A Few Days in Mexico City

The best thing that we did was take a day trip to Teotihuacán and the Basilica. Teotihuacán is the Aztec ruins outside of Mexico City. It is an amazing place in many ways, and climbing the pyramids are quite a treat.

Xochimilco was kinda fun. It is about a half hour away from the city, and you go on a large gondola style boat and go along a river. As you are on the boat, sellers of flowers, corn-on-the-cob with mayo and cheese toppings, drinks/beer and sometimes mariachi bands will play a song for 50 pesos.

Taxco - a small town about a 2 hour ride from Mexico City which has the cheapest silver in all of Mexico. They say that silver sellers in Mexico come to Taxco to buy their silver and sell it elsewhere in Mexico. There were some nice deals here, but even better was the city and the views of the city. Just beautiful. If you go, find a nice spot to eat lunch - high up on the hills.

Quick Tips:

If you go to Teotihuacán and Taxco - bring some sneakers. Taxco has some major steep hills so sneakers are the best for the town. Bring sunscreen to Tautichan - my shoulders got a bit scorched.

They say if you are going to get money out of an ATM - don't do it on the street. Find one in your hotel or in a shopping mall.

We were slightly careful with the food - usually I didn't feel fantastic after eating outside of the hotel - but that is Mexico. You gotta love it. I just tried to make sure everything was cooked all the way through - so it was okay. If you order soda, it always comes with ice - so if you are worried about the water, ask for no ice. You can purchase bottled water almost anywhere so there was no issue with water.

No one wears shorts in the city - most people wear long pants or skirts. Everyone told me that Mexicans consider this beachwear, so try to stay away from this.

Best Way To Get Around:

We walked to many places, but if you have trouble with smog, Mexico City has much of it. Since it is at a high altitude, and with the smog, sometimes it is tough to walk around a lot.

We took taxis when needed. Make sure to go into a registered taxi if you use them. We choose to take a taxi from in front of our hotel or other hotels so we didn't take the wrong ones.

We used tours when we could - made that easier.

Driving - there is a ton of traffic during the weekdays. If you can avoid it, I would.

I hear the subway is good - we never took it, but I hear it is extremely crowded on weekdays. Weekend for driving or subway seem a good choice.

This is a hotel owned by a Japanese company - so the rooms are a bit in a Japanese style. Not a big fan of the coloring or the way the room is decorated, but the staff was really nice and helpful. They have a few restaurants, 2 sushi bars as well. The food was pretty good.

This is more a pub but you can definitely eat here. This pub is right across the street from the Nikko Hotel - and we frequented this bar often. Try eating the Empanadas - which were awesome! You can choose the fillings - I ate chicken and cheese - which were just fabulous.

You can sit outside and enjoy a few beers here - I learned from my Mexican friends to have a beer that had lemon juice put in the glass when served. I wish I remembered the name - but you can order Corona or whatever beer you want, and they put lemon juice in the bottom of the glass. Makes the beer a bit more sweet - but it is pretty yummy. They can also add some spice to the drink if you like that as well. So it would be lemon juice with spice.

Nice Italian place - has pizzas and pasta which were pretty yummy. The atmosphere was nice - could be pretty romantic for dinner. White tableclothes and a nice little bar in the middle.

Well, if you know Hard Rock Cafes, this is another one. Although some of the items we ordered didn't really look like what was written on the menu - but the food was still good.

Xochichan was kinda fun. It is about a half hour away from the city, and you go on a large gondola style boat and go along a river and through the floating gardens. As you are on the boat, sellers of flowers, corn-on-the-cob with mayo and cheese toppings, drinks/beer and sometimes mariachi bands will play a song for 50 pesos. It is a nice family getaway for Mexicans - they bring along the whole family and rent a boat on have a family picnic. It was fun.

Taxco is a really cute town about 2 hours away from Mexico. Here you can buy very cheap silver. They told us that many sellers of silver came to Taxco to buy their silver and then resell it elsewhere in Mexico. They say they sell it cheaper because they actually design and make the jewelry in Taxco - so you are buying directly from the maker.

We had lunch high on the hill in the town - which overlooked the beautiful church in the middle of the city, and then all the other buildings in the town. It was really nice.

Bring sneakers to the city if you are going to go. I didn't realize that it was so steep and I brought sandels that didn't have much traction and struggled to go up and down the hills.

Teotihuacán was really great. I would definitely recommend coming here if you go to Mexico City. There are two Pyramids that are there in the city of Teotihuacán - the Moon and the Sun pyramids. You can climb them. If you climb the Moon - it is a shorter climb up and behind it - you can see a volcano. They say if you climb the sun pyramid, you are recharged with energy.

There is a lot of history here - which is extremely interesting. We talked to one guy who said he had a global positioning system and he took it up onto the Sun pyramid and it could not locate him on top of the pyramid - which he said shouldn't happen. Pretty neat!

Well, at the moment, the Mayan section is closed - so that was a bit disappointing. But very interesting in general, with many artifacts from pre-Hispanic people. This is a must, if you come to Mexico City.