to arrive in beauty

The flight we took to Mexico City was ideal. A 737-800 with lots of spare seats, departing on time at 11.15pm, clocks forward two hours, quick snooze, arrive half an hour before 5.25 ETA, bags by 5.30, on Metrobus Linea 4 Norte zooming down fairly empty streets in its exclusive lanes with only four passengers by 5.50, by 6.30 walking the pre-dawn through the park past the magical Palacio de Bellas Artes and into the no-cars Avenida Francisco Madero named after the first President.

After two short blocks, turn into Calle Bolivar, named (I think) for the most renowned independentista of the western hemisphere, Simon Bolivar, open the big front door opposite Dolce e Gabbana into this our courtyard.

and arriving at our front door in the Casa Borda this is the view back

and inside our airbnb studio apartment, our host's style makes for great comfort... and it's actually more intimate and warm that the cool elegance displayed at airbnb.

I went out for breakfast things to where the world was scrubbing up

past the no-such-intense-sanitisation outside the junk food on the corner

and around into Madero, with all its history now overseen by the Torre Latinoamericano

It's a gentle place to sweep into, although abundant police presence.

I had a muy rapido conversation with the smiling man in the Aero shirt as he flew by.

Welcome to Mexico! 

Gracias señor!

Google has responded, providing responses in Spanish now, to all this magical sliding into a nuevo mundo... which is how it feels. There is a rhythm that just is, even if it's not always the same rhythm, it rhythms. I have to go back at 6.30 another morning to capture not only the haunting Bellas Artes in its pre-dawn silence but also the row of slightly nervous (or jumpy-tired from night shift?) young police with shields protecting the end of Madero.

I asked the jefe:

Esto es normal, o es un problema, senor?
Es normal senor

Whether that's good Spanish I'm not sure, but it's what was said. You have to dive in. And I have to find out how to do the Spanish style of placing a question mark at both ends of the question, the first one inverted. And how to put the wavy over the n in senor. This is going to be packed with questions, senors, senoras and senoritas! Ai yai yai!

I stood on the corner of Madero and Bolivar at 9am to make this tiny (and trembly tiredy) movie.