Casa Gonzales’s dining room of two tables for eight is set with blue and white china that’s almost a willow pattern and is “girled” by three young, kind, courteous women wearing masks. They are exceedingly patient with the French, English, Swedish and other native speakers who order as we do from menus the size of small posters with a dizzying array of huevos, panes, jugos and cafes. Each table is adorned with red flowers and paper hearts, the silverware circled by a wire with a tiny flower, the plates sitting on heart-shaped doilies. Happy Valentine’s Day!

All three of us down our various vitamins and medications and meet our pre-arranged taxi driver for the nearly one-hour ride from our hotel to one edge of the Zocalo: the main square in Centro Ciuidad Mexico.

We summon the clearly drunk Google map genie who cannot make up its mind where to point its blue arrow, take a wild guess, and wend our way past the National Cathedral on our left, through a gantlet of souvenir hawkers and through a narrow construction blockade just wide enough to permit one person through from EITHER direction at a time and walk another 100 yards to the entrance tents in front of the Palacio National guarded by soldiers with real guns and rifles. They let a few people through and stop us cold. We point inside and say, “Diego Rivera murals.” They shake their heads and point across the street and back toward whence we came. Ahhhh, we must go to another place for entradas (tickets).

We get in THAT line at 9:45 and wait our turn and are told that the 10:30 English-language tour is booked. Ok. So what about the 1:30? Booked. As is the 4:00. Nothing for the rest of the day. Can we buy for tomorrow? No, we may purchase entradas only on the day of entry.

We are somewhat less than joyous and turn our backs on the courteous but adamantine guardians of the ticket booth and consult our itinerary spreadsheets for alternative activities. Templo Mayor, here we come; it’s right around the corner under the south wall of the National Cathedral: the size of a large city block with half a pyramid and a variety of supporting and adjacent structures reconstructed with chunks of black lava stones jumbled together with concrete. Aztec and the center of the Mexica Empire, built around 1325, and interesting to see but not as interesting as the seven-floor museum within its confines.

The first exhibit you see inside the museum is a wall of 120 dead heads. The next jaw dropper for me was a life-size terra cotta statue of a skeleton with its liver hanging down from inside its stomach. Apparently the Aztecs believed the liver was the center of a body’s life force. Ceramic pots with the face of Tlaloc, the water god, models of Chinampas agriculture — floating islands of mud built on stilts driven into the swampy basin of lakes that used to be Mexico City and environs — in all, almost as full of artifacts and information as the vaunted but we will see it tomorrow anthropological museum.

We are forced by guards to retrace our path into the site outside the museum and make our way along Avenida Madero to the Casa de la Azulejos — a huge edifice coated in beautiful blue and white tiles, where we hope to get lunch and are seated but leave our table after no one gives us a menu after 20 minutes. Propelled by hunger, we walk to the Palacio de Bellas Artes to get the English-language tour and see Rivera and Tamayo murals. At the ticket booth we are told the English-language tour listed on the website is not available today. When is it? Well, you have to book it on the website. But, we say, there’s no way to book on the website. That’s because you have to reserve the tour with a personal guide, we are told. So may we arrange a personal tour for another day with you, we ask. No, we are told we may only book such tours on the website.

Yadda yadda, yadda. We get in for free ‘cause we’re seniors. Rivera’s Carnaval de la Vida Mexicana, his Revolution Rusa o Tercera Internacional, and other murals by Orozco blow us away. Cynthia can’t wait to see the Tiffany glass curtain in the performance space but, of course, we are told that despite what the website says, it is shown only for 1/2-hour from 1:30 to 2:00 and not on weekends.

We walk back to the Zocalo and get drinks on the rooftop bar of the Grand Hotel. It’s standard margaritas are the size of punch bowls. In front of us, a couple in total glam preen for each other and other guests at a table strewn with red flower petals and adorned by about six wait-staff.

The margaritas also are made with a mix rather than real lime juice, so we split after drinking only two and uber to dinner at the Cafe de Tacuba where we have a great meal and are assaulted by a seven person mariachi band.

It’s Valentine’s Day. Cynthia comps the check of the adorable couple easily in their late eighties at the next table and we split for Casa Gonzales.