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July 7, 2007 :: A Quick Tour Through La Ciudad de México

A beautiful day in our neighborhood...
Today my co-auditor, Henrik, and I met up with some other auditors in the region to take a look at the surroundings in "La Ciudad de México" (Mexico City). Our local expert, Ideli, picked us up from our home in Stadía Suites around noon and whisked us off, east, to the city.

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride...
First, let me tell you a little about driving in Mexico...it's nuts!!! Concepts such as speed limites, stop lights, the right of way, and general defensive driving are lost on the citizens of this fine country. :) Luckily Ideli is a native and knows all of the ins and outs of driving around here. I do admit, though, that I had to close my eyes from time to time. Haha!

A simpler life...
We took a quick swing by the Sheraton in downtown to pick up another auditor, Charles (yes there are many of us...over 400 to be exact ;), then we headed north to check out one of the smaller, more cultural areas of the city. We arrived and took a quick stroll over to an outdoor bizzare near the church in the picture above. The inside of the church, by the way, was amazing...but unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures.

At the bizzarre you could find just about everything on sale. All kinds of arts, crafts, clothes, and toys were available for a couple Pesos here or there. There was a beautiful fountain in the middle, as well, which featured two dogs looking whistfully at each other and the water from the fountain jettisoning up towards them.

The weather at this time was warm, which was practically the first time since I arrived in mid June! Walking through the shady market place we emerged back into the square outside of the church to sunny, ~75° warmth. Ideli, being familiar with the area, took us over to a little local restaurant where I had a chicken breast smothered in mole verde (green mole sauce). It was a smidge spicey, but not too much for my dollishly sensitive palette :)

After lunch we headed back towards Ideli's speed demon to continue on. First, however, we passed through an enormous open-air market place which featured a plethora of different kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables, some of which I hadn't ever even seen before, as well as fresh meats. Ideli got us a great deal on some homemade guacamole (which I'm seriously looking forward to trying) before we finally moved on.

Next stop: San Angel...
Not too far from our first destination was San Angel, another cultural and fairly wealthy area of town. San Angel also had an outside bizzarre as large as the one we saw earlier. However, San Angel had large indoor shops, one of which looked like a mall of sorts filled with different rooms for craft vendors. My mom would have been in flea shopping heaven!

Nearby was a beautiful, small-ish park where Ideli said many people have been married in the past. It looked like some other folks were having a reception of sorts there because along with the regular Joe's such as our group, there were a group of folks dressed up as well. It was a great day...right up until it started to rain. :)

In with the rain, out with the site seers...
Late afternoon came and so did the rain. We piled back into Ideli's ride and headed back to the Sheraton. Henrik and I got out with Charles at that point and took a $300 MXN cab back to Santa Fe and the Stadía Suites. Before you get too surprised, $300 MXN is less than $30 USD, but it was still the most expensive ride I've had around town yet. Usually we only pay less than $3 USD for a cab ride...albeit those rides are a lot shorter :)

Next weekend hopefully we'll check out the Aztec pyramids and/or Zocalo. Stay tuned for more great pics and stories. To see the rest of the pictures from this adventure, click here: http://pictures.brooksny.net/

Cheers!

M@
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