You never know what you'll find...

...in Mexico City. Like the Pasterlería Ideal, known not only for its pastries but also its enormous wedding cakes:

The upstairs of the bakery is entirely devoted to wedding and other celebratory cakes.

This sucker was HUGE.

Want a clown cake?

Or how about 10 kilograms of sweet dolly love, aka Bride of Chucky?

I thought this one was quite pretty! If you want to see more of their famous cakes, visit their online gallery.

If the cakes were too much for you, there's always beer..

I like it dark. Negra Modelo!

Mexico City is a bit of a foodie paradise. I enjoyed my shrimps in lime sauce.

 

Gordon had shrimps in a chipotle sauce with nice helping of black beans and guacamole.

On another day, there were enchiladas...

...and blue corn tortillas with avocado and huitlacoche! What is huitlacoche? Yep, a pathogenic plant fungus that infects corn, aka corn smut. Where I live, farmers don't wanna see it on their crops but in Mexico, they turned it into a delicacy.

 And ya know what? I liked it so much, I had it twice on my trip. It makes for a very black tortilla filling, but to me it tasted like earthy mushroom!

Here's a hilarious blog post on this Mexican treat.

Don't tell my hens, but Mexicans also eat a lot of POLLO, aka chicken...

And what snack is the red-haired lady holding in the styrofoam cup?

Chicken feet. With the claws removed! Yeah, I'll pass on that one.

But not on this..

Strawberry cheesecake.

 

Gordon had a cappuccino with his. 

Lots of things go on in Mexico City...

 

Like the Cat in the Hat standing on a street corner. There were cartoon characters all over the place, including Batman and a very sexy Catwoman. People pay to have their photos taken with them.

Our very own Canadian Scotiabank was everywhere. When my mother was pregnant with me, she worked as a teller at Scotiabank, then known as the Bank of Nova Scotia.

Here's a shot of the Zocalo (main square) and presidential palace (the president lives elsewhere these days) from the rooftop restaurant where we had our cheesecake.

I think the only thing worse than driving in Mexico City would be hauling around passengers in a pedicab!

It's always nice to be serenaded!

And on the way to the bus station, we found an entire store devoted to drinking chocolate. Why can't we have these in Canada?

This machine grinds up the cacao beans.

And here's Gordon waiting for our order of chocolate caliente: hot chocolate! With a little cinnamon. Yum.

We'll be moving onto Oaxaca soon, where I sampled these:

Chapulines aka grasshoppers. Ugh.

Gordon chowing down on a forkful of insect. I tried a few myself and didn't vomit, but I couldn't get past the fact that I was basically eating the food of choice of our pet leopard gecko. I once had a chocolate-covered cricket and it was marginally better. Marginally. I think chapulines are one of those things you have to grow up eating in order to truly appreciate their, er, unique flavour. Like seal flipper pie (which I will never try!)

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about chapulines

After being thoroughly cleaned and washed, they are toasted on a comal (clay cooking surface) with garlic, lime juice and salt containing extract of agave worms, lending a sour-spicy-salty taste to the finished product.

Yup, agave worms. Because what's an insect snack without a little added.... insect?

Beer really helps wash these suckers down.

I think I'll just stick with corn smut....

More to come on Mexico!