Marvellous Mexico City

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We left home Jan 9th for Mexico City. We were joined by John and Shaire Ford. It is an amazing city. Our flight from YVR was at 5:40am so we opted to stay out by the airport. I used Hotwire.com and got us each a hotel room for $47USD plus tax. Didn't think deals like that were around. It was the Coast airport Hotel. Free shuttle and nice place. We arrived in Mexico City via Salt Lake City about 1PM. Best laid plans. We thought we would store one bag of luggage at the airport and then take the Metro into the City. We had an extra bag of stuff our fellow campers wanted me to pickup and a wonderful bag of little girls clothes for a little girl whose mom works in the park. Sharie and John are in Mexico for 2 months so they needed lots of stuff for cooking etc. so also an extra bag. Well, the storage was going to be $8 per day for each of us so we opted to taxi to Centro with all our bags. The taxi was only about $25 so it made no sense to store anything.

Mexico City is a very cosmopolitan city. We bussed to the Museum of Anthropology one day and I was amazed at the number of middle aged Mexican ladies dressed to the nines wandering around the museum. I could imagine them having lunch and then doing the Museum for an afternoon of entertainment.

We bussed and metroed all over the city. Once we got our bearings it was easy. We also did the double decker hop on, hop off bus 3 times. It had two separate routes and then we did it again after dark. What a beautiful city.

Never once did we feel unsafe or onguard. We talked about our feelings just to make sure none of us was feeling uncomfortable and we were all feeling the same - SAFE. We walked from the bus after dark, down small streets to get to our hotel.

We were in Mexico City on a Sunday and that seems to be the huge market day. Check out the pix. Reminded us a little of Axe en Provence (pls excuse my sp!) Ate amazing fruit all cut up and ready to go while seeing the market. None of had any repercussions! It is always a gamble.

Did a great river boat ride for an afternoon. Larry and I had done the same trip with my mom and dad in 1974, except in 1974 the painted flowers on the fronts of the boats were actually crepe paper. Things change. There was a ton of activities happening on the river. A birthday party with a meal especially catered that a boat lady was preparing in her little dug out canoe on the river. Lots of mariachi entertainment, xylophones etc. Never a dull moment. The river water quality was probably about the same as the Midi Canal, if you remember the stories of it. Thank gosh, Larry didn’t feel obliged to take a dip or a plunge as he did a couple of times in France. There was not a lot of English spoken in Mexico City by between John’s Spanish and our charades, we managed just fine. People were very pleasant, I can’t think of a single person that didn’t try and help us with directions etc. when we requested.

All in all, Mexico City was tremendous and we were all so happy we had taken those 5 days to see it well.

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