And if we go to Mexico

After our 11 hour flight and our trawl through customs, we eventually reached out hostel at about 8pm. Our first impressions of Mexico city were not the greatest given it was dark and their were virtually no street lights on the hostel´s road and the roads were all dug up and stank of sewage (luke was pleased to view some drainage). However the next day in the daylight and the heat things starting looking up. After Maeve arrived the next morning, we headed to the zocalo and were greeted by an enormous Mexican flag and a huge square surrounded by the cathedral and palacio national. Inside the palace are a number of Diego Rivera´s murals, a guide brought us to each of the murals and explained ther many symbols of Mexican history contained in the murals. We were all exhausted due to jetlag and the heat, so figured the only way we´d see anything else that day was by hoping on the tourbus. I covered most of the main sights though we spent most of the journey driving around Chapultepec park! (much to Rory´s bladders dismay!)

Wednesday morning, we went back to Chapultepec park, this time on the metro and visited the Museo Nacional Antropologia.It had a gorgeous fountain of water cascading from the ceiling in the entrance The place looks deceptively small but after 2 and half hours we had only seen one floor! The museum had a number of sections from pryamids and recreations of tombs found from the many different cultures in mexico.

Next stop was Cocoyan to visit Frida Kahlo´s Blue House which contained a number of her drawings, the retable collection and two of her painted corsets. Both her and Rivera´s rooms have been preserved even has a pair of Diego´s muddy boots on the floor.The house was beautiful, yellow floors, ornate tiles and multicoloured furniture! I asked Luke to buy it for me, but apparently there is some problem with buying it from the Mexican government!

Outside we hopped in a taxi so we could get down to Xochimilco floating gardens before they closed. The taxi was a bit of a hairy experience. The driver appeared to have no clue where we were going, kept stopping for directions and eventually stopped down an alley of boarded up buildings to introduce us to ´his friends´ who would bring us out on the boats. We werent exactly enthuased with the friends, esp their mangy dog that Rory was convinced had rabies! We eventually got a boat, we hadnt time to go to the island of the dolls, but there was a few of them hanging along the river banks which were odd enough in themselves! We got some cerevesas and had a pleasant trip along the canals with Mariachis floating by!

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