Mexico City at Christmas
OK, the next big adventure is about to begin. With the usual combination of too much haste and stress because I simply had a couple hundred thousand things left to do the last minute (mostly unimportant things though). So after less than two hours sleep I found myself slightly disorientated and sleepy at Schiphol airport.
My plan of “little sleep the night before, so that I'll be knock-out during the flight” worked swimmingly and I was sound asleep before the plane had left the runway. Unfortunately an hour and a half later I had to change flights in Madrid, and on the next 12-hour stretch I was as wide awake as an XTC addict working in a coffee factory.
This, coupled with bad food and even worse in-flight entertainment made that I didn't arrive in Mexico in the highest of spirits.
Christmas in Mexico
However, as always, as horrible as the flight may be, a good night's sleep later you can't really remember just what was so horrible about it at all.
I took a taxi to the centre, where I had booked a hotel for the first night. Arrival in the centre was, for lack of better words, breathtaking. It was already dark when I arrived and the entire Zócalo, the main square in front of the cathedral, was adorned with thousands or flashing colourful Christmas lights depicting several figures and images. Incredibly well done.
After checking in to my hotel I had a quick bite to eat in a rather tasteless Mexican restaurant and went to bed shortly after that. Mexico City is, apart from very busy, noisy and dirty also very dangerous (or so I've been told) and it is not recommended to go out alone at night. This was evident from the fact that police was present on every street corner, and the entire Zócalo was deserted by 9 PM.
