25/10/04- 03/11/04 Cuidad de México

There is a lot to do and see in this massive capital city of 20 million inhabitants.
Great hotel- big armed raid on Spanish restaurant opposite the first night (honestly, it's really nice round here)- don't worry- we stayed aways from the windows except when Fiona needed to snipe. Cop killer.

Aside from sort out our tickets with the not so understanding Lufthansa we went:

To the zoo- and this is a jaguar, so Fiona assures me:



To the Belles Artes building- it was going to be the National Theatre (and I think it may still be but we weren't allowed in there) but there was some sort of uprising around the time it was being built and its purpose was changed. Now it is a great big art deco thing with 7 pictures in it and a Basquiat exhibition which is rubbish because Basquiat was rubbish:



Here is the Zócalo- the main square with the cathedral in the background- and a very big flag in the centre, but more importantly this was the site for the successful world record attempt for the longest instumental in the history of useless records. We know becuase we witnessed the last 10 minutes of it.



24 hours it was and it seems they didn't get a chance to retune their guitars

The day of the dead festival is on here on 1st and 2nd of November when Mexicans honour their dead families etc. They make some smashing statues of happy clothed skeletons or skeletons doing things people with flesh still do- one exhibition had the Mexican Olympic team in Athens represented- if they had won anything they put a medal around them- aaahh.

I thought it in a little bad taste as I presumed that most of the athletes were still alive. They also make up little alters and leave miniature offerings of bread, tequila and other things that the dead might find useless.




The following day we had a wander around town and took in the many museums with Diego Rivera and Frida Kalho's work exhibited, the markets and the museum of torture. No pictures though as we feared that they could give you nightmares, especially the Rivera murals.

For a bit of a change and a rest we decided to head out of town the following day towards the floating gardens of Xochimilco. Very pleasant they were too, though we resisted the urge to have a whole troupe of Mariachi singers attach themselves to our boat and sarenade Roger.




Then it was a short walk through the town to another museum filled with hairless dogs and the like.



Went to some more ruins- Pirámides of Teotihuacan. The largest pyramid, the pyramid of the sun, is about the same size as the great pyramid of Cheops- the one in Egypt doesn't have thousands of people crawling all over it though.



And when people get to the top they fight around the pinnacle to put their fingers on something I couldn't see- some kind of shiny stone. Strange behaviour.



Roger at the top


Me on my way back down and still smiling- Fearless I tell ya!