MEXICO CITY - MEXICO

Upon arriving to the worlds largest metropolis, Mexico City or as it is more commonly referred to in Mexico, `Distrito Federal` (D.F.) I was immediately in awe at the sheer size of the place. Despite already being aware of the fact that the city was home to around 26 million inhabitants, I was amazed that we could fly for almost 40 minutes over a landscape of houses, roads and lights before landing at the international airport. My amazement continued after exiting the subway in the city centre (Zocalo) where I was confronted with a huge plaza, massive cathedral and one of the biggest flags I have ever seen.

Throughout my stay the city continued to astound me and I quickly grew very fond of the excellent metro system which I was able to use for travel from one end of the city to the other for less than US20 cents. Not only was the metro system safe, relaible and cheap (the same for which cannot be said for the metro in London for instance) but also the frequency of trains was quite astonishing !

As with many of the larger cities I have visited, Mexico city certainly through up a range of things to do and I never felt like I was bored at any stage during my visit. I really enjoyed just wandering around parts of the city centre and checking out various places of interest. However probably the highlights of my stay in the city were:

1) The museum of anthropology. This place continued the trend of `huge things` in the city and was the largest museum I have ever seen. With exhibitions of Mexicos anthropological history spanning over 2 floors and around 16 large rooms on each floor, this place kept me occupied for the best part of a day and even then I didn`t feel like I had covered everything there was to see (after all there is only a certain amount of information one can take in at once). The exhibits of Mayan, Aztec, Zapotec and Olmec artifacts and history were really interesting and a good kick start to my visits to important archaeological sites around the country.

2) The archaeological site of Teotihuacan. It should not be surprising that I mention how large this site was also. The sheer size of the 2 pyramids constructed at the site was hard to comprehend and I can only guess at how amaing the `real deal` in Egypt must be. Despite trecherously hot conditions and a truckload of tourists (mostly school children) I really enoyed walking around the site and taking everything in.

3) The Basillica of Guadelupe. Having never seen a proper Basillica before, I was pretty impressed with all the different churches and Cathedrals at this one site. Not only did they showcase a range of modern and traditional architectural styles but also the views of the city from the top of the hill within the site were quite impressive.

In addition to these places I visited a tonne of other sites including the Templo Mayor, which was quite dissapointing although the accompanying museum thankfully made up for this fact and the city museum, which contained interesting exhibits on the history of D.F. During my stay I also managed to go out twice, firstly to a pretty standard Irish pub with some good music and where I met some friendly locals and secondly to another establishment which unfortunately wasn`t so interesting, despite the fact that it was a Saturday night in the worlds largest city (didn`t quite add up but anyway!).

Unfortunately I was also subjected to the famous `Moctezumas revenge` whilst in Mexico and on my 2nd day in the city I was rendered unable to walk and was doubled over in pain after stupidly consuming some of the city`s local water. I later discovered this was most unadvisable, not because the water was bad but because all the pipes used to transport water around the city were in quite a bad state. This of course didn`t seem to make sense to me from an Engineering perspective but I gave up trying to reason with the locals and went and bought some drugs to cure me of my problems instead.

Without doubt, D.F. was one of the most interesting cities I have ever visited and I really enjoyed my time there. I met some great people, took in some wonderful sites and despite the city being almost completely `americanized` I was still treated to some of the mexican culture, tradition and of couse cuisine.

Photos 1-3: View of the city nightscape from one of the tallest buildings (Torre Latinoamericano) Photos 4-7: The Archaeological site of Teotihuacan.
Photos 8-10: Other locations around the city.
Photos 11-17 : Photos from Basillica Guadelupe.