Mexico '06 Day 1

Since I was a little kid, I've always wanted to go to Mexico City. Kell was traveling last summer so since she was flying from the DR, I ended up flying by myself down to Mexico City. The flight was fairly unenventful. It was a 4 or 5 hour direct flight down to Mexico City. As we were preparing for the final descent, I could see the city limits. Huge. I don't think there's anywhere in Mexico City where you can see the whole city at one place.

I made it through customs, and asked about taking a taxi versus the metro. I was told to just take the metro. I wasn't sure how it would be, as every guidebook and the State page on mexico advises people not to take the metro, or at least be careful about it. And that women traveling alone shouldn't do it. Well, since it was the middle of the day, I thought I could handle it. Needless to say, I went to the front train which is for women and children only and had no problem.

However, at that point I realized I had thrown away the directions to the hostel at Baltimore. I remembered which metro stop I was staying at and just went there. I found an internet cafe, looked up the direction-asked someone where it was and made it to the casa de amigos--the Quaker hostel we were staying at. I dropped off my stuff in our room and headed out to get lunch. I went for a lunch that was less than $2.5o american and was a 3 course meal. The highlights of the meal were the fresh corn tortillas (made to order) and the green sauce. I fell in love with the green sauce. Of course I had to have a licuado. I think I just had a banana one.

I still had several hours to burn until Kelli arrived at the hostel. Our hostel was a few blocks from the museo de revolucion (Museum to the 1910 Mexican Revolution). I ended up on a free tour and got a history of Mexico that was a little different than what I was ever taught. Very, very interesting. Afterwards, I walked around where we were staying, bought some snacks and bottled water and then headed back to the hostel.

Kell arrived back to the hostel and we had a happy reunion. We then went back out and walked around. We metro'd down to the Zocalo and took a look at where the temple of the sun was. The main street of Mexico City down to the Zocalo was emptied of cars and full of protestors. Needless to say, the protests actually had a family feel to them (there were carnival rides for little kids etc) and we decided to just walk back to our hostel since we really weren't that far.

We were both kind of hungry so we ended up getting tacos. The guy charged us about a dollar for the tacos...needless to say, we didn't go back to that vendor. Gringo priced tacos? Lame. We
walked back to the hostel and crashed.

MexicoDayOne