Mexico City

Now it's 5 a.m. local or 3 a.m at home. We've had no sleep, and very little food. We decide we need a good breakfast to keep us going for the day. What do we find??? McDonalds. Had a fine egg McMuffin and a coffee and that did seem to get us in gear again. Now we have to find terminal 2 for the last leg of this journey/marathon.

A fine looking, middle aged man approaches us in the airport (as we wander with looks of what? where? on our faces) and he asks if he can help. It turns out he runs a tourism booth at the airport. He has perfect English and was raised in the City so we took a 2 hour tour with Alex. It was a perfect day, smog was not so overwhelming that we couldn't see the surround hills. Most people are on vacation and businees are not open until 10 a.m. so the traffic was light and the people were scarce. He drove us through the very old areas where the Spanish had built the first of their grand building. We saw the biggest and oldest cathedral in the Americas. Across the zocolo were the parliament buildings and city hall. Very impressive.
During this holiday time the mayor has dedicated the zocolo for a kids skating rink and snowmobile experience place. Great fun for them.

Mexico city is a mile and a half high, therefore quite chilly. We still haven't been able to get warm and I can't entertain the thought of changing into anything lighter, or even taking off my jacket and scarf.

The basic look of Mexico City is grimey but as we travelled he took us to a newer area where all the grand financial institutions are. Much more impressive. We drove past a grand park, it has museums, art gallerys, etc within the area. The park is 2000 acres so it is massive. Many charming colonial homes have now been converted to businesses and botiques (like a lot of places worldwide!)

Jim and I agreed the sights are great but we don't have to do it again!

Back at the airport Alex dropped us off at terminal 2 so we could prepare for our final leg of today's travel.