We both woke at 2 o'clock but we didn't know which two o'clock!?! Was it 2pm in the UK which meant it was 8am?  Was it time to wake up?

No it wasn't. It was 2am here in Mexico and we then just couldn't get back to sleep for love nor money. The old body clock was certainly still set to Greenwich Mean Time.

Five hours later we decided concede and stay awake. 

When I popped to the bathroom I was staggered by how incredbily spacious and stunning it looked. We must have seen it last night but it hadn't registered.

Back in the bedroom I spent sometime trying to figure out how the coffee machine worked before realising it wasn't even plugged into the power, but even after I sorted that out I couldn't work out the issue. So I decided to find the common room.

I had better luck with the coffee machine there. It was only a Nespresso style machine but it made a real decent coffee. I carried two cups back to our room and sat in bed for an hour writing up my journal.

There wasn't a rush to get up and out this morning because breakfast was served in the restaurant downstairs and it didn't open until 9am, and not wanting to miss something we had paid for we were happy to wait.

So at 9am precisely we made our way down to the restaurant. It was a lovely sunny day so we sat outside. We've not had the weather at home to eat al fresco for over six months! It felt so good to feel the warmth of the sun on my face.

It was  a great place to people watch. We could see the Zocalo and the National Palace.

We were shown a menu from which we could choose our complmentary breakfast. It wasn't very large. It was categorised into three types, the Farm, the Mexican or the Continental.

The Mexican was chilaquilles, with or without chicken, with red or green sauce. The Continental was some Danish pastries. Then there was a choice of fruit, a selection of fruit juices, and a tea or coffee. 

I chose the chilaquiles with salsa verde, it's my all-time favourite Mexican breakfast and couldn't wait to try it again. Obviously I specifically asked for it without chicken but when it arrived it had chciken on it, shredded everywhere.

Julie spotted it first. "No, no, no chicken. He's a vegetarian" she said.  The waiter apologised and remembered me asking for it without chicken.

Whilst he took the plate away we tucked into a large plate filled with slices of orange, melon and watermelon. Also a large glass of grapefruit juice. All very fresh.

"What's the bet that they'll just pick the chicken off?" I asked.

"No, they wouldn't do that!" Julie replied.

When my plate came back, that's exactly what they had done. There were still a few shreds dotted around. Back at home I would have complained but here I didn't want to kick up a fuss so I accepted my plate fate, meticulously picked all the remaining chicken pieces that I could see and ate it all. 

Once breakfast was over we booked an Uber taxi over to the suburb of Coyoacán. It was only 10km away from the historic centre along a straight multi-laned road heading South from the Zocalo. Thankfully Mexico City's notorious traffic congestion wasn't a problem this morning. The journey took less than twenty minutes. The driver, Jose Luiz, was a very chatty man and made the journey seem even quicker.   

We were venturing out into the suburbs to visit the former house of famous Mexican artist Frida Khalo. She was born there and died there. In fact she spent most of her life living in her family home in Coyoacán.

We arrived at a street called London (Londres) and immediately recognised La Casa Azul, the blue house trimmed with red. It wasn't difficult to miss. Even in this artistic bohemian neighbourhood it stood out.

It was also where our taxi stopped, so obviously it was the Frida Khalo museum. That's the beauty of using Uber, there's no "lost in translation" issues, you've already instructed exactly where you want to be delivered.

Further confirming it was the long queue of people waiting in line.

There was a small sign with 10:45 displayed on it. Clearly this was the queue for the time allocated entry into the museum which suggested we first needed tickets. So we went in search of the ticket booth but we didn't get that far.

At the front door there was another sign. Our hearts sank when we read that the next available time-slot was 10am, ......  Monday 26th February!

I was so disappointed and angry with myself. Visiting the Frida Khalo museum was the main reason why we came here to Mexico City. I should have done my research.  

Not knowing what to do we began walking away from La Casa Azul. I knew of other "house" musuems in Coyoacán. Not far away was the house of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary murdered with an ice-pick in Mexico City in 1940. Who incidentally briefly lived at La Casa Azul with Frida Khalo and her husband and fellow famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera.

A little further away was Diego Rivera's house, now also a museum.

Also, (I didn't know at the time but I wish I did) there was a large food market only three blocks away. We always enjoy a good local food market. 

But we couldn't shake the disappointment and in the end decided to get a taxi straight back into the centre to see the second main reason why we came here, Diego Rivera's mural in the Palacio Belle Artes. The one he painted in the Rockerfeller Centre New York which was torn down, so he repainted it here.

The return leg took us a little longer, the traffic going into the centre was a little heavier. The driver, called Arturo, spoke no English, so there was no conversation to distract us.

At least the slower pace gave us more time to look out of the window and take in the daily lives of the chilangos, a nickname given to those who are from Mexico City.

The sprawling metrolpolis is home to 21 million making it the 6th most populated area in the world!

We were dropped off outside the Palacio Bellas Artes, or the Palace of Fine Arts. Built with white marble from Carrara Italy the building itself was worthy of being called bellas artes. Its sunset coloured domes were very unique.

It took over thirty years to build. Although they weren't actively constructing for all those. It should have been completed in time to celebrate Mexico's centenary celebration of its independance from Spain in 1910 but problems with its foundations in the soft soil delayed it. Then came the 1910 Mexican Revolution which lasted for ten years.  

Eventually the project was revived and completed in 1934.

We walked inside. After our eyes adjusted it was still a very dark entrance hallway. The staircase was of black marble and the walls were dark brown. All polished and shiny which rendered Julie incapable of walking properly as she reached for my arm for stability.

At the top of the staircase it opened out into this vast art deco atrium where we could see the light coming through the glass dome, from three floors up.

There was something quite wonderful about it. Whilst it was not my idea of an attractive design it had a beauty in the fact it hadn't been changed since the day it was built. A 1934 time capsule.

The main part of the building was a concert hall where performances are still held but we were here for the murials on its walls.

Up on the first floor we walked around a temporary exhibition called Mexichrome. Fotografia y color de Mexico. A collection of photographs capturing the country. We politely but very quickly browsed through them all.

Only one made us stop to have a closer look. We were excited to come across an image of Frida Khalo taken in 1938. She was in a traditional dress holding an Olmec sculpture.

"At least we've seen something about her today" I said still annoyed at not pre-booking tickets to her museum.

Up on the second floor we came to the murals. These were large pieces of art. The first one we came across was on the East wall, entitled Catharsis by Jose Clemente Orozco in 1934. Although technically it wasn't on the wall but a sheet of steel. 

It was a chaotic scene of war and depravity enveloped in flames, all burning in hell. It was fascinating.

All the way on the other side, the West wall, was the mural we were here to see, Man, Controller of the Universe by Diego Rivera. The story behind this painting has always fascinated me. 

Rivera was comissioned by Nelson Rockerfeller to paint a mural on a wall at the Rockerfeller Centre in New York. The brief was to contrast capitalism with communism. The idea backfired as Diego Rivera, a former member of the Mexican Coummunist party did far too good of a job making the socialist path seem more attractive.

It's original title was Man at the Crossroads.

In the centre was man, in a boiler suit and wearing thick gloves, pulling a leaver, controlling the universe. In front of him was a hand holding a sphere with the image of dividing cells and recombination of atoms, the building blocks of life.

To one side was a microscope to the other a telescope. Then, stretching out from the centre, were four wing-like shapes inside which were the exploding suns and cell forms that were discovered by these visual aids.  

In April 1933 the New York World Telegram newspaper published an article calling the unfinished painting anti-capatilist propoganda. Rivera's reaction to this was to paint the image of Lenin, the former leader of the Soviet Union, unifying a diverse collection of people. Beyond that came a scene from the Russian May Day rally with red flag waving and further sense of unity and order.

It caused a lot of controversy and he was asked to remove it. He refused offering instead to paint Abraham Lincoln on the other side to balance it out.

However the other side didn't celebrate the virtues of democracy and rightousness but highlighted the disfunction of Western society where the rich drank, smoked, gambled and danced whist the poor protested and war raged on.

Rivera never got the opportunity to finish the painting. He was ordered to stop painting. It was originally hidden from view with a drape.

When he caught wind of the threat to destroy his work and had an assistant photograph every detail. These black and white photographs were used to repaint the mural here at the Palacio Bellas Artes. It was apparently almost identical but on a smaller scale.

Eventually the Man at the Crossroads was plastered over and lost.

Free of the American constraints the recreated version here in Mexico continued with even more commnist who's who, with Leon Trotsky, Karl Marx and Friederich Engels making a guest appearance.

In another provocative move Rivera (an aethist) painted Charles Darwin pointing to a monkey.

Then in a final act of revenge he painted the image of John D. Rockerfeller Jr. drinking with a woman in the nightclub and apparently above their heads was a dish of syphilis bacteria. 

Without any doubt it was a masterpiece.

Having looked at every aspect of the mural we stood their for a few moments more before moving on.

The next mural that made us stop and stare was called the New Democracy by David Alfaro Siqueiros painted in 1945 and was painted to celebrate the victory over facism.

It was certainly an "in your face" image of a woman breaking free from her chains,   representing freedom, with a torch in one hand and a white flower in the other.

We overheard a tour guide say "see how he painted democracy as half woman and half man". I struggled to see the male side although perhaps was that an adam's apple?

Anyway, what was an interesting fact about the painter Siqueiros was that he was implicated in an assasination attempt on the like of Leon Trotsky! 

We moved on.

The third floor appeared to have more art but smaller pieces. It was also the location of the Museum of Architecture which sounded boring, so we decided to give it a miss.

Julie held onto me for dear life as we walked down the shiny marble staircase. Her balance had abandoned her. Her cautiousness was validated moments later as a  gentleman, only a few steps ahead of us, stumbled on the last step. He fell to the ground like a sack of spuds with a loud thud and a slight whimper.

He got back up on his feet fairly quickly but walked with a limp from there on in, leaning on his partner for quite some time afterwards.

We left the Palacio Bellas Artes and decided to walk towards the Zocalo. Our route took us down Avenida 5 de Mayo where we came across this attractive tiled building. It was known as La Casa de los Azulejos, or the House of Tiles.

It was also known as the Palace of the Counts of the Orizaba Valley, or Palacio de los Condes de Valle de Orizaba.

What we see today, a New Spanish Baroque palace with a stunning facade covered with beautiful blue Talvera tiles from the state of Puebla, was built in the late 18th century renovating an original 16th century palace.

We decided to have a closer look and walked inside, through an electrical store of all things. The building was now owned by Sanborns, a chain of restaurants and department stores, which explained the shop.

We continued inside where it opened out into a large courtyard filled with people busy eating.

"Shall we eat here?" asked Julie. It was almost 1pm and justifiably time for lunch. So after finding the maitre di we were given the choice of dining downstairs in the courtyard or upstairs. 

For some reason we chose upstairs which meant more marble steps to climb. However, we did get to see another mural as we walked up to the first floor. It was of Jose Celemente Orozco's earliest works, painted in 1925 and titled Omniscience.

I'm not sure he would have been impressed that today the door in the centre of the mural now lead to the toilets.

After searching again for the first floor front of house we were taken to a table right in the back of the dining room, with no view overlooking the courtyard. There were a few tables outside next to the balcony but we didn't make a fuss.

The waiting staff were all dressed in colourful traditional style costumes although I can't imagine those garish colours being any region's tradition. A mature lady came to serve us, handed over a QR code that linked to an Enlish on-line menu.

I struggled to find anything meat-free. The only dish I discovered was the same as I had for breakfast, chilaquilles.

sleep.