Day of the Dead

A year ago, my family and I visited Mexico City during the Día de los Muertos celebrations. What an amazing trip! I highly recommend it. Betsy McNair, of mymexicotours.com, made it so with her fun itinerary, restaurant recommendations, and reservations. She asked each of us what we wanted to do and luckily, they were all similar: Day of the Dead celebrations, art, museums, food, and shopping.

My son Taylor (mural artist), his girlfriend Sadie (website designer for AG) and my daughter Ava (retail manager AG) and I visited the home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, hung out during the Day of the Dead to see the local celebrations in Coyocan, Frida’s hometown, partied with the masses at the Zócalo, the magnificent square, where the Metropolitan Cathedral is in Mexico City, did a mural tour of our neighborhood, Roma which was wonderful all on its own and ate some of the best food ever.

It seemed like there were new ideas everywhere - shops, decoration, murals, food, and more food. On a more somber note, we saw remnants of the earthquake devastation and held a fundraiser for it when we returned.

Lifesize alter

Painting made of sand

Annie, Ava, and Tay at The Blue House - Friday Kahlo Museum .

Día de los Muertos face painting.

Zócalo plaza festivities.

The mural tour was guided by a Bay Area ex-pat and most of the art had been done for the Juxtapoz festival previously. The scale ranged from tiny, graffitied over or massive two-story building. More on that in my next blog next week.

Sugar skulls on the Edgey Pedestal Stand.

We came home with a renewed respect for creativity in all its manifestations- visual, ideas, crafts, architecture, cooking. But even more so the pleasure of joining together with a massive amount of people in the main square was, to use a much-overused term, awesome. Great pride and enjoyment were evident in the families in full costume, performers roaming about among the giant sculptures and ghoulish paper mache figures, fantastically elaborate sand paintings under thousands of fluttering paper cutout flags was truly awe-inspiring. Put it on your bucket list!

- Annie