weekend news

Well, Mexico City was interesting....traffic was tough getting there but after we finally surfaced near Alameda Park it was fun to show Nate around, being that it was his first time ever in the D.F. It was a beautiful day and the park was hopping. We came with a mission to get Bob Dylan tickets and although the lady in the bookstore who worked the Ticketmaster desk was out to lunch when we came through we drank coffee for a half hour till she came back and we got the tickets. Its gunna be a fun time, our friend Chrystian is driving us into the city and we're taking a full car of Stu, Nate, Hilary, and I. Its like the 27 or something, a wednesday in February.
Oh i made the big mistake of accidentally leaving Stu's Lonely Planet guide book, our travel Bible, in the taxi as I was getting out at the bus station in Pachuca. It would have been real helpful on Saturday. We went to four bookstores in Mexico City looking for another one but they were all sold out everywhere. We had wanted to see Chapultepec Park but it closes at about 5 so we werent going to make it. We wanted to see an incredible huge art exhibition in the main zocalo too but the line was literally a mile long....all day long. So instead we thought wed check out the yuppie area of Condesa and Roma but without a good guide book we spent a couple hous walking around big peopleless boulevards trying to find a good place to eat or even a sign of life. We were definitely in the wrong side of town. It was supposed to be a pretty popular neighborhood. So we gave up and took the metro back into the centro and came up near the Zocalo. We sat down at a touristy restaurant, too tired to talk, and after waiting for 15 minutes for them to take our order, quickly all agreed that good old McDonalds would be perfect instead. We suddenly were filled with new energy as our trained gringo noses found the closest fast food restaurant. A quarter pounder never tasted so good. Exhausted we got back on the metro to go home. But that turned out to be quite a trip (it always is because we have to change trains twice to get to the bus station) because at our first change we realized the entrance was blocked and we overheard that someone threw themselves in front of the train and that entrance would be temporarily closed. Well we didnt know how long that would be so we came up to the road to find a taxi. So did everyone else and their brother. We were three gueros flailing down taxis and we still couldnt get one. So we went down again. This time the metro was cleared out and we got on fine. But 2 minutes into our trip and the train stopped and all the lights went out. Ay, caramba. The city's been plauged with power outages a lot recently. Too bad the train was packed so full we could barely move and it was stinking hot. We sweated it out for over 5 minutes until we felt the engines gear up again and the lights came back on. That was the first time that every happened to us. Finally we made it to the bus station and made it home to sweet old Pachuca. What a day.
Jenny's friend from college, Drew Cooper, aka David Spade, came to visit us from outside Cuernavaca where he volunteers at an orphanage. He is a ton of fun and lives and loves Mexico like we do so we hit it off right away. We took him up to Real de Monte on Sunday for brunch and then later that afternoon hung out with the huge crowd that gathered at the baseball field by our house. Drew claims that if he lived in pachuca hed be there every Sunday. I'd been there once with Stu but the crowd hadnt been that big. They were really into the game. It was a blast.
So anyway, tranquilo weekend, but stilll a good time. I did see the main Cathedral in Mexico City for the first time and the ruins of Templo Mayor that lie behind it. So that was cool.
Have a great week!