A rant about Delta with lots of pretty pictures

We had our most touristy day on Monday, but before we get to that, we need to talk about Delta. Getting our return flight to Boston sorted took up the best part of our final days in Mexico, added infinite stress, and an extra day to our trip.

We'd known for a few days at this point that our return flight to Boston was going to cancelled. There was a massive snowstorm scheduled to slam the entire eastern coast of the US on Tuesday, the day our flight was scheduled for. Best case was the first leg of the flight would get us to Atlanta, but there was no way we were getting back to Boston on Tuesday. Unfortunate, but understandable. Snow happens.

So on Sunday — two days before we were scheduled to leave — we began trying to contact Delta to get put on a flight for Wednesday. After very slow responses from them on their Twitter direct messenger, we were finally told by somebody whose signature was "*JW" that we'd been put on a flight for the same time on Wednesday. Brilliant, we thought.

A few hours went by, and we received no confirmation email of our flights being switched. Lia's Delta account also showed nothing had changed. So we messaged back asking for a conformation. No response. We tried calling, and were faced with a minimum wait time of 25 minutes. We messaged and messaged and messaged; Twitter, Facebook, email. No response on any front from a SINGLE ONE of Delta's representatives.

The next day we finally managed to get someone on the phone, Kelsey. She told us that we had not been put on this new flight we were told we had been rebooked to. She also told us that there was one flight left out of Mexico City to Boston on Wednesday, and it left at 7am, and had a layover in New York that involved a ground transfer from JFK to Laguardia. Not ideal, but we took it. We finally had a flight. I'll pick this thread up in the next post, but the plot thickens...

In addition to panicking about our flight, we spent our Monday in Mexico exploring the central downtown area and seeing the main sights. Our day began with the best torta I've ever eaten though. My favourite restaurant in Boston serves them magnificently, so I was excited to try one in its natural habitat, and with egg and chorizo to make it breakfasty — a surefire way to make any food better.

I can report it was simply sublime.

We wandered around the main square, called Zocalo, and saw some spectacular buildings that ringed it. There was the national palace, the police headquarters, and most stunning of all, the national cathedral. 

Neither Lia and I are religious, nor fans of religious infrastructure. But both of us can definitely get behind some insane, baroque religious architecture. While the Spaniards may have razed the original city when they arrived hundreds of years ago, certainly brought something to the table with this cathedral. It was enormous, gorgeously crafted, and having taken a religious literacy class earlier this year, it really added a sense of depth to the experience for me. I was quite in awe for our entire visit.

Lia articulately pointed out that it would be easy to see how if you came from poverty and dirt, you could be easily persuaded to believe in this building and its powers.

We also saw the ruins of the Templo Mayor, which was the main temple of the city before the Spanish arrived. It's all cordoned off as they're working on restoring parts of it, but you can tour it as a museum. Or you can lean over the barrier and take some photos.

We wandered further around, enjoying the majesty of the main square (and an entire mall dedicated to religious paraphernalia, which was just fascinatingly odd) before heading a little further into downtown to see a few more sights. We had a long old checklist, as this was our main touristy, sightseeing day.

We visited the House of Tiles, which was lovely, and strangely reminded me of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

We looked at going up a tall building to check out the view, but they inevitably wanted to charge us an unnecessary amount of money to essentially use an elevator and see into the distance. Se we went to the Palace of Fine Arts instead. 

It was closed as it was Monday, but we did take a brief peek in the lobby. It was art deco heaven.

And Lia threw a ball of wool at a public art installation!

We wandered through the park, again loving the purple leaves on the trees, while Lia spammed Delta with messages demanding attention.

And we saw more public art. Lia noted they'd been making progress on this wave made out of buckets since we drove past a few days ago, and in the distance you can see the tall tower we considered going up.

Lastly, we walked a bit further to a market our Airbnb host had been banging on about since we arrived. She said it was the place to pick up all our souvenirs, and being two people who like wandering around markets and spending money, we couldn't resist.

After the market, we went to dinner at the fanciest place we went our whole trip. There were people with ties there! We ordered the famous fish tacos, two different ways, and sampled both. The whole meal cost about $15 U.S. dollars — got to love that exchange rate — and it was the only one that actually made us feel a little bit sick! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯