Mexico City’s Escandón 11
March 2013
Mexico City
really seems like home. One of many, but home. We drove in on the road from
Puebla up over the flank of the Volcán Ixtaccihuátl and down onto Calzada
Zaragoza, and from there straight to Colonia Escandón, our neighborhood for
many recent years, without having to make a single turn. Of course, it wasn’t
by the route we had wanted to go, which despite following the signs we were
unable to find, and we didn’t really know where we were until, miraculously, we
were home. Mexico does that some times.
The word
Mexico, for the uninitiated has two meanings. Outside of the country it means
the country of Mexico. Inside the country it means Mexico City. If we tell
somebody in Huejotzingo we are headed for Mexico, there isn’t one iota of ambiguity.
They may wonder about our good judgment, or our sanity, but not our
destination.
We settled
into the Hotel Escandón, strategically located on Calle Martí, right across
from the market, where the lady who runs the Comedor Los Tucanes greeted us
with surprise and pleasure. The flower seller man saw Linda coming and wrapped
up a gardenia plant. The Hotel Escandón, with its one gardenia-scented room, is
close to almost everything we might need.
There are
two Michoacana ice cream stores within fifty paces, and 9 or 10 neighborhood
groceries (a conservative estimate). There is a leafy park behind the market
with lots of play equipment for kids, a public library, a skate board ramp, and
tables in one corner where there are always community activities taking place. There’s
a laundry up the block and it’s only four minutes to the Metro entrance.
Everything just exactly where it always was, as it always is in one’s “home”
town.
Of course
inside the Hotel Escandón, the lobby is stark and uninviting, the restaurant is
moderately expensive and just OK. The rooms are lovely, large neo-deco in
style, even if not all that well-layed out. And it’s 750 pesos a night, about
$65. We spent a lovely five nights there while David occupied his days in the
Archivo and Linda knit and toured the home neighborhood.
The routes
from the Hotel Escandón to the Metro pass by a couple of other hotels and one
of them, the Hotel Patriotismo with its elegant exterior and unusual drive-in
entrance, kindled David’s curiosity. True, it is situated on the Calle
Patriotismo, the six-lane one-way speedway that marks the west boundary of
Escandón. The lady in the hotel’s reception cubicle let me check out a room.
Large, modern, attractive, spotless; good window light; a comfortable bathroom.
And only 520 pesos per night.
Done deal,
three nights by credit card, thank you. We trundled our luggage two blocks down
the Calle Martí sidewalk and around the corner to the Hotel Patriotismo.
It wasn’t
until we were settling into our 3rd-floor room on the side away from
Calle Patriotismo’s Mississippi of traffic, that we began to notice some
telling details. The mirror facing the kingsize bed. The fact that while the
room has a small closet, there are no drawers for putting things in. The
spectacular glass-enclosed shower stall protruding into one corner of the room,
large enough for two people to shower together, with a showerhead on the
ceiling and a button to unleash a spurting, bidet like fountain from the floor.
The free additional channels on the cable TV. The pair of toothbrushes next to
the soaps and lotions on the sink, along side the pair of combs, and the two
packets of condoms printed with the name of the hotel. The “villas" section of the hotel
features drive-in mini garages with discrete curtains to mask the
visiting cars from prying eyes.
Yup, one of
those hotels. Very much on the
elegant side, but inexpensive. Unless you figure that for most folks the 520
pesos is for an hour or two, and not a whole night.
Still, the
staff couldn’t be more friendly and accommodating. Our large room is spotless
and cheery and well appointed (except for the paucity of wall outlets and
drawers). At dawn, before the rise of Mexico City smog, both Ixtaccíhuatl and
Popocatépetl ,trailing a plume of steam, are visible from our window. And no
street noise seems to penetrate the Hotel’s exterior walls.
Inside
those walls, though, there is a bit of an echo. The tac-tac-tac of tacones (high heals) sounds a little
like the intro to one of Paul Simon’s African songs. And the ay-ay-ay-ay-sí-sí-sí, far into the
night, is a cheerful reminder that love (though perhaps of the commercial sort)
is alive and well in Mexico City.
I suppose
we may go back to the Hotel Escandón when we return in July for Max and Kyle’s
wedding but still the Hotel Patriotismo has its charms . . . .
David & Linda (who fly to our northern home
on Wednesday)