Mexico City, Taxco & Acapulco

Promenade beneath rows of leafy palm trees as you watch ten lanes of traffic zip (or, more often, creep) by on Mexico’s answer to the Champs-Elysées. Emperor Maximilian built the Paseo de la Reforma, or “Reform Avenue,” to connect his house with the Palacio Nacional, and today it remains one of Mexico City’s most elegant and busy thoroughfares. Check out the golden angel on top of the 150-foot Independence Monument, one of the city’s most beloved structures and a favorite spot for wedding photos.

Step inside this beautiful church, built in the last century by Franciscan monks.

Crowds, cars, and cantinas. Twenty million residents clamoring all day long in the marketplaces and dancing all night long in the clubs. Few cities have the pure, tangible energy of Mexico City. Explore the past and present of this mammoth metropolis, built right on top of the capital of the Aztec empire. A licensed local guide will take you to the immense Plaza de la Constitución, the second largest square in the world after Moscow’s Red Square, whose unofficial name “el Zócalo” means “plinth” because of the never-completed statue in the center. Lining the square are the Cathedral and Palacio Nacional. The Cathedral was built between 1573 and 1813, and its architectural styles change, getting more and more ornate, as you go up. The Palacio Nacional still holds the president’s offices and a spectacular set of Diego Rivera murals — the artist depicted almost the full span of Mexican history, from the Toltecs and Aztecs to the Mexican Revolution, in amazing detail and striking, vivid colors. Nearby, the excavated Templo Mayor shows several layers of the chief Aztec temple. The Aztecs rebuilt their temples every 52 years, and there are at least seven separate structures (most of them now well below water level and not yet excavated) on this site.

Explore one of the top anthropology museums in the world. Arranged in over 100,000 square feet of display space are such artifacts as massive Olmec stone heads, the tomb and skeletal remains of an 8th-century Mayan ruler, a carved jaguar with a hollow back for the hearts of human sacrifices, and the famous Aztec Calendar Stone. At the museum entrance, the rain god Tlaloc stands guard over all these treasures. City residents claim that when this statue was moved here from its original home, severe rainstorms raged and ended a citywide drought.

Who needs hotdog stands when you’ve got canoes? On weekends this network of canals showcases not only a floating garden but also a floating market, with vendors in passing boats selling everything from tacos to flowers to mariachi music. On any day of the week you’ll see the ingenuity of the Aztecs, who sank woven reed rafts into the lake and anchored them to the bottom with live plants, creating a series of floating islands suitable for growing produce. Tour the innovative gardens on your own flower-bedecked boat.

See the rough woven cloak that miraculously generated a full-color image of the Virgin Mary. On December 9, 1531, resident Juan Diego, hurrying to find a priest for his dying uncle, saw a vision of the Virgin. She commanded him to build a basilica here and proved her divinity by curing his uncle and miraculously setting her own image into Juan Diego’s cloak. Since then she’s been busy performing miracles, ending plagues, and presiding as patron saint of the Americas. The basilica is now one of the most visited in Latin America.

The Aztecs named it “The Place Where Men Became Gods.” Get some divine inspiration yourself as your licensed local guide shows you this remarkable ancient town, so impressive that when the Aztecs found it in ruins, they assumed a race of giants had built it. At its height in the 7th century, the city had as many as 250,000 residents. The oldest structure, the Pyramid of the Sun, has a base as large as the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The long Avenue of the Dead leads to the smaller but more graceful Pyramid of the Moon. Clamber to the top for spectacular views.

Bargain for silver jewelry, leather coats, traditional wooden carvings, hand-woven fabrics, paintings, hammocks, and other unique souvenirs from all over Mexico at this vast arts and craft market, set up in the city’s former fortress.

Bristling with Baroque flourishes, Taxco’s ornate Santa Prisca church emerges like a coral reef from among the surrounding sea of trees. The city’s wealth came from its silver and gold mines, and architects did their best to reflect this rich heritage in designing the church — inside, the walls and arches are dripping with 24-carat gold. Explore the church, then dive into the town itself. Taxco is one of the most beautiful in Mexico, arranged among seven hills, and its cobblestone streets, numerous fountains, and covered walkways preserve the sense of its colonial past.

When Cortez and the conquistadors discovered silver in Taxco and established the first silver mine in the country, the Spaniards were convinced they had finally found the hidden wealth of the New World. Conduct your own expedition into the city’s silver market, still thriving five centuries later.

Madonna. John Wayne. Elvis. You. Join the ranks of the rich and famous who have basked in the Acapulco sun. A ride through the spectacular Sierra Madre mountain range will bring you face to face with the most famous beaches in the world. Watch professional divers jump from the 136-foot La Quebrada cliff into the surf, hunt for souvenirs in the city’s flea markets, or just don your sunglasses, settle into a hammock, and while away the afternoon.

Take a free day to enjoy yourself at the beach.

Take a free day to enjoy yourself at the beach.