decided to make a pit stop in Mostar, and it was one of the best spontaneous decisions of the trip (minus the incredibly scary drive down the mountains in Bosnia to Dubrovnik, but more on that ahead).

croatia 2018: the drive to dubrovnik (+ a stop in bosnia)

Thursday, September 13, 2018

After close to 24 hours in Split, we took a ferry with room for our car and headed over to the island of Hvar. By the afternoon in Split, we were wiped from walking around in the heat and took the 1.5 hour ferry ride as a prime opportunity to caffeinate and nap. The ferry brought us into Stari Grad (one of the oldest towns in Europe), and we began our ~30 minute drive to the city of Hvar, where we would be staying overnight.

croatia 2018: hvar

Monday, August 13, 2018

Split as seen from the line for the ferry

croatia 2018: split

Saturday, July 21, 2018

St. Mark's Church

This year, H and I (mostly I since it was my turn to pick our destination, although H will disagree) decided to visit Croatia! I had a very difficult time deciding where to visit, with a close contender being Iceland. However, Croatia was an appealing option for many reasons. Most importantly, we have a limited time frame which for me means a maximum of 5 weekdays off, for a total of 9 days of travel time. Picking an international destination for this period of time of course means factoring atleast a total of 2 days to actually get to and from the destination. After visiting Japan last year and realizing that 7 days in a foreign country would almost never be enough time, I set out to find a more manageable trip that could also been just a week long. Additional benefits were the price point, good weather, not really knowing anything about the culture (positive for me since it's a chance to learn), and a good mix of natural beauty/outdoorsy things, which is what I prefer, and historical things, what is what H prefers.

The trip itself was an especially exhausting one partly due to my lack of complete planning, and partly because of coming down with a sinus infection while on the trip. Other highlights included us realizing we could accidentally burn out our breaks if we didn't drive properly with a manual (thank you to the friends who told us about that) and H learning how to drive a manual while on a mountain, a freakish thunderstorm on our drive to Dubrovnik, and a mysterious rash H came down with. I will be dividing our Croatia posts up by city and in chronological order, starting with the city we flew in and out of, Zagreb!

croatia 2018: zagreb

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Day 3:

We arrived in Kyoto via bullet train early in the afternoon. Fortunately our lodging was less than a 10 minute walk from the train station, so walking around with all our luggage wasn't as painful as it could have been. We stayed at Sanjyotakakura Hibiki Guesthouse both nights we were in Kyoto, and really enjoyed our experience. It was spacious, clean, and we had our own bathroom. Best of all, it was pretty centrally located in terms of being around the things that we wanted to see/do while in Kyoto.

Right outside Sanjyotakakura Hibiki Guesthouse

By the time we dropped off our luggage at the guesthouse and had a second to catch our breath, it was already 3 pm. Since sunset was around 5:30, we had a few decent hours left if we wanted to see anything outside. Most of the indoor things we wanted to experience (mostly museums) closed around 5, so we had to move quick. We headed over to Kyoto Imperial Palace, the former ruling palace of the Emperor of Japan (until the Meiji Restoration in 1869, after which the emperors have stayed in the Tokyo Imperial Palace). Before we went to see the buildings, we walked around Kyoto Gyoen Garden to find even more amazing cherry blossom trees than the ones we had seen in Tokyo. There's definitely a upward trajectory in terms of how amazing the cherry blossom trees were day-by-day on our trip, with the pinnacle being the last day of our trip in Tokyo. But more on that later. The garden here was filled with people picnicking with family and friends under the beautiful, blooming Sakura.

After about 30 minutes of gawking at the gorgeous blooms, we headed over to the palace. Most of the palace was for viewing exclusively from the outside. The palace ended up being a great way to spend the afternoon outdoors and checking one thing off our list.

After heading out of the Imperial Palace, we walked around looking for a coffee shop where we could grab a bite to eat, get some caffeine, and charge our phones. Along the way, we found two shrines, one of which was the Go'o Shrine (which I just now found out is on Atlas Obscura!). We ended the day really early (like in bed by 7pm kind of early) after eating at a cafe we found on our way to the train station. Our goal for the next day was to hit up as many things as we could fit on our list because it would be our last full day in Kyoto.

Day 4:
The next morning, we were up bright and early. Like, I was up at 4 am. We got ready and headed out the door for a full day of things to check off our list. The first stop of the day was our usual breakfast at whatever bakery we found on our way. Next, we hopped on a train and took a ride to one of the sights I was most excited to see and experience on our trip- the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. We walked along the main road in Arashiyama and over the Togetsu-kyo Bridge, which were filled with tourist shops and stalls. There was a small path off the main road that led to the breathtaking bamboo grove. The walk was incredibly crowded but so worth it. The bamboo towered around and over us, and it was incredible to see how tall the plants were. The photos below let this place speak for itself.

Togetsu-kyo bridge

Arashiyama bamboo grove

After walking out of the bamboo grove, we walked down the main street back to the station for the next part of our itinerary. On the way back, we got distracted over and over again by the small shops that lined the street. One of my favorite shops we found was what appeared to be a store exclusively selling handmade plush/stuffed things (I wish I could find this place on Google Maps so I could link it here). I was mesmerized by the hanging plush mobiles they had throughout an entire half of the store. It was incredible to think these were all handmade (and thus really expensive).

By the time we made it to our next stop, it was already after noon. The next place we visited was Sanjūsangen-dō, a Buddhist temple. This temple was first built in 1164, and rebuilt a century later because of a fire. The temple is known for it's 1000 Kannon statues which were constructed from Japanese cypress and covered in golden leaf. The statues are perfectly arranged in 10 rows and 50 columns, and in the middle is a huge statue of the main deity Sahasrabhuja-arya-avalokiteśvara or the Thousand Armed Kannon. There is absolutely no photography allowed once you are inside the temple out of respect to those praying (but a quick Google image search will reveal how vast this collection of statues is).

Outside a market near our Guesthouse

On our walk to Sanjūsangen-dō

After visiting Sanjūsangen-dō, we stopped at the Kyoto National Museum since it was almost just across the street. Unfortunately, the museum was closed for excavations (we never figured out what was being excavated), so we bought tickets to the small garden area where we could rest for a bit and plan out the rest of the afternoon/evening. The gloomy clouds overhead eventually prompted us to start the 20 minute walk back to the train station, and had successfully convinced us it was time for a quick afternoon nap back at the Guesthouse. After taking a break at the Guesthouse, we awoke in time to meet up with one of my friends from medical school who happened to be in Japan (more specifically, Kyoto) at the same time as we were. To make things an even odder coincidence, we were staying in the same area of Kyoto and our hotels were hardly a 10 minute walk from each other. The three of us met up for dinner and wandered around Kyoto for a good part of the evening, taking in the sights and intermittently complaining about the woes of residency- a very therapeutic combination.

Day 5:
We packed up and checked out of our Guesthouse early the next morning, leaving our luggage at the front desk because we wanted to stop by one last place on our list before heading to Mount Koya. We spent the morning at Fushimi Inari Shrine (Inari is the Shinto god of rice) with the iconic tunnels of orange torii. After watching a prayer, we walked through some of the tunnels up the mountain. The walk in it's entirety reportedly takes 2-3 hours. While I wish we had the time to complete the hike, we made it through a few of the torii gate tunnels after having to turn around so we could make the next leg of our trip (which took about 4-5 hours). We stopped by our Guesthouse one last time to pick up our luggage, and hopped on another train to make it to Osaka and eventually Mount Koya later that evening.

Stay tuned for my next post covering our time in Mount Koya!