It was 2.30 pm when I headed towards Salto Del Agua the closest metro station just a block away from the hotel.

I had picked up a mini-coloured metro map from the small tourist information booth by the cathedral. She confirmed to take the pink line to Chapltepec station. She also gave me some reassuring information about what I wanted to do tomorrow so that was really useful.

I had read that using the metro in Mexico City was simple and yes it was. For entry into the system it was only 3 pesos or NZ 28 cents / US 23 cents and you can travel either one station or ride the whole system all day if you wanted too.

The metro system is all colour coded and like many metro systems around the world all you had to do was know which was the end station of the line and followed the clear coloured coded signs. with a city population of way over 10 million people, their orange coloured trains came regularly and were packed. In fact there were only a couple of minutes between trains. It felt like it was a continuous service. Pockets all zipped up for pickpockets. They were fast as well. A bit different than San Francisco wonderful BART system with so many people here.

Remembering my time in Rio de Janeiro when I exited a metro station and walked in the wrong direction thinking that I was heading towards Sugarloaf, I asked a young local also looking at the local map on the station wall for directions. He said "left, left, right towards the monument".
 
I knew that once I had exited the station I had to head north. Remembered that the phone had some apps so I decided to use the compass and map. I found the monument and to my surprise it was an extremely tall modern finger pointing skywards. I had expected a monument of an old Mexican leader or war hero. My gut feeling was to follow the busy road and map but in front of me were streams of people heading into the park so I followed them to see where they were going to.

It was not a waste of time as this was my second attraction in this area if I had time but I had to make my way to the Museo National de Antropologia as this was my primary focus in coming out to this part of the city.

Paid the 57 pesos / NZ $5.36 / US 4.40 and wandered in. By now I was starting to feel tired and my brain certainly did not want to stop to read the various English descriptions on the many exhibits.

I was glad that I've made the effort to come out here as many of the sites we would visit later on in the tour. in some ways it would've been good if this was the end point so that I could relate the artifacts to the actual sites. At the moment it is just a blur.

With sunset at 5.56 pm I decided to head back. Anyway I was really tired and no surprise to have been on the go for 2 days now.

So knowing where the metro station was, I headed straight back along the side of the busy road towards the monument and descended underground. In next to no time and by transferring from the pink to the blue line at Pino Surrez station exited back at the Zocalo.

When I was at the cathedral earlier, you could only go halfway in as a service was on. So I decided to see if I could go up towards the altar. I could and took more photos and these are included in the separate entry for the cathedral. I also saw the number one attraction inside the cathedral being the pendulum hanging from the center dome. It was a good several metres out of plumb. The cathedral is slowly sinking.

I knew that the Cathedral and Zocalo Square had some lights around it so decided to stay a bit longer to see what it would look like when it was dusk but the body was saying "no" and it was time to retire. Would love to be back here once the Christmas tree is finally been built and decorate

Finally back to the hotel at 7 pm and was asleep at 8 pm but was wide awake at 1 am so decided for the next couple of hours to both upload my day's images plus also experiment and understand how to use Siri in Notes to blog the day just gone. Just wish Siri would understand my accent a bit better!