New Year's Eve

Luc and Matt went to spend the day at the Museum of Anthropology and I held down the fort. After spending hours at the museum they came home to take a breather before the New Year's festivities began. Our plan was to have some great Mexican-Japanese Teppanyaki on Reforma. So we headed out to Reforma and admired all of the nativity scenes on display. We especially loved the cutout head scene and voted Luc to be baby Jesus. There was a "light and sound spectacular" which attracted a huge crowd right outside the Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel. We checked it out for a bit then headed inside for dinner. (Who knew....all therestaurants were closed on New Year's Eve too?). We ate a great buffet dinner and afterwards hailed a cab to the Zocalo. When we got there it appeared pretty sparse. We had read that the Zocalo was the place to be and got really crazy. On the contrary, it seemed pretty tame. Mostly, families were camped out waiting til midnight. We got a great spot in front of the cathedral. All of the holiday setup (like the ice-skating rink and ice slide) were fenced off. Luc & Matt were mesmerized by crayon-looking blow up toys that could be bounced all over. Once I saw a vendor with GIANT sparklers, we were all over it. They were sold in sets of 4 so we had an extra one. It was so adorable when a little boy approached Luc and asked him for it. How could we say no? The Holiday Inn which overlooks the Zocalo jumped the gun a bit and lit off some quasi fireworks from their ledge. Our official countdown coincided with the bells of the cathedral. All in all a great start to 2009 in Mexico City!