Mexico City

The camera stands on the roadway at the corner of the square, close in under the National Palace, which takes up the whole of one side of the view - a long low front of pale stone and dark red tezontle with rows of red awnings, its central portal directly ahead and the national flag on the roofline above it. A crowd is gathered at the door. Turn away from it and the square opens out: bare paving, no gardens, no fountains, just an enormous flat expanse with the flagpole in the middle and the flag hanging off it, and on the far side the Metropolitan Cathedral with its twin bell towers and the domed Sagrario alongside. The rest of the perimeter is arcaded blocks. The scale is the point, and it does not photograph - from a single frame the Zocalo looks like a square, and from the middle of it looks like a field.

Mexico City is the bustling capital city of Mexico, and is also the largest city in the nation. There are many reasons to visit and they include the Historic Center (Centro Historico) and the floating gardens of Xochimilco, which together comprise a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Main sights in the Historic Center include the Zocalo (the Plaza de la Constitution), the city’s central square dominated by the Metropolitan Cathedral, the National Palace, and the ruins of the Aztec Templo Mayor. You’ll find one of the city’s most recognizable landmarks, the Angel of Independence column, on the elegant Paseo de la Reforma, built to resemble the Champs-Elysees in Paris. The avenue connects the National Palace with the Chapultepec Castle, the only royal castle in North America. There are more than 150 museums in the city, as well as scores of art galleries and performance halls.

There is superb shopping throughout the city in traditional open-air markets as well as sleek shopping centers, sophisticated shops, and boutiques boasting internationally known designers. Numerous fine dining establishments are available, including a number of wonderfully restored haciendas that are now restaurants.

Teotihuacan (“The City of the Gods”), located about 25 miles northeast of Mexico City, is a sprawling archaeological site home to some of the world's largest ancient pyramids. The three main pyramids are the Temple of the Moon; the Temple of the Sun, which has lovely views; and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, also called the Feathered Serpent Pyramid and decorated with stone dragon heads. There is an excellent museum that has artifacts excavated at the site, including tombs, skeletons adorned in jewelry, and sculptures, and a raised walkway around a scale model of the site.