Tourist Day

After a busy week of university Spanish, homework, church meetings, hockey practice and other day to day things, we decided this Saturday would be a good day to do something touristy. We did not know what we were going to do so we thought we would take the bus from our house and head downtown and see what fancied our interest. At the Auditorio Metro Station, we saw a double decker bus called the Touribus. We had seen the bus before and knew we wanted to take the tour someday. Well, we checked how much money we had with us and decided today was that "someday". They offer a three hour tour of the central part of the city and we saw all sorts of places that we had not seen yet or did not realize existed. Mexico City is very much a city that has drawn its architecture and city planning from Europe. We constantly heard phrases like Parisian influence, or designed in Italy or Spanish architecture. This city does remind me of Europe. Earlier this week we were in the Polanco district to meet with our lawyer about our visa application and that area reminded me of Madrid. It's hard to believe that this gem of a city is so close to major U.S. and Canadian North American cities and yet is hardly visited by tourists north of the border in comparison to Mexico's resorts. The depth of history here surpasses that found most everywhere else on the continent. The day was a "shorts and t-shirt" kind of day and the cool breeze on the upper deck of the bus was welcome. Now that we know where there are a few more interesting places in this city, we will likely visit them in the near future. These days we are on the lookout for new things for our Gateway teams to do, teams that are visiting Mexico City for a second time. I never get tired of visiting the pyramids of Teotihuacan but we feel that maybe groups that are coming for a second time might want to experience a different aspect of the city on their tourist day. I think we have a few options now.