Photo Walk Nº105 was a last-minute decision to repeat the San Miguel Chapultepec walk for a couple of people who missed it last time.As with the previous photo walk, we started in Condesa and made our way around the neighborhood of San Miguel Chapultepec and then returned to our starting point. We visited a number of art galleries, stopped off for coffee in a charming little cafe and wandered around the leafy streets, some very quiet, photographing the architecture and other scenes along the way.This neighborhood needs to be walked and explored to be fully valued, and some research should be done to find out where the many art galleries are since they are behind anonymous, sign-less façades. But as photographers, we soon discovered that there is lots of charm to this often overlooked and underrated "barrio".
0 Comments
For Photo Walk Nº104, we explored the area around the Alameda Park which was the first urban park in the Americas and originally the site of a large Aztec market. Some of the places around here were badly damaged during the 1985 earthquake, being totally rebuilt, while we saw the effects of the more recent Sep 2017 earthquake in the churches.We met at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, located at one end of the park, and photographed both the outside of the building and the interior before making our way into the park, renovated in 2012 and full of jacaranda trees and fountains. The mounted police have returned to the park in recent months and not only allowed us to take photos but encouraged some of us to get up on the horses. We also visited different places including the Plaza Juárez with its fountain made up of 1034 red pyramids overlooked by the Museo de Memoria y Tolerancia and some other modern buildings.We then went up to the Don Porfirio Café to have some refreshment and take photos of the Palacio de Bellas Artes from an elevated position.Although we had originally planned to go to the Zócalo as well to get some photos of the colourful umbrellas there, we discovered they had been removed so we were able to spend more time exploring this part of the Centro Histórico.San Miguel Chapultepec is a rather small and overlooked neighborhood wedged in between Av.Constituyentes/Chapultepec Park and Condesa. Despite its reduced size and being relatively unknown, it is actually a thriving artistic place, with many private art galleries hidden behind anonymous doors and an increasing number of cafes and restaurants. We went to explore this area for Photo Walk Nº103.Our walk started in nearby Condesa where we paid a visit to the Librería Rosario Castellanos/Cultural Centre and then to Molino El Pujol on the other side of the street. The former, once a thriving cinema in an art-déco building, has been turned into a beautiful bookshop complete with armchairs and coffee shop, a cultural centre and small cinema. The latter is Mexican chef, Enrique Olvera's tortillería where only native corn from Oaxaca is used for the "masa", previously having undergone the ancient Aztec process of "mixtamalización", soaking and cooking in lime which results in increased nutritional value and flavour.We then made our way to San Miguel Chapultepec where we photographed the streets, visited art galleries and had some refreshment at a coffee shop along the way. Our final stop was to see a large colourful mural on the wall of the Espressopolitan Coffee Shop. When we arrived, they were just starting to paint a new mural sponsored by Street Art Chilango, a duo (Alex and Jenaro) who promote urban art in the city and who also do street art walks.This photo walk turned out to be an eye-opener and many of those who came along discovered San Miguel Chapultepec for the first time. |
Margaret MetcalfeBorn to travel, explore and share photos and experiences Archives
May 2019
Categories
All
|