Ciudad de Mexico, what a place. We loved this city, definitely one of our favourites in Latin America and sadly our last. Despite its utter huge-ness (21 million people live in the metropolitan area making it the 3rd largest city in the world), it's easy to get around with a great metro system and there's oodles of things to see and do. We were there for 5 days and feel that we only scraped the surface on discovering the city, giving us the perfect excuse to return.
We stayed in the Centro Historico for a few of the nights. When we arrived in the city at 9.30pm on a Wednesday night, the whole area was eerily quiet and we were doubting our decision to stay there. However, from 7am the district was buzzing with street vendors, business people and tourists milling around. Luckily for us we also got upgraded to a huge room with a balcony overlooking the street.
The city, previously known as Tenochtitlan was originally built on the island of Lake Texcoco by the Aztecs in 1325. It was almost completely destroyed in the 1521 siege of Tenochtitlan, and subsequently redesigned and rebuilt in accordance with the Spanish urban standards and later known as Ciudad de Mexico.
Eating a blue corn tortilla with cheese and mushrooms...yumm
Making some fresh tortillas
Plaza de Garibaldi and the fantastic Mariachis - tequila anyone?
Found the tequila at the tequila museum...delish
The ruins of Teotihuacan, about an hour away from the city by bus, are beautiful. It is thought that they were established around 100 BC lasting until around the 8th centuries AD. At its peak, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a population of around 125,000, making it among the largest cities in the world in this period. Teotihuacan was even home to multi-floor apartment compounds built to accommodate this large population! It was hot hot hot walking to the ruins, which took a good 45 mins to reach after being dropped off by the bus. Luckily the temples stairs were accessible, so we huffed and puffed to the top to admire the view. You wouldn't want to suffer from vertigo though as coming back down is a little scary and a few people are hospitalised each year after rolling down them.
Mexico City is one of the most important cultural centers in the world, allegedly boasting more museums than any other city. It also comes third after London and New York with the most theatres in the world. We were rushed off our feet trying to see all the great museums and galleries that the city has to offer. Luckily we experienced much of cultural Mexico during our first amazing couchsurfing experience. Our fabulous hosts, Brenda and Humberto lived next to the Corona factory 30 mins out of the city centre. They preferred to speak Spanish which gave us the opportunity for mucha practica of the language and advanced our speaking abilities by 100%. They were also awesome hosts - they took us to the lucha libre wrestling, a crazy 80's nightclub - Patrick Miller, fabulous tacos and empanadas at local markets, Freda Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition, Castillo de Chapultepec, Museo de Anthropologia, Plaza de Garibaldi and the list goes on.
We stayed in the Centro Historico for a few of the nights. When we arrived in the city at 9.30pm on a Wednesday night, the whole area was eerily quiet and we were doubting our decision to stay there. However, from 7am the district was buzzing with street vendors, business people and tourists milling around. Luckily for us we also got upgraded to a huge room with a balcony overlooking the street.
The city, previously known as Tenochtitlan was originally built on the island of Lake Texcoco by the Aztecs in 1325. It was almost completely destroyed in the 1521 siege of Tenochtitlan, and subsequently redesigned and rebuilt in accordance with the Spanish urban standards and later known as Ciudad de Mexico.
Eating a blue corn tortilla with cheese and mushrooms...yumm
Making some fresh tortillas
Plaza de Garibaldi and the fantastic Mariachis - tequila anyone?
Found the tequila at the tequila museum...delish
The ruins of Teotihuacan, about an hour away from the city by bus, are beautiful. It is thought that they were established around 100 BC lasting until around the 8th centuries AD. At its peak, Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a population of around 125,000, making it among the largest cities in the world in this period. Teotihuacan was even home to multi-floor apartment compounds built to accommodate this large population! It was hot hot hot walking to the ruins, which took a good 45 mins to reach after being dropped off by the bus. Luckily the temples stairs were accessible, so we huffed and puffed to the top to admire the view. You wouldn't want to suffer from vertigo though as coming back down is a little scary and a few people are hospitalised each year after rolling down them.
Mexico City is one of the most important cultural centers in the world, allegedly boasting more museums than any other city. It also comes third after London and New York with the most theatres in the world. We were rushed off our feet trying to see all the great museums and galleries that the city has to offer. Luckily we experienced much of cultural Mexico during our first amazing couchsurfing experience. Our fabulous hosts, Brenda and Humberto lived next to the Corona factory 30 mins out of the city centre. They preferred to speak Spanish which gave us the opportunity for mucha practica of the language and advanced our speaking abilities by 100%. They were also awesome hosts - they took us to the lucha libre wrestling, a crazy 80's nightclub - Patrick Miller, fabulous tacos and empanadas at local markets, Freda Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition, Castillo de Chapultepec, Museo de Anthropologia, Plaza de Garibaldi and the list goes on.
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