Air Transportation

At Mexico City’s international airport, the following Mexican carriers offer service:  Mexicana, Aeromar, Aeromexico, Aviacsa and Magnicharters (Grupo Aereo Monterrey). In addition, more than 20 international airlines offer flights: Aerolineas Argentinas, Air Canada, Air France, America West Airlines, American Airlines, British Airways, Copa Airlines, Continental Airlines, Cubana de Aviaicion, Delta Airlines, Iberia, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lan Chile, Lufthansa, Northwest, TACA (Aviateca-Lacsa), Tikal Jets, United Airlines, US Airways and Varig, among others.

Climate

The climate is temperate in winter, hot and dry in April and May. The rainy season begins in May and ends around October, consisting generally of sunny mornings followed by cloudy, rainy afternoons. Mornings and nights can be cold, especially in winter, with an average temperature of 15 degrees C (59 degrees F).

Lodging

There are a total of 174 tourist quality hotels in the city of which 121 are classified as four star or higher. The city has 19,482 tourist quality hotel rooms that are classified as four star or higher.

Special Venues for events

Mexico City has numerous historic buildings that make excellent venues for social functions. Most are located in the Historic Center, which was declared a world heritage site by Unesco. It is advisable to use these facilities at night, when there is less pedestrian and vehicular traffic and the buildings can be seen at their best.

The Turibus

This sightseeing bus offers tours of up to three hours along the city’s main avenues and streets, giving you the opportunity to see the Historic Center’s colonial buildings, the tree-lined avenue Reforma, the posh Polanco neighborhood and Avenida de los Insurgentes. During the tour, you’ll also see art deco and art nouveau architecture in the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods, as well as modern buildings in Santa Fe. The Turibus runs daily, except on Dec. 25 and Jan. 1, from 9:00 to 9:00. You can buy tickets on board. Prices vary depending on the tour you want to take.

 

Historic center

Starting from the central plaza known as the Zócalo, visitors can travel through time according to where they walk. Try heading to the city’s second most important plaza, Santo Domingo, where you’ll see the building that was the headquarters of the Inquisition, and continue north to see the ruins of Tlatelolco (a city once allied to Tenochtitlán). Or you could take different streets that lead to the Alameda, and wander from the 14th to the 21st centuries, block by block.

Alameda Central

The original city survey, made by Alonso García Bravo immediately following the Spanish Conquest, did not include this site to the west of—and then rather distant from—the main plaza.

The Alameda has undergone a lot of changes since then: the México-Tacuba causeway is now Avenida Hidalgo and Corpus Christi Street became Avenida Juárez.


Its layout has changed as well, though it still maintains the décor it acquired mainly during the late nineteenth-century presidency of Porfirio Díaz, with polygonal plant beds, circular promenades, sculptures, stone benches and attractive fountains.


Numerous museums, buildings of great historical and architectural value, theatres, cinemas, restaurants and bars, as well as Mexico City’s Chinatown, and other places of interest, are found nearby and along the park’s perimeter.

Metropoplitan cathedral, National palace, Alameda Park, Palace of fine arts, Latin America tower, Plaza de la constitucion, Templo mayor, Museum, Mining palace, San Ildefonso museum, Franz Mayer museum, Plaza Garibaldi.

Chapultepec Polanco

Chapultepec Park is the city’s largest garden and recreational center. The first section (the original park) occupies 230 hectares. The second and third sections cover equal ground, respectively. It’s a partly-natural, partly-planned woodland, where there are museums, lakes, theatres, a zoo, cultural centers, a botanic garden, restaurants, amusement parks, cafés and strolling options for all ages. 


Because of its varied offerings, it receives about 4 million visitors monthly.

Polanco has been an exclusive, luxurious residential zone since its beginnings, and has conserved this characteristic over the years. The residential zone has endured, but the neighborhood has been steadily becoming a space for business and commerce. Many of the city’s most exclusive shops, high-end restaurants, jewelers, boutiques and not least of all, large numbers of art galleries, are found in Polanco.

Three of Mexico City—and indeed the nation’s—most important museums occupy the zone between Chapultepec Park and the Polanco neighborhood: the National Museum of Anthropology, the Museum of Modern Art and the Rufino Tamayo Art Museum. This area is also home to the largest concentration of foreign embassies.

Cahpultepec park zoo, Papalote childrens museum, Anthropology museum, Museum of modern art, Caracol museum, Chapultepec castle, National museum of history, La feria amusement park.

 

Paseo de la Reforma and la Zona Rosa

The tour described here refers to the original path of the Paseo de la Reforma, a 12 km avenue that connects Chapultepec Castle with the Historic City Center. Today the avenue is at least twice as long, connecting at its western extreme to the Mexico City-Toluca highway, at to the north with the avenue that leads to the Basilica of Guadalupe.

During more than 130 years, the original Reforma district has been transformed into the city’s most important thoroughfare, in part because of its status as a tourism and business corridor, and more importantly in that the view afforded by this broad cityscape represents much of what Mexico City and the nation has aspired to be in modern times, as it moved forward from its treasured past.


On Reforma you’ll find traffic circles, the monumental column commemorating Mexico’s independence from Spain, monuments honoring the last Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc and Christopher Columbus, as well as the fountain celebrating Diana, the mythological huntress, and ultimately, the main entrance to Chapultepec Park.


The Zona Rosa lies halfway between the Alameda and Chapultepec Park. It’s an interesting area that offers numerous family tourism and business options by day, and that becomes the place for every kind of grown-up entertainment by night.

Condesa Roma

It’s said the street names in the Colonia Roma neighborhood, one of the last neighborhoods built during the Porfirio Díaz regime (1876-1911) were taken from the cities visited by the Orrin Circus, property of one E. W. Orrin, the developer who laid out this subdivision in which art nouveau, neoclassical and eclectic architectural forms prevail.

By the mid-20th-century, both the Condesa and Roma neighborhoods had somewhat decayed, and they suffered grave damage in the 1985 earthquake. This misfortune, paradoxically, elicited a response on the part of neighbors and investors, and today the city’s most cosmopolitan spirit seems to reside in these two restored areas.


There are numerous restaurants, bars, bookstores, cafés, galleries and cultural centers that offer noteworthy meeting-places for residents and visitors alike.

Xochimilco

Museum of the basilica of Guadalupe, Las Amercias racetrack.

Nahuatl for “the place of the flower beds,” and constructed on top of man-made islands called chinampas, Xochimilco is the only settlement in the Valley of Mexico that resembles the lakeside towns that once constituted this basin in pre-Hispanic times. Its Nauhuatlaca settlers first arrived in the 12th century, one hundred years before the Aztecs, though eventually they became their tributaries in the 15th century. Since that time the Xochimilcas have been dedicated principally to the cultivation of produce as well as medicinal and ornamental plants. Such activity has changed little or not at all over the ensuing centuries.


Xochimilco is also an exceptionally appealing spot for visitors. They enjoy excursions on its network of canals every day—especially on weekends—aboard colorful launches called trajineras, propelled by pole-bearing oarsmen, who work much like a Venetian gondolier. Local merchants in trajineras or smaller launches called chalupas use these craft to provide visitors with every type of merchandise or service (food, artesanías, music, drink, etc.).


There’s plenty to see nearby, from the various embarkation piers, to Xochimilco’s market, church and park with its kiosk, as well as the Dolores Olmedo museum, which houses a collection of both Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s works.

Also on the south side: Bazar del sabado ( flea market), University city, Cuicuilco archaeological site, Anahuacalli, Frida Kahlo and León Trotsky museums.

There are numerous points of interest nearby the main tourist corridors mentioned. Near Tlatelolco to the west is Santa María la Ribera, an old residential neighborhood dating from the Porfirio Díaz era. South of Tlatelolco is the Buenavista neighborhood, where the old train station stands, and which is close to the El Chopo museum and marketplace.

The Hipodromo de las Américas is located west of Polanco and is the ideal spot for horseracing fans.

The Palacio Legislativo (Mexico’s House of Representatives) is located to the east of the Historic City Center and the National Archives aren’t far from there. Further to the east you can visit the sports complex that contains the Palacio de los Deportes and the Magdalena Mixhuca Ciudad Deportiva. Finally there is the Central de Abastos market, which, while not exactly a tourist attraction, certainly offers a radical perspective on the city as it is Latin America’s largest market and indeed one of the biggest in the world.

Main tourist attractiosn in the surrounding area
Many interesting sights are located in the environs of the city and in the neighboring states of mexico and morelos: La Marquesa park, Plaza satellite mall, Cuernavaca, the museum of colonial art in tepoztlan, Pyramids of Teotihuacan, Oaxtepec and Cocoyoc resorts. Desierto de los leones national park, Popocatepetl volcano, Tula, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Toluca and Pachuca.

Archaeological

In Mexico City you can find archaeological ruins of the Mexica culture (more commonly known as the Aztecculture). At these places, and in their museums, you can learn more about the mysteries of the Aztecs’ cosmo-vision and their customs, some of which persist in the capital today.

Templo Mayor – Located in downtown Mexico City at 8 Seminario Street. This is a small archaeological zone where you can see the remains of the Aztecs’ Grand Temple, the most important building of Tenochtitlan (the old Aztec capital now known as Mexico City).  The site has a museum that houses objects found during excavation and restoration. The Aztecs built the temple in honor of their gods Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli. Open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 to 5:00.

Tlatelolco – Located in the center of the city, on Eje Central Lazaro Cardenas, Col. Nonoalco-Tlatelolco. Considered the sister city of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire. The base of a main temple still stands at this site, similar to that of the Templo Mayor. There is also a round temple that was built to the honor the god of wind. The pre-Hispanic constructions form part of a group of architectural structures known as the Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Three Cultures Square), which is where you’ll also find colonial building la Iglesia de Santiago Tlatelolco (the Church of Santiago Tlatelolco) and a housing complex.

Cuicuilco – Located in south Mexico City at 156 Avenida Insurgentes Sur and Anillo Pereferico, Tlalpan District. This is one of the oldest pre-Hispanic urban zones in Mexico. Here you’ll find the preserved ruins of several religious and residential buildings, as well as the remains of a water works system. One of the most interesting ruins is a round terraced pyramid with five levels, considered the first attempt by Mexico’s pre-Hispanic civilization to create a relationship between religion and the cosmos.

Golf

Mexico City has excellent golf courses offering the finest services and spacious facilities. The city’s pleasant climate makes a day on the links all the more enjoyable.
Mexico city´s golf clubs are all private. Playing time can be arranged through a DMC, but it should be done well in advance.

Shopping

Mexico City offers many options if you want to go shopping. From department stores that sell clothes and electronic goods, to first-rate shopping malls, such as Centro Coyoacan, Perisur and Centro Santa Fe, where you’ll find boutiques and jewelry stores selling the most prestigious brands. All along Avenida Presidente Masaryk, in Polanco, you’ll spot many exclusive boutiques and stores selling top-notch designer goods. In the Zona Rosa, the Roma and the Condesa, you’ll come across the best art galleries selling works of renowned artists. To buy crafts, you can hit La Ciudadela market and the Centro Artesanal Buenavista, where you can purchase items made in different regions throughout the nation. Finally, at the Lagunilla market or at bazaars in Coyoacan, San Angel, the Roma and the Condesa, you’ll find antiques, books, jewelry, coins, old records and photos, among many other objects.

Night life and shows

Concerts, festivals, theatre, the movies, coffee houses, bars, nightclubs, pubs and discos (called antros in Spanish) are just some of the many options Mexico City brings you when night falls.


Things usually begin with dinner around 7 or 8, and then afterwards there’s a show or a movie and ultimately a visit to a bar or dance club. Among antros there’s something for every taste and budget.


Most antros are clustered in the Zona Rosa, San Ángel and Polanco neighborhoods. There are also a lot of bars that fill up well before midnight, with people on their way to nightclubs, in the Roma and Condesa neighborhoods.


Most bars are open from mid-afternoon until midnight, seven days a week. Lots of nightclubs (principally in the Zona Rosa) open starting on Wednesday, but Friday and Saturday are the most happening nights.

Among the most appropriate for incentive groups are: Restaurante bellini in the world trade center, a revolving restaurant on the 40th floor. Restaurante del lago de Chapultepec park.

Mexico city ranks fourth worldwide in its number of forums and theaters and is known as the entertainment capital, or Broadway of latin America. There is always a good time to stop by the palace of ine arts and the national auditorium.

Spas

The city’s spas have full treatment systems, highly professional staff and state-of-the-art therapeutic equipment that gives better and faster results. These facilities offer a wide range of services, including massages, facials, dermo-cosmetic clinics and makeup and beauty treatments. In short, you’ll find everything you need with the comfort of knowing that you’ll receive specialized attention. Visit some of these places to revitalize your energy while you get a relaxing massage with body oils.

Restaurants

Mexico City offers a wide variety of restaurants where you can enjoy delicious national cuisine, such as sopas, guisados, tacos and antojitos (which are a fusion of indigenous and Spanish culinary traditions). The city is also well known for its gourmet and international fare.

 There’s everything here, from the most exclusive restaurants to simple, traditional fondas.

When looking for traditional Mexican and Spanish food, your best option is the downtown Historic Center, where the colonial atmosphere provides the perfect backdrop for enjoying breakfast or dinner.


The Colonia Condesa neighborhood is home to numerous world-cuisine restaurants (particularly Argentine, Colombian and Italian) as well as to modern “fusion” establishments.

And if you’re looking for something a lot more traditional, the markets in Xochimilco and Coyoacán offer Mexican favorites that can’t be beat.

As always I will be really happy to serve you in Mexico City, please contact me at ralva@maritur.com

Roberto Alva
Grupo Maritur DMC
Mexico City Manager