Mexico City

Mexico City ~ If you have been to Mexico City you can understand, but if not you can just imagine the immensity of this city, which is home to 18 million people and continues to grow everyday. Time and patience is needed while navigating through this city even as a tourist, which is why Carlos and I have made multiple trips with the latest being this past week. I have included some photos of our first trip, which was back in January, as well photos from our most recent trip. I won't go into detail for the January trip, but I will include some information along with the photos.

Originally, we were first going to go through Mexico City to Puebla then return to Mexico City and continue on to Cuernavaca, but due to a stomach virus I had for two days our plans changed. I won't go into the details, but it wasn't my best two days...that's for sure, but Carlos took care of me the entire time. Our time only allotted for a few days in Mexico because we wanted to return to Chilpancingo for the birthday weekend celebration for Carlos' mom.

We spent our time wisely or at least the best we could for the three days while we were there. Our first stop was to the National Rehabilitation Institution, where Carlos studied for five years. It was his chance to visit with some old professors. Due to some problems the degree Carlos received is no longer being offered at that particular institute so students wanting to pursue an Orthotics and Protestics degree are no going to have the same options as Carlos had.

We only stayed about an hour because Carlos was well aware of the amount of time it would take us to get to the heart of the city. Almost an hour later and 100 pesos ($10) we reached our hotel, Brisas, which is located one block from La Reforma and the Angel, for those of you who have been to Mexico City. Carlos' cousin works at the five star hotel so we were very lucky with our rate. Actually very lucky is an understatement. The room we stayed in has a $270 rate per night and we paid $40 (taxes included). We were quite impressed with our room which was actually a suite. I liked it so much that I took a three hour nap. I suppose I was low on energy from my stomach virus. We used this location of Mexico City as the base for the three days.

Prior to my nap we did in fact walk down La Reforma for a bit and ate at the famous Sanborns restaurant. We spent the rest of the night cheering on Mexico against Brazil . It seems my support helped because they beat Brazil. Even though it was Brazil's B team, a vistory against any Brazil team is a victory.

Our next day was a FULL one, as we ended up walking for 12 hours, literally. We started our day with a complimentary breakfast at the hotel, thanks again to Carlos' cousin, before venturing out. As you can see from the photos, we spent our day in El Bosque de Chapultepec which is home to numerous museums, amusement parks, lakes and a zoo. Our first stop was the Castillo, which was quite a site in the middle of the largest city in the world. We then decided to paddle around in in a boat on one of the lakes, which was my idea. Carlos was thrilled with the idea. Once we got in the paddle boat it took us some time to figure out how to operate it because we could only go in circles...it was quite funny. We didn't last very long though. The lake was a very unnatural shade of green and the back to Carlos' seat was broken and he kept falling backwards. From there we went to the zoo. As most of you know I am not a fair of zoos, but since I made Carlos take out the paddle boat it was my turn to give in so the zoo it was. This zoo was the first place outside of China where pandas were born in captivity. The zoo has three of these rare bears, descendants of the original pair donated by the People's Republic in 1975. We then finished our day with the Museum of Anthropology, which is a must see if in Mexico. I can't even began to explain the importance of the museum. It is quite impressive.

The main objective of our night was to meet with my mom's neighbor who was in Mexico City for work. He was staying at the Hotel Nikko. He was kind enough to bring me my credit card because mine was stolen in Acapulco earlier in the trip. We spent a few hours at his hotel watching the US play, if you can call it that, Argentina in the America Cup on the largest big screen tv we have ever seen. . The US lost 4 -1!

The next morning was a busy one. After our complimentary breakfast, we headed to the computer plaza of Mexico City to buy a couple of things for Carlos' sister. This is an area full of all electronic equipment. If you can't find it here, new or used, it doesn't exist.

We then continued our day at the Modern Art Museum which was interesting because it is full of Mexican artists. The only disappointment was that all of Frida Kahlo's works were being exhibited at the Bella Artes, which is on the list for the next trip. As we were walking from the museum and along La Reforma, we heard someone yell "Guerro", which is Carlos' nickname ~ meaning white Mexican. It turns out that even though Mexican City is the biggest city in the world...it is still a very small world because the person yelling for Carlos was one of his best friends from Chipancingo. We met up with him and his brother's later in the day for a ride to the bus station because Carlos was not interested in taking the train, cab, or bus since it was Friday afternoon. Fridays, especially pay days, in Mexico are the worst days to travel and from the car ride to the train station in the south of the city, I witnessed just that. It took us almost 2 hours to get from the center of Mexico City to the south. It was a great trip though. We drove through UNAM, which is one of the best univerisities in Mexico.

We are sure we are missing a ton of information, but we are not even sure if you have even read this far...thanks if you have.

The last interesting observation I will tell you about is on the buses here in Mexico. Typically when you board a bus, the men are checked out by security and usually on Friday pay days, everyone on board the bus is videotaped. Thses are just a few of the security measures that are in place here. So far we have not had any problems. We have not yet had to go through a security check point on the highway though and these are very common as well.

We are off to Chilpancingo then will continue our travels to Puebla and Cuernavaca.

Cuidate mucho!!!

Gracias por todo, Paola!!!

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