Mexico City

Originally written March 19, 2007

My husband and I have just returned from Mexico City this past Thursday and it was an experience let me tell you. I was so excited when we left because this was my very first time visiting somewhere outside of the US for more than a few hours. My husband decided to surprise me with this because he knew just how stressed out I'd been lately and because he's such a wonderful person...anyway it was a great surprise with a few exceptions.

3/10 - When we were on the plane descending into Mexico City, the thing that stood out the most to us was the abject poverty that overwhelms the city. I thought that I'd seen poverty before, through my own experiences and through what is shown on TV, but never had I seen poverty like this. The next thing that amazed us was the traffic! There are lanes that they don't use, there are lights that are completely ignored and their ability to narrow five lanes down to two in three seconds is amazingly scary. If you ever go to Mexico, my advice is don't drive!

3/11 - On our first day, we arrived to our hotel at around 5:00 p.m. so we decided not to wander too far away from the hotel. We ended up walking around the Zócalo a little bit and reveling in the beautiful architecture of the Palacio Nacional and the Catedral Metropolitana, as well as the judicial building and the other buildings in Mexico City's main square. For dinner, we ate in the rooftop restaurant in our hotel, the Best Western Majestic. Needless to say, we discovered that Mexican food in Mexico is NOTHING like Mexican food in the States. Mexican food in Mexico is unidentifiable (to us) and is rather bland...I guess I'm kind of a snob, I'll stick with our TexMex Mexican food here in the States. I've never had such a craving for spicy foods!

3/12 - Our second day started off crappy! I woke up with a migraine and was so nauseous it wasn't funny. I couldn't hardly eat anything because I wasn't feeling good at all. It finally wound down to a residual headache so we contacted the guy who was conducting our tour of the pyramids at Teotihuacán to see what time he was going to pick us up on Monday. We met with him at our hotel and he told us about a tour of the floating gardens at Xochimilco which we decided to take him up on it and I'm glad we did! This was an incredible display of the culture of Mexico, with the floating trajineras (flower-painted boats) for hire, the mariachi boats, the vendors of various textiles, souvenirs, jewelry and food it was an incredible experience! We were with another young lady from Australia (hello Catherine!) and had such a great time people watching and soaking up the culture! The other part of this tour was a visit to the plant market which was another experience. All the plants, animals, foods, and textiles for sale, it was awesome. Catherine fell in love with the baby tortugas and I actually enjoyed the parrots even though I'm not too great with birds.

For dinner that night, we at at the Gran Hotel de la Ciudad de México. Another disappointing experience though it was better than the previous evening. I had ketchup chicken (it was supposed to be sweet and sour but wasn't) and Nick had filet mignon but swears it was rat! I know it wasn't but it was a pretty bad steak. Needless to say, we weren't impressed with the food.

3/13 - The good, the bad, the ugly!

Day three, we had a half day tour of the city (meaning churches) and a half day at Teotihuacán. The churches (the Shrine of Guadalupe and the other one we went to) didn't interest us much, seeing as how we aren't very religious but the Aztec temple that was UNDER the church did..though the churches were pretty impressive architecturally. The pyramids at Teotihuacán were AMAZING! I couldn't believe that those had been standing for thousands of years and built completely by hand. It's awesome to think about. I managed to climb the Pyramid of the Moon but since half of it was closed because the archeologists were working on it I only climbed about 40 steps - though they were HUGE!! Each step was about 1 1/2' high and my thighs were absolutely killing me the next day. It was completely awesome though and I was totally speechless for about 30 minutes. I never did manage to make it up the Pyramid of the Sun but Nick made it almost all the way to the top.

We ate at some local restaurant and I ended up eating only black beans and corn tortillas because I couldn't identify anything else. For dinner that night, we ended up eating Pizza Hut because we wanted something recognizable and Nick had a migraine. I think the altitude or smog or something was affecting both of us. Unfortunately, Nick was worse off than I was and we ended up going to bed at like 7:00 p.m. - or rather Nick did or tried to. He had to stick toilet paper in his ears and pillows over his head because of the stupid whistles! Traffic cops trying to direct the pedestrian traffic because the pedestrians don't have the right of way at all in Mexico.

3/14 - Our final day. We decided to get around for ourselves instead of go on a guided tour and we took a taxi to the Museo Nacional de Antropología which was completely amazing as well. All the different representations of the various cultures that have inhabited Mexico since its inception, it's just incredible to think about. Someone could easily spend hours upon hours gazing upon the different sculptures, drawings, paintings, masks, and of course, the amazing Aztec Sun stone - it's too much for mere words to express. We remained there until around 2:00 in the afternoon and returned to our hotel for a bit of a rest. then we had the best meal of our entire trip...Burger King followed by Krispy Kreme donuts for dessert. Yum yum!

3/15 - was our flight home, back to civilization and a return to reality. It was a great trip and I'd definitely like to go back someday. I hope you all get the chance to enjoy it too!


The good: the museums, the floating gardens, the architecture, the beauty, the markets, the people, the ruins, the pyramids, the lack of inhibition, and the culture.

The bad: the traffic, the poverty, the traffic cops (damn annoying whistles at all hours of the day), the food (I was never so glad to see a Burger King!), the noise and smog (next time we'll take doctor's masks!).

The ugly: some guy with metal bars sticking out of his face that we saw walking around the Zócalo on a daily basis.