Museums in Mexico City

A couple of different days we went to see museums. The Anthropology Museum is very impressive! They took you through the original settling of Mexico from the Olmecs, to the Mayans, to the Aztecs, the Spaniards conquering, to present day.  It was fascinating!

 Here is Sandi by the "original" Mayan Calendar! The only trouble with the calendar is that is expires this December 2012!

 Curtis in front of one of the big stone statues from the Olmec period. It reminds of the statues out on Easter Island.

 This is a picture of the valley where Mexico City was founded. See the Eagle on a cactus about left center, well that is the island where the people came to settle.  They filled in the entire lake and all that area is now what we know as Mexico City. It is huge!

 We also went to the National Museum & Castle of Maximillian. The above photo was taken from his balcony looking down the main road through Mexico City. You can see a lot of people in the road, we were told later that there was a demonstration of about 3,000 people for one of the candidates running for President. The four white pillars is a monument - what I don't know.

 The castle where Maximillian lived (he was Emperor of Mexico for about 3 years in the late 1800s) and it was named after grasshoppers or crickets but in spanish. This fountain was in front of the castle.  The castle reminded me of the ones I saw in Europe. Come to find out his parents ruled Austria for years!

 This is just one hallway in his castle. Reminded me of Versaille's hall of mirrors in France! Later I found out he actually designed to be similar to it!

 This is the second floor gardens of Maximillian's castle.  It was so lovely! You can see Sandi standing by one of the pillars holding her white hat.

 This is the main Cathedral of the Zocalo (center of Mexico City). It sits in a main plaza. To the immediate right are ancient ruins just discovered in 1978 they are excavating, the Presidential Palace is also across the street.

 This is inside the Presidential Palace (he doesn't live there anymore, they made it a museum). It reminded me of the old Austrian ones from the German era. I could imagine soldiers marching around in the compound. I felt creepy there.

 These are the ancient Aztec ruins discovered under Mexico City at the heart of the Zocalo.  This is called Temple Major. It was built in 7 layers. Each king had to out build the previous and just added a layer on top.  You can see the steep steps, similar to the ones at Teotihuacan pyramides. 

 These guys were not nice. They killed children and slaves. Cut out their hearts and offered them to their God(s) on altars. Here is an original altar they are still uncovering. It is made of skulls!!!  Twisted!

This is a statue (laying flat on the ground) inside the museum of Temple Major. But what is interesting they were killing people and pulling out the hearts, you can see this statue is eating the heart. It caused us to remember Neal A. Maxwell's comment about the only thing we can lay on the altar is our "will" or our "heart". The Aztec's just misunderstood and did it physically rather than spiritually.

So it was a fun time to see some amazing things!