This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
I sleep late, and it's after lunchtime before I grab a ham torta and head down into the Metro to explore the city. It's a remarkable system, fast and efficient and clearly laid out in colour-coded lines, each station having a neat little icon representing the area it serves or its name - stations named after famous (mostly revolutionary) individuals having a thumbnail portrait of the person. I'm mostly using Google Earth for navigation now, and find a plugin which overlays the Metro network on the Mexico City area.
The Metro, like everything else here, is a hive of commerce. It's full of tiny narrow shops selling souvenirs, herbal medications (advertised by handwritten flourescent green posters with oddly out-of-place newspaper cutouts of athletes and bikini models, presumably illustrating the power of the herbs to bring beauty, potency and physical ability), toys and magazines.
There are miniature Domino's stalls at every station selling microwaved personal pizzas for 15 pesos. Every train is worked by two or three pedlars selling magazines, packets of sweets and children's goody-bags, some with powerful (occasionally deafening) portable backpack speakers through which they play samples of their wares, questionably copyrighted compilation CDs of pop ballads in photocopied sleeves.
There's clearly a great deal of political activism and speech in this city - everywhere are people with placards and masks, banners at the big intersections of the city, and the papers seem to be full of political protest on various sides. A man on the Metro hands out photocopied manifestoes and gives a rousing speech to the whole carriage, seeming to be decrying the actions of the current President.
I explore the Zocalo, the historic town square, where some kind of fair is going on - the square is full of marquees, most selling books on art, history and literature, some hosting lectures on a strange variety of topics - breast cancer and revolutionary history in the two I pass by.
At one side of the square I wander through the cathedral, a remarkable gothic building with extravagant gold leaf decoration, beautiful statuary and twenty-foot panelled doors of dark wood on three sides. While its weight of Catholic history means little to me, it has a powerful sense of peace and spiritual calm, enhanced by the beautiful, clear female voice singing prayers in Latin which echoes up into the arched stone ceiling.
Back into the Metro and just two stops on I emerge at the Hidalgo station to walk along the Paseo de La Reforma, location of many of the city's most dramatic modern buildings and beautiful monuments. Under the enormous brick arch of the Monumento a La Revolution some kind of gathering is taking place, a man with a megaphone calling out names from a clipboard to a sizeable crowd of well-dressed city people, but I'm unable to determine what its purpose is.
I roam the streets of the area for some time until I hit another Metro station, and work my way west to the gardens at Chapultepec, but find that they've already closed for the night. Tired but satisfied that I've used my day well, I head back to the hotel.
On the way I'm caught up in the latter part of Mexico City rush hour, which makes London look tame. Once each carriage is apparently as full as it can be, three or four more people will wedge in through the doors, bracing themselves against the frame to push back and compress us all into an even more efficient space. But there's no anger, no raised voices, bitching or elbowing as you'd find on the Tube - everyone gets along despite the incredibly cramped conditions.
I stop at another stall on the corner for a pile of fried pork and tortillas fresh out of the pan, and settle in for my second and last night in the hotel.
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