Mexico City

I remember studying Mexico City in geography class in school, and my memories of it from then are all pretty negative - a massive, sprawling city choked by thick pollution, with maddening crowds and dangerous muggers everywhere. By now of course, with all my traveling, I know to pay little or no heed to such generalisations, and I'm delighted I did.

Our one day sojourn to Mexico City was probably one of my favorite 'days out' of the whole trip so far. We did have to walk a far bit in the morning to catch a bus to the main terminal (because buses aren't allowed in the city centre), but once there we caught a bus direct to Mexico City straight away. It arrived on time too, passing very impressive volcanoes on the way.

At the Mexico City bus terminal it was really easy to hop on the metro and go straight to the main plaza, one of the biggest in the world apparently. From there we strolled about the centre, checking out various free or cheap museums (seeing as how we only had one day there was no point paying for the big, expensive museums). We also checked out some really great cafes, restaurants and bars of course, the best certainly being Sanborns headquarters (the tile house), La Opera Bar, and where we had a great dinner Cafe Tacuba (although the waitress got quite snotty with Sarah 'cos she felt her tip wasn't enough, but she'd been snooty all along, so good luck to her...!).

Towards the end of the day we got another metro up to the most famous religious shrine in Mexico, the Basilica of Guadalupe. This is famous for a shroud that apparently had an image of the virgin Mary (or a local version) just miraculously appear one day. It was all pretty miraculous alright, although the most miraculous thing is that literally millions of Catholics come here every year to see, and take photos, of this shroud.

I was expected something vaguely authentic looking, something a bit like the Shroud of Turin (which most people with a working brain now accept as a fake), but in fact the image is a nice colourful affair looking exactly as if some local artist had painted in on a cloak.

But the new basilica itself (the old one is being restored), is mighty impressive architecturally - especially the Star Trek teleporter system hanging from the ceiling!

So hopping back on the metro and back to the centre, we relaxed in a couple of the cool bars again (including the 4th story terrace of the Gran Hotel, which has a really fantastic foyer and nice views of the plaza). Then it was back to the bus terminal, and after a bit of a frenzy finding our way around we hopped on a bus back to Puebla (waiting time about 1 minute).

We got back to Puebla just after 23:00, so there were no local buses. Luckily though they have the fixed-price taxi system here, so we just got our taxi ticket in the terminal and hopped in a taxi straight back to the hostel.

Next day was a leisurely start with a quick delicious taco from Taco Tony's down the road, before using the free internet service in the tourist office for a few hours sorting out various California travel issues. Then yet another gorgeous dinner in the small, cosy La Gardenia restaurant (trying the local speciality of Chile en Noganda) before more internet (writing this), and then busing it to the airport for our flight to Tijuana.