Seen from the plane Mexico City seems huge, it certainly looks like the biggest city in the world, which apparently it is. At the airport we book a room at the Hotel Isabel (25USD a night), which is in the Isabel la Catolica area of the city.

We take a taxi straight there as it is dark, we are very tired and don't fancy wandering around the city at night. The taxi driver drops us off in a dark, quiet street, outside the hotel entrance.

The hotel Isabel is much better than expected, it is a really nice old colonial type building set around an internal courtyard. The room is absolutely enormous with high ceilings and a small balcony, it is a bargain considering the low price and fantastic location.

Wake up still feeling a bit tired but not too bad, decide to have breakfast in the hotel. The Mexican breakfast is nachos with chicken and cheese with some sort of sauce - it tastes quite good, although we are not used to having nachos for breakfast!

We then walked to the main square in Mexico City, the Zocalo, and entered the Palacio Nacional which is a grand building set around an internal courtyard. We can't seem to find the guide so we walk around ourselves and admire the large mural paintings, eventually we meet up with the tour group so we decide to join them, he takes us outside to the botanical gardens at the rear. The gardens are really a collection of all the types of cactus you can think of including tall ones and the bush like one that is used to make tequila.

Next we visited the Catedral Metropolitana, the largest cathedral in Latin America. It has some very impressive woodwork and contained a huge organ. We also saw a lady confessing all in an open confession box to the priest.

Then we visited the ruins of the Templo Mayor, which were discovered in 1978. It is the ruins of the main temple from the ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan (now called Mexico City), and includes a large, well presented museum. All the descriptions were in Spanish so it was not too easy to figure out what some of the displays were but they were interesting nonetheless.

Next we wandered back towards the hotel trying to find the English bookshop, on the way we stopped for a snack of tacos, they were beef with cheese, and tasted delicious, the Mexican food is so far living up to my high expectations. We found out that the bookshop is in a distant part of town so we headed back to the hotel, on the way back we popped into a stationers for Katerina to buy a new diary, and I bought a small sketchbook.

After a rest at the hotel we headed out to find a restaurant, it was after 9:30pm so most places were either closing or closed so we ended up in the restaurant of Sobourns department store. The food was good, I had fajitas which were very similar to the ones you get in England although I did have to ask for the tortillas so am I not sure if they would have come with the meal or not.

Up quite late, still feeling tired, not sure if it is jetlag or altitude or both. We decide to have an early lunch so go to a branch of the Mexican fast food chain called Vips, the food was very good, we both had chicken burritos. After lunch we headed over the area called Almeda Central which is the western half of the historic centre. Seen lots of impressive buildings on the way and ended up at the Palacio de Bellas Artes which is a magnificent building housing the opera house/theatre.

Then we walked through Alameda Park and went into a couple of museums/galleries at the western end, the first of which was the Museo Diego Riviera. This museum contained many of his works including the famous mural 'Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park' and many works by his wife Frida Kahlo.

Next we popped into the gallery next door, the Laboratorio Arte Alameda which is a museum of contemporary art housed in a former convent and church. Some of the displays were typically strange although interesting, however the building was more impressive than its contents.

Next we walked to the Museo Franz Mayer which is in a beautifully restored 16th century hospital and contains the private art collection of Franz Mayer. There were lots of paintings, ceramics, textiles and furniture from around the world, including some decorative tiles which Katerina was particularly fond of. We left the museum as it closed and wandered in the drizzle back to the hotel past more impressive buildings including the post office and various churches.

On the way back we stopped by at the University of Mexico City Engineering Department which had an impressive display of large meteorites displayed outside. After a quick break at the hotel we headed to the Hotel Majestic for dinner.

The hotel is situated on the main square and the restaurant is situated on the 7th floor and as such gives fantastic views over the square, fortunately we were given a prime table with the best views (much to the annoyance of some other people who arrived at the same time) and could watch some early Independence Day celebrations take place.

Dinner was very good, although Katerina was surprised that her dish, the Mexican national dish of giant stuffed pepper, was suprisingly cold. After dinner we wandered around the square watching some strange dancing to a banging drum and people generally having a good time eating, drinking, and buying various Mexican souvenirs such as giant sombrero hats, giant fake moustaches and giant long balloons; everything was inscribed with 'Viva Mexico!'

After breakfast in the hotel we head down to the Metro station to catch the underground train to Chapultepec. The Mexico City Underground is very clean, efficient and very cheap, the equivalent of 20 US cents to travel anywhere in the city, also it is very unusual in that the trains have wheels with tyres and run on a curved metal channel rather than rails!

At Chapultepec we walked through the park, past lots of food stalls and a boating lake to reach the best museum in Mexico City and one of the best in the world, the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City.

The museum is set around a large courtyard which is covered by a huge roof which is supported by a single concrete pillar in the centre. We decided to explore the ground floor first and started in the first galleries which set the scene for the rest of the museum, they were concerned with the initial settlement of the Americas (i.e. migration from Asia across the then frozen Bering Strait).

The galleries were very well presented, although there was a distinct lack of English explanations, which meant constant referral to the dictionary. These first galleries were also very busy and almost everybody (well, the Mexicans) was avidly taking notes about all the displays and copying the descriptions into their notebooks.

After the first couple of galleries we went to the museum cafe to have some lunch before heading to the main and largest gallery, the Mexica room (or Aztec room). This room was huge and contained all manner of Mexica artifacts together with some larger stone sculptures including the sun stone and a model of Mexico City in Mexica times (when it was based on an island on lake Texcoco and called Tenochititlan).

We then spent some time wandering around the other sections of the museum, including the Mayan, Oaxaca, and various other rooms.

The museum is huge, we did not really have enough time to see everything and ended up just briefly looking at the first floor which was dedicated to the indigenous population of Mexico. We looked around the museum shop before heading outside where it was now pouring with rain, we decided to a wait a while for it to die down. We then headed for the bus stop to catch a bus which would take us in the direction of the hotel.

We hopped onto a mini-bus, we stood for a few stops but eventually got seats, there was almost no legroom as I sat there squashed up in a very uncomfortable position. We managed, with some help of fellow passengers, to get off at the right stop where we headed for a restaurant we had spotted the previous day. The restaurant, Los Girasoles, although quite expensive, served some very good food. After eating we took a slow walk back to the hotel.

Mexico City Page 2