Day 1 - Early Start
Be prepared because my writing is going to make the jabbberwocky sound perfectly logical...
I woke up early, sometime near 4 a.m. so I could get a shower and start (almost literally) throwing everything inside my bag. I definately know that waking up that early with only a couple of hours of sleep is nowhere near healthy, but meh. At 5 a.m. sharp (or so he claims) Carlos arrived so we could make sure we had everything we needed and leave for the airport right away. I think it took us about 30 minutes to get to the airport and that is nothing really. Then again, it was still dark outside so why would anyone else bother with driving at that hour! I really don't know how do we dare to call it the "Ciudad juarez international airport" because it is nowhere near international.
When we finally got on the plane I started reading this little magazine that was on my seat but I eventually realized that this two-hour flight was my only chance to sleep for a while. I feel asleep for like an hour and woke just in time hear the pilot say something about low visibility and that we will make a first attempt to land at the Toluca airport and if we didn't succeed we would continue flying and retry landing in twenty more minutes. Fortunately the pilot did manage to land on the first attempt even if it was kind of a rough landing. When we arrived to the small Toluca (didn't realise how small it was untill a week later) international airport we quickly found the exit and got on a bus to Mexico City's WTC.
After waiting for a while for Cuauhtemoc to finish having his breakfast, he finally arrived where we were and gave us a ride to our hotel (the hotel that he had reccomended us). After he left we just unpacked everything in our hotel room, had a smoke and left to find somewhere to eat. It is weird how sometimes posibilities seem to dissappear when you're desparate and we just ended up eating some tacos right there on the street. However, we did wander a lot around the hotel and we thought there was nothing else to eat. After eating we wandered for some more time as I wanted to see what was near the hotel but we actually walked in the direction where nothing interesting was. After we got a decent map and kind of lacated where we were we left the hotel again and went to the one monument whose exact location we knew - the monument to the revolution - and it was just in front of our hotel.
We continued to walking without a sense of direction and when we thought we wereb lost we found a cementary and my reaction was immediate "Look! There's something and is free!" And so, that's how we found the San Fernando Cementary-Museum, it has the graves of all this famous Mexicans that had a huge part during the revolution along with some other historic characters. After I finally admitted I was lost, we started looking around and I saw the Latinamerican Tower at the distance so I finally knew where the historic centre was, but I decided for going back to the hotel so we could look for other landmarks instead because the historic centre would take us much more time than what we had left of the day.
When we finally got walking in the right direction (that is all through reforma) we got to see a palm tree which is called "La Palma" and when we continued walking we finally found the Angel of Independence.
After we finished our "little" walk we went back to the hotel to rest a little while I called Cuau so we could go and drink a few beers. We met on the Alvaro Obregon Street and Cuau told us it was part of the Colonia Roma (Roma Neighborhood) which he could only define as the intelectual part of the city (in fact he used the word 9 times). After we had a few beers we returned to our hotel when the clock was near 2.30 a.m. and went almost diretly to sleep.
We were looking for a place to chat and catch up with my friend Cuau and it was all good, until the live band started playing hehe
I am not saying the band was bad, it was quite good actually, except for the vocalist, but we weren't able to talk with each other because of the volume of the music.
I decided to rate this as average as opposed to cheap, because of the $30 pesos cover price. Then again it might not be much to those used to spending in dollars and euros.
It is free to go in and inside you can see plenty of graves and tombs from well known characters from Mexican history, from the revolution and presidents too. The two most interesting are the ones of Benito Juarez and Vicente Guerrero.
This cementary also has a small room where they show the characters and a little history of the revolution and the first constitution. Right next to the cementary is a church but I found no way to get inside.
I would like to give you more info about how to find it, but I kind of stunbled into it. If you want to find it, just walk towards the historic centre and ask for San Fernando. i'm not sure if they'll know hot to get here, because it is kind of obscure.
The MetroBus runs from north to south and south to north all the Insurgentes avenue, which is one of the largest in the city. It works like the metro because it has several stations where you can get on or get off it. It is a bus because it evidently goes on the street and has to stop at traffic light, but it has a complete lane separated for its use so it doesn't take much time from one station to another.
Now the important thing, you use the MetroBus through a pass card that you can buy off the machines at each of the stops and it costs you only $20 pesos. Each ride costs you about $5 pesos I think.
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The Monument to the Revolution is located just a few meters away from this hotel so it is very easy to locate. With reforma very near you'll have all sorts of banks nearby, and there is also a lot of places to eat nearby.
The hotel has what I think are very comfortable beds and huge windows so you can smoke hehe just don't forget to close it when going to sleep or the mosquitos will attack you (I speak from experience). The hotel may also book you any tour you want in just a days notice.
Note: You can't bring alcohol inside the hotel, just in case you were wondering.
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