mexico city tour

Mexico City Tour

Why not go on a tour of Mexico City. It can be a super place to tour and to have a vacation. You may want a tour on a bus, a car, a taxi a horse or just to walk around the city. You may want to rent,. hire, sell, loan buy a cottage, cabin, a house, an apartment a villa in the city.
The Federal District is located in central - South Mexico. It is bounded by the state of Mexico on the west, north and east, and by the state of Morelos on the south. Mexico City and its metropolitan area, which extends over the state of Mexico, are located in the Valley of Mexico or Anáhuac, a 9,560 km2 valley that lies at an average of 2,240 m above sea level. This valley is a basin surrounded by mountains on all four sides, with only one small opening at the north. At the southern part of the basin, the mountain range reaches an altitude of 3,952 m above sea level; and to the east the volcanoes reach an altitude of more than 5,000 m. The region receives anti cyclonic systems, whose weak winds do not allow for the dispersion, outside the basin, of the air pollutants which are produced by the 50,000 industries and 4 million vehicles operating in the metropolitan area. The federal and local governments have implemented numerous plans to alleviate the problem of air pollution, including the constant monitoring and reporting of environmental conditions, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. If the levels of these two pollutants reach critical levels, contingency actions are implemented which may include closing factories, changing school hours, and extending the A day without a car program to two days of the week. To control air pollution, the government has instituted industrial technology improvements, a strict biannual vehicle emission inspection and the reformulation of gasoline and diesel fuels).

In 1986, the non-urban forest areas of the southern boroughs were declared National Ecological Reserves by president de la Madrid. Other areas of the Federal District became protected in the following years.

Mexico City has a temperate highland climate (Koppen Cwb), due to its tropical location and high elevation. The lower region of the valley receives less rainfall than the upper regions of the south; the lower boroughs of Iztapalapa, Iztacalco, Venustiano Carranza and the west portion of Gustavo A. Madero are usually drier and warmer than the upper southern boroughs of Tlalpan and Milpa Alta, a mountainous region of pine and oak trees known as the range of Ajusco.

Originally much of the valley lay beneath the waters of Lake of Texcoco, a system of interconnected saline and freshwater lakes. The Aztecs built dikes to separate the fresh water used to raise crops in chinampas and to prevent recurrent floods. These dikes were destroyed during the siege of Tenochtitlan, and during colonial times the Spanish regularly drained the lake to prevent floods. Only a small section of the original lake remains, located outside the Federal District, in the State of Mexico, in the municipality of Atenco.

The Historic Center (Centro Histórico) and the floating gardens of Xochimilco in the southern borough have been declared World Heritage Sites by the UNESCO. Famous landmarks in the Historic Center include the Plaza de la Constitución (Zócalo), the main central square with its time clashing Spanish era Metropolitan Cathedral and Palacio Nacional, and ancient Aztec temple ruins Templo Mayor ("Major Temple") are all within a few steps of one another. (The Templo Mayor was discovered in 1978 while workers were digging to place underground electric cables.)

The most recognizable icon of Mexico City is the golden Angel of Independence, found on the wide, elegant avenue Paseo de la Reforma, modeled by the order of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico after the Champs-Élysées in Paris. This avenue was designed in the XIX Century to connect the National Palace (seat of government) with the Castle of Chapultepec, the imperial residence. Today, this avenue is an important financial district in which the Mexican Stock Market is located. Another important avenue is the Avenida de los Insurgentes, which extends 28.8 km and is one of the longest single avenues in the world.

The Chapultepec park houses the Castle of Chapultepec, now a museum on a hill that overlooks the park and its numerous museums, monuments and the national zoo and the National Museum of Anthropology (which houses the Aztec Calendar Stone). Another magnificent piece of architecture is the Fine Arts Palace, a stunning white marble theatre/museum whose weight is such that it has gradually been sinking into the soft ground below. Its construction began during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz and ended, after being interrupted by the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s. The Plaza of the Three Cultures in the Tlatelolco neighbourhood, and the shrine and Basilicas of Our Lady of Guadalupe are also important sites. There is a double decker bus, known as the "Turibus", that circles most of these sites, and has timed audio describing the sites in multiple languages as they are passed.