Tourist Bus

After our breakfast today we decided we'd once more attempt to go on the bus tour of the city. Todays effort proved more successful as we managed to catch one at around 11:30. We decided to go on the southern circuit first, partly because the buses are much less frequent and partly because the lady at the hostel said that the other circuit was walk-able in any case. The first stop was Mexico's world trade centre which is a huge, very modern glass building with a rotating restaurant at the top, this restaurant is set around 5 stories above the rest of the building and gives it a very distinctive shape. Next was the Plaza de Torros, the biggest bullring in the world (we think) seating up to 45,000 spectators, the stadium itself is a rather boring concrete construction but there are many interesting statues which surround the stadium depicting the various heroes who have appeared in bullfights here, most of them seem to be from the opening ceremony because it attracted the most famous fighters from around the world. Continuing on through some smaller streets around this area we eventually emerged next to the Stadio Universitario, where the 1968 Olympics were held, this stadium was beautiful with a sort of mosaic pattern all over it, we did feel sorry for the spectator watching however since the stadium is uncovered meaning you would have to watch whatever event you came to see in the glaring sun. The east side of the stadium is decorated with a rather impressive mural made of different coloured stones representing various myths and symbols from ancient Mexican cultures. After this came a very long, straight and rather boring road along which were located several shopping centres, there were a LOT of shopping centres located along the tour each of which was accompanied by a little spiel of why you should go spend money there. At the end of the road we entered a much more interesting region of the city called Thalpan, this is where many interestingly shaped building are located, of course all of these have some kind of historical significance, but with so many mentioned along the way neither of us can remember any of it... On the way back we drove through the university area which is filled with many libraries, parks and museums on various subjects, A couple of the buildings had really interesting designs, for example one is completely covered in murals and relief, it's quite spectacular. The last area of the city we visited was Coyocan which is a lovely area, as it should be since it's where the city residents used to go for their holidays, apparently it's also famous for it's ice cream and since it's so pretty we decided we should return and explore the area some more. We then arrived back at the start around 3 hours after we left and went to get some lunch of tortillas and cheese, we got back on the bus for the Centro tour. This one started by driving around the Zona Rosa before heading to the Angel De La Independencia, which we had walked to yesterday but you get a much better view of it from the top of the bus, continuing down this street we passed several more statues dedicated to various aspects of Mexican culture. Then we drove into the actual down town area where we passed lots of colonial style buildings, including the government offices, cathedral, old mining institute and so on. We also drove into the third largest city plaza in the world the Zocalo which is quite impressive although I think it will be more so on foot as this is another area we will definitely be returning to for further exploration. After looking at the abundance of stunning architecture in the historical centre we drove back along Reforma avenue passed the Angel again and also several sellotape sculptures on the sides of the road of various animals and famous world monuments until we reached the business area of the city, suddenly we were surrounded by ultra modern buildings although the architecture on display here was no less impressive although much more innovative than down town all glass and odd angles, it's very pretty but since all the buildings are huge and geometric it's not really an area you need to see more than once. The final leg of the tour took us past a theme park within the city, which had an awesome looking wooden roller coaster and a military barracks which apparently also has a casino (weird) along with several more museums mostly of art. We also passed some more of the seemingly hundreds of parks located within the city, it is by far one of the greenest cities we have been to with practically every street lined or divided by trees despite it's immense size!! We finally arrived back at the start at 6 or so, extremely tired and sore from sitting on the bus for almost 8 hours. We dropped our stuff off at the hostel and went out to find a supermarket where we discovered just how cheap food is here, we bought some refried beans, peppers and cheese to have with our left over tortillas for dinner and went back to the hostel to cook it. We then spent the evening trying to get the blog up to date!