Day 1& 2 - Monday 24th / Tuesday 26th March
Uneventful, if a long and boring flight yesterday, as the on board computerised entertainment system was not working, so thanks goodness for the IPOD and a book! Still the upside is that we all got £50 on board shopping vouchers. Arrived in Mexico City at about 6pm but it took a further hour to get the luggage - the Spanish manyana culture is already in evidence. We were met by our guide Maria and taken to the hotel which is modern and anonymous but in a nice area and has every thing we need. After a quick snack we retired as by now it was almost 3am for our body clocks.
Today it was up and out by 9am for a tour of the city. Maria met us and we went to the historic centre where we parked and walked for several hours. It was good having a guide as she took us into a lot of buildings, which are now hotels / restaurants, but were important and beautiful historic buildings in the past. We would never have known what lay inside and would probably not felt we could just walk into many of them. Mexico City has the third largest square (after Tiananman Square and Red Square) surrounded by a beautiful cathedral and palaces and government buildings - the only problem is that the city is built on what used to be a lake and many of the buildings are subsiding badly. The evidence is quite easy to see and in the cathedral there is a huge pendulum hanging from the centre of the ceiling depicting just how much it is leaning. They are trying to repair the damage and there is a lot of sophisticated measuring equipment in evidence.
Part of the problem is being caused by the huge influx of people coming to the city to try and find a better living (there is now a population of 20 million in the city) the infrastructure and water table are being seriously compromised and the general feeling is that it is a city running out of time. After a very pleasant lunch we finished the day with a visit to the Museum of Anthropology where we learnt probably more than we wanted to know about the Mayan / Aztecs etc... Conclusion - Like most big cities, Mexico City is a city of contrasts, run down areas nudge shoulders with beautiful wide boulevards, lined by jacaranda trees and impressive monuments. The jacaranda trees were in bloom and stunning (took one or two pictures!)
More thumbnails ...
Where I stayed:
Campino Real
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