Lillia, the Anthropological Museum & a Tap Dancing Wall With 6 Legs

Lillia tucking into a taco in Reforma, Mexico City

Ok, if you think the title of this thread is weird, you should have tried being in my shoes yesterday!

I went back to Reforma on Monday morning to see if I could find the restaurant where I met Liilia in case she was there again. Now it is one thing when you don’t know an area and you stumble on a place, it’s not so easy when you try to find that exact place again. After walking in circles for nearly an hour I found the restaurant and true enough, Lillia was in her usual spot watching people pass by and engaging a young French student and a Spanish guy in conversation.It was fantastic to see her again and we chatted over breakfast and then we went for a walk through Reforma and she took me to her favorite taco stall where we could choose between various types of pork taco, belly pork, chopped pork, pork kidneys and a variety she called ‘mother’s womb’. “You mean OVARIES?!’ said I and which Lillia confirmed. Everything was deep fried in a huge sizzling vat of almost back oil.

All the various forms of pork were deep fried in thick black oil

The stall was doing a roaring trade; we had to elbow our way through to get served. I honestly was still full from breakfast but Lillia had a belly pork taco, then a chopped pork taco, which, by her own admission, she had been salivating just at the thought of, all morning.

The taco stall was doing a roaring trade

We walked a bit more then we sat on the wonderful Paseo de Reforma, which is modeled on a French boulevard. Conversation turned to all the different dialects in Mexico, a natural direction of topic as Lillia is an anthropological linguist and I have a long established curiosity of the evolution of language.

Lillia buying a freshly squeezed fruit juice to wash down her taco

We made arrangements to meet up the following afternoon, which was yesterday, and take Katie to the Anthropological Museum and then I left to collect Katie from her summer camp.

When I picked Katie up from the summer camp yesterday I didn’t tell her where I was taking her, preferring to keep it as a surprise till we got there.

We arrived ten minutes late after being crushed on a bus, which was in turn crushed by other traffic, but we found the museum ok and saw Lillia waiting for us. She had downsized from her usual handbag, two large shopping hold-alls, and four neck pouches, to just a handbag and the neck pouches – all of them. She cut an instantly recognizable figure sitting on a low wall, wearing her Ms. Marple hat and hunched over a book.

Katie and Lillia at the Anthropological Museum, Mexico City

We walked through the museum and Lillia seemed to be in her element having a child to entertain, in the same way as she had done with her own children when they were young and she had taken them to the same museum.

A replica of a burial chamber

We explored the Occidental Room and learnt about the anthropological history of SW Mexico and then we went to the restaurant for a coffee break and we played a game where we made up a story and each person took it in turns to add a sentence.

A carving representing the Dias De Las Muertas

The end result was the tale of a wall with magic runes painted on. One day a man came along and fell in love with the beautiful paintings on the wall and decided to take it apart brick by brick to take it home to keep. Before he removed the first stone a cockatoo flew up and scared him off. The wall then grew six legs, picked itself up and started to run away, but the man chased after it. The wall, gaining a long lead, became over confidant and started to tap dance, but then tripped over its six legs. The wall was scattered but the magic runes on each brick started to swirl and gravitate towards each other, thus the wall was able to put itself back together. Suddenly music started playing and the wall resumed its tap dancing, when suddenly out of the woods appeared Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tinman and the Lion who all joined in with the dancing. Overhead the wicked witch flew up and was caught up in the merriment, tap dancing and swirling her broom like a baton before flying up into the sky and playing a cello. Then the wind picked up and a house came tumbling out of the sky, when it landed Dorothy’s aunt stumbled out looking dazed and confused. Then just as Dorothy realized her aunt was the witch all along, (the aim was never to make sense!), the witch soaked up all of her goodness and Dorothy was then sapped of and her skin turned purple and out of her head sprouted a big black pointed hat.

The huge fountain in the central courtyard

It was all nonsense but it was good fun and it got Katie to focus her imagination which we have been working on.

A model of what Mexico City used to look like in Aztec times

We walked through a few more rooms of the museum, which were all fascinating and then a torrential downpour started. Lillia said that even though we are in the midst of what is supposed to be the rainy season, Mexico City has been very dry this year. In a twist of fate, we were then caught up in the biggest rainstorm Katie and I have seen since being in Mexico. We were soaked to the skin and it was the middle of the afternoon rush hour, the roads were clogged and after waiting 35 minutes for our bus home, Lillia gave up and phoned a taxi driver friend of hers. We’d been sitting at the bus stop a total of an hour by the time he arrived and we crawled inside his taxi, wet and looking pathetic. There was a moment as we were driving home when a lorry drove through a puddle, sending up a huge wave of water which came in through Lillia’s window and hit Katie and I across our faces!

We eventually got home tired and soaked to the skin. I had been wearing sandals and my feet were so wet and cold that my toes hurt. I made some dinner and then my landlady’s long-term couchsurfers’ boyfriend came over with his niece who is only a few months younger than Katie and they chased each other round the living room screaming and shrieking and having a fabulous time.

So, all in all, yet another fantastic day in Mexico City!

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Tags: anthropological museum, Lillia, Mexico City, tacos