Mexico Tour Overview
We are excited to introduce this new tour that begins in Mexico City’s Zócalo, where the excavated Aztec Templo Mayor, the “Ultrabaroque” colonial cathedral, and the multilayered National Palace reveal competing ways of claiming and interpreting the same ground.
We follow this idea into the world-class National Museum of Anthropology, Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul, and Diego Rivera’s Anahuacalli collection of pre-Columbian art. We then travel to Puebla to meet Talavera pottery artisans and visit the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, where ideas about craft, faith, and scholarship have shaped what Mexico preserves and values.
Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth provides a mischievous companion to our journey. Its flamboyant auctioneer-protagonist transforms ordinary objects by inventing irresistible stories about them. We’ll discuss the novel, then watch similar forces at work in a market, artists’ homes, museum collections, a Talavera workshop and—if the 2028 calendar permits—a live auction at Morton Subastas. Other readings by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Octavio Paz deepen our inquiry into authority, identity, and the unstable boundary between the sacred and the profane.
Along the way, you’ll ask who creates value, whose story becomes authoritative, and what happens when someone tells it differently—all while enjoying the beauty and energy of Mexico City and Puebla with a lively group of fellow travellers.
Accommodation
Accommodations will be announced shortly. In Mexico City, we will be staying near the Zócalo.
Itinerary at a Glance
Day 1: Arrive in Mexico City / discussion + welcome dinner
Day 2: Zócalo walk / Templo Mayor + Metropolitan Cathedral / Diego Rivera murals
Day 3: Discussion / Coyoacán lunch / Anahuacalli + Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul
Day 4: National Museum of Anthropology / Mexico City market visit
Day 5: Discussion / Sor Juana’s former Convent of San Jerónimo
Day 6: Possible Morton Subastas auction visit, subject to the 2028 calendar / Museo Jumex
Day 7: Travel to Cholula / archaeological zone visit / continue to Puebla + historic centre walk
Day 8: Discussion / Biblioteca Palafoxiana + Museo Amparo
Day 9: Talavera workshop visit / return to Mexico City + farewell dinner
Day 10: Departure
Readings
Valeria Luiselli, The Story of My Teeth
Selected short works by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Octavio Paz
We chose these readings for the different kinds of attention they ask of us. Valeria Luiselli’s contemporary novel The Story of My Teeth rewards a willingness to follow an unreliable storyteller, enjoy the absurd, and question our own desire to believe a good story. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century nun writing in New Spain, brings wit and precision to the defence of intellectual curiosity, asking us to consider the relationship between learning and freedom. Mexico’s great modern poet and essayist Octavio Paz invites examination of identity and the tensions within cultural inheritance.
Read together, these books offer a glimpse into the richness and imaginative power of Mexican literature, and guide our explanation of the questions that shape this tour: What do we owe the stories and traditions that shape us? And how can reading another person’s words unsettle what we think we know?
Practical Details and Next Steps
Requesting an itinerary is a great way to help decide if this tour is for you. We will send it to you as soon as it is available. We’re also here to talk by email at info@classicalpursuits.com or on the phone toll-free at (844) 869-1001.
Once you’re ready to join, our colleague Abbie at our partner Worldwide Quest is happy to get you started with information about putting down a deposit and the tour payment schedule. You can reach her at abbie@worldwidequest.com or 1-800-387-1483. Classical Pursuits offers a number of pre-tour online experiences for each tour, all of which are free or deeply discounted for tour participants.
All Classical Pursuits tours are sold by and operate through our longtime partner Worldwide Quest, a licensed Ontario tour operator and an IATA Accredited Agent that was created in 1970 (as Quest Nature Tours and Worldwide Adventures). All participants on Classical Pursuits trips are covered by the terms of the Ontario Travel Industry Act (Worldwide Quest Inc., Ontario License #2667946).
