Day 6 - Mexico City
We slept in a little bit and then got ready to see some more of Mexico City. It was another hot day and we got a taxi to the downtown area. It’s another very different part of the city from the airport and from Polenco and there are some really lovely old buildings, including the post office we walked through which was very ornate (and very gold!).
We walked through the Bella de Arts building to look at the massive murals, including some interesting works by Diego Rivera. We then moved on to the cathedral, another beautiful building with many grottos devoted to saints and other figures. Apparently, the cathedral is slowly sinking though, as the area is built on top of the Aztec ruins of Tenochtitlan. To see what was causing the problem, we went around the corner to see the Templo Mayor, an Aztec temple that was only fairly recently uncovered underneath the middle of Mexico City. It was great to be able to walk through the temple and see how it was still being excavated, then to go through the great museum adjoining it that showed a lot of the things that they found in the temple. Needless to say, there was plenty of gory stories about sacrifices, flayings and heart-cutting-outs to go along with the temple and altars!
Lunch called after the temple and we headed across the the Zocalo (stopping for a $1.50 shoe shine) to the Holiday Inn, which has a rooftop restaurant looking back over the square, cathedral and temple. We had a good lunch enjoying the view and headed back to Casa Fernandez by taxi.
After dinner, Vanessa mentioned how good the hot chocolate was in Mexico and we thought it would be a good idea to go and pick up some for Craig. Manuel offered to go and get some so I tagged along on the back of the motorbike. Luckily we made it back without having to use our travel insurance :)
It was then time to get our stuff together for a very early start and our flight to NYC!
