Nh Krystal Rosa Mexico City

... young population.
Met Elias at the hostel (Hi !) who was very kind and showed me around. Too bad I was too tired to really enjoy the nightclubs...

Next day, my plane for Bogota took off at 3:50pm. I accidentally broke a piece inside the -cheap-plane, and was kindly asked to not destroy it during the flight ^^.

Thursday 20 Aug 2009

After a night´s sleep on a single bed made into a double bed we got up to greet our first day of being away. Brian fancied tea and toast (shockingly enough). One shattered glass cooker top later he still didn´t have any tea - the embarassment! I have to point out at this stage that I did say 'I think you're supposed to lift the glass up' but the bottom of the kettle wasn´t marked so 'it must go on top ...

... to take all his bags to dinner with him. We met the girls at their local suburb. We were disspointed to see the young one, it felt so wrong. They told us we were going to a taco shop but then instead took us to a burger joint. That was ok because they were excellent and cheap burgers (of course we were paying).What was completely ****ed up about eating at this restaurant was that the girls parents were eating there also. So Dave and I were sitting with one ...

... actively artists with many modern sculptures lining the streets, out door exhibits (one of them a collaboration with London) and even the benches were works of art that added an edge to city. Also a to me a burnt **** as i mounted a large bronze hand that had been baking in the sun too long. Yikes!
It was now around 4 and Alex had arranged to meet a Spanish guy who lived in DF though a friend of a friend as he is interested in moving out here to work so we caught a taxi down to ...

... of people in Mexico City! I guess I wasn't really sure of what to expect in Mexico City. My preconceptions were not all that favourable, I guess as they are to any large metropolis. However I was very pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed the city. The city is beautiful with many art works, statues, trees, old colonial buildings, and relatively clean. The people were very friendly and the public transport great and very ...

... Time for some (more!) R&R. We drove to Rio Dulce (Sweet River) where our accommodation consisted of over-water bungalows, well let's be honest, it wasn't quite Tahiti, more cabins, but all the same very nice and comfortable. However the weather wasn't! From here we were due to go on a boat trip down river to Caribbean Livingston. The weather came in from who knows where and it absolutely chucked it down with rain all night, buckets of it, and this is in the ...

... Villa. Beneath the monument is the Museo Nacional de la Revolucion. The Mexican Revolution took place at the beginning of the 20th century. Our evening walk back to the Zocalo along calle Francisco I. Madero was particularly delightful since by this time it had been turned into a pedestrian street full of people out for an evening stroll. What a great way to spend a day in Mexico City. Coming soon: Mexico City: Polanca and much more

... must have once been a sizable and manageble metropolis, but with the explosion of population in the cities sometime in the last century, the city has grown and grown and grown. From the plane you can see the houses stretching as far up the hillsides as they dare before petering just before the summit. Every inch of space is used in Mexico City. washing lines hang between television aerials, cars are parked in back gardens. This is partly why the ...

... to be a big rally or something soon. After this, we headed back to the Zocala about 4pm to try and find another Sitio taxi. The ones hailing on the street you can be robbed from. We headed into a hostel as we were reliably (!) informed by the LP that we could get a hotel or restaurant to call a Sitio taxi for us. By this stage, the traffic was packed! The hostel weren't keen to call one for us (we don't know why) and suggested we take the Metro ...

... to excite/bore David with lots of fascinating facts. We saw more evidence of the Aztecs on a visit to the chinampas (floating fields that were built on Lake Texoco). We took a boat trip along the waterways with Ros and Ron. We were expecting some kind of Mexican equivalent to punting...what we got were 100s of boats with families eating/singing/dancing on board whilst floating mariachi bands entertained them - very cool!