Play: Margaritas, salsa and online museum tours? Say hello to the virtual vacation.
Plan a Mexico City ‘trip’ with VR castle experiences, online museum tours and (real) margaritas
Ihad dreamed, plotted and mapped out the perfect Mexico City vacation for spring. The weather would be glorious, the food sublime and the city enchanting. And now …? I know, of course, that sheltering in place during a raging, tragic pandemic is an essential thing. But — we’re friends, right? I can confess something? I’m a little bummed out that instead of visiting incredible museums, taking cooking classes, drinking margaritas and eating seafood at Gabriela Camara’s Contramar, I will be spending my vacation week in a state of sameness on the couch, like “Groundhog Day” come to life. Or rather, a “Groundhog Day” in which Bill Murray is obsessed with TP.
In these days of virtual happy hours and Zoom everything, perhaps a quasi-vacation is not such a far-fetched idea. Museums have virtual tours. The margaritas will be real. It’s a free faux-cation and you can come, too. Viva, virtual Mexico City!
VIRTUAL WONDERS
Castillo de Chapultepec: Take a virtual reality tour of Mexico City’s castle at bayareane.ws/castle. Learn more at mnh.inah. gob.mx.
Museo Nacional de Antropologia: Take a virtual tour of this major anthropology museum via Google’s Arts & Culture site at bayareane.ws/anthropology. Learn more at www.mna.inah.gob. mx.
Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul: Take a virtual tour and learn about Kahlo’s life via Google’s Arts & Culture site; bayareane.ws/frida. Go to the museum website at www.museofridakahlo.org.mx/en.
Palacio de Bellas Artes: Take a virtual tour at bayareane.ws/ Palacio. Learn more at palacio.inba.gob.mx.
Saturday morning arrival
There’s a lot to be said for waking up in one’s own bed. It’s not as glamorous as a boutique hotel in the trendy Roma or La Condesa neighborhoods of this bustling metropolis, but it’s comfy — and jet lag is no problem. So coffee in hand — but minus the Panaderia Rosetta’s guava pastries we’d hoped for — we head for www.youvisit.com/tour/mexicocity/80648 to get the lay of the land.
The site offers a scrolling tour of Mexico City’s landmarks, from the 360-degree marble grandeur of La Catedral Metropolitana to the ruins of Templo Mayor, the 15th-century Aztec temple that once crowned Tenochtitlán, where Mexico City began. In 1978, utility workers chanced upon an 8-ton stone carving of the Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui on the site, and excavations continue to this day.
We can get a better look at the ruins, though, by jumping over to Google Maps, dialing in Templo Mayor and street view, and then dropping the little yellow guy — the marker that puts you at street level — among the ruins to look around. In fact, we can do an entire “walking” tour of the city like this, hopping from the Zocalo, the enormous plaza in the heart of the city’s historic center, to the 1,600-acre Bosque de Chapultepec.
Museum hopping
Twice as large as New York’s Central Park, Chapultepec and its forests are home to a zoo, a botanical garden, a lake and nine of the city’s 150-plus museums — more museums than any city in the world — and a castle. It’s a real one, too. It was the home of a Hapsburg emperor, Maximilian I, and his wife from 1864 to 1867.
Today, the Castillo de Chapulte- pec houses the Museo Nacional de Historia — and there’s a virtual tour that takes you through 360-degree views of the grounds, salons and exhibits. It’s cool online. It’s even better with Cardboard, an inexpensive virtual reality headset ($9 and up) made out of, well, cardboard. Load the Youvisit app on your smartphone,