Further impressions of Mexico City

Today's lunch I actually got cutlery -- unlike yesterdays, where it was rip the chicken off the bones by hand, rip up the sausage, stick it on the tortilla, pour on salsa, roll up and eat.

Went to another "locals" type restaurant, had chicken with mole sauce. Mmmmm mole. Was nice, with a good bit of warmth to it, but not too spicy. I asked Luis, my local contact, about how spice it was compared to normal, and he said "about average". So apparently I'm comfortable eating "about average" Mexican Mexican food. :)

Took a bus to the restaurant -- a small bus. Pay cash, and the driver made change. It drove along, apparently along some route, stopping here and there -- but the doors were open all the time, stopped or moving. And it was blaring loud music all the time, too.

I continue to be glad that I'm not driving.

Went to an Italian restaurant for dinner -- felt right at home. Same dishes, they even came out and changed a birthday greeting with hand-clapping in rhythm to someone. Of course, the chant was in Spanish -- but otherwise just like home.

Air seemed nastier today, and lots of the cars are really old, and rickety, and polluting.

It seems they passed a law in Mexico City to reduce pollution -- depending on your license plate, you couldn't drive on certain days of the week (start with 0 or 1, not Monday, etc.) So, this made things worse -- cause instead of buying one ok car, newer with pollution controls, people would buy two older, junkier, more polluting cars -- but with different license plates so that they could drive any day of the week. From what I've seen, I can believe that this happened.

A lot of the economy seems to run on cash, no receipts.

(The above may make my expense report more difficult to do.)