Museo de Dolores Olmedo

The weekend of the 25th October, in between slagging off our landlord/satan and marking exam papers we took a trip to Xochimilco to visit the casa de Dolores Olmedo and go for lunch on the trajineras.

Having visited the Casa estudio the week before it is easy to see why Frida had so many problems with Diego as the house he purchased for his mistress (Dolores) is over twice the size of her blue studio. It is beautiful with huge gardens which have peacocks and Spanish, short haired dogs roaming freely (unfortuantely the dogs were not around the day of our visit as it had been raining - very Lindy/Blitzi of them).

In the gardens we saw some tradditional Mexican dances from all the different regions of Mexico.

Inside the house there was an exhibition based on Dia de los Muertos - the pictures below are blurred as taking photos is technically banned and so Zoe had to act fast.

The house also has a lot of Diego Rivera's work. He was a great artist, who uses big, simple shapes and brushstrokes with beautiful colours. Most of his work is still in Mexico City and so I am defintely looking forward to seeing more of it. There are also lots of photos in the house of Olmedo touring the world and mooching with different celebrities. It seems that being a bit of a tart worked very well for her. Below is a painting of her by Diego Rivera (like the postcard I bought):

After the musuem we went to the market to buy blue corn quesadillas and mamey (my new favourite fruit) to eat on the boats.

We floated about stopping at some of the markets and enjoying the views from the boats, searching for our names on them. Fortunately my name is Spanish enough and so the VIVA LAURITA boat does exist, oh yes! Although Zoe had no such luck.

As for Edgar, I have now moved out and live with another teacher from the school. However there will be no photos up here untill I have found a vacum.

That's all for now as I am off to the centre to celebrate Dia de los Muertos (today).