Ten years ago, while travelling around California, I hopped on the trolley from San Diego to Tijuana and spent half a day in the border town. Since then, I have been wanting to return to see much more of Mexico. It is impossible to 'do' Mexico in a two-week holiday and it was really difficult to narrow down my itinerary when so many places sounded fascinating but I still managed to see a lot of the country.

When I was researching my trip to Mexico, I was pleased to find that Mexico City had plenty of the third-wave specialty coffee coffee bars I love so much. Mexico is a favourite coffee-bean region of mine — much of it is grown in Oaxaca and Guerrero, closer to the coast, but there are a lot of great varieties in DF (when I visited Cuba in 2005, much of the best coffee was exported, leaving only poorly-quality beans for the Cubans). 

Yesterday morning, I went to the two last museums on my list for this trip: the Museo Nacional de Historia and the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, both of which are based in the Bosque de Chapultepec, a huge park on the west side of the city centre. Chapultepec means 'the grasshopper hill' in Nahuatl, and the history museum is located in the Castillo de Chapultepec, at the top of the said hill. 

About 30 miles outside the centre of Mexico City lies the ancient city of Teotihuacán, which was first established in about 100 AD. The origins of the city and the people who founded it (the name Teotihuacán, meaning 'birthplace of the gods', was given to it many centuries later by the Aztecs) remain mysterious. However, the site — famous for its two large pyramids, the Piramide del Sol and the Piramide de la Luna (Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon) — is one of the most popular attractions in the Mexico City area.

Making the most of the (relatively) cooler weather in Mexico City, I went for another run to the Bosque de Chapultepec yesterday morning. This time, I went further into the park, including the very steep climb to the top of the hill on which Castillo de Chapultepec is perched. 

After almost missing my connecting flight from JFK to Mexico City (my first flight was late,and I had to run through the airport and sweet talk the guy at the airline desk into letting me check in even though the flight had closed), I made it to my hotel safely on Friday night. I decided to stay in the Roma area of DF (Distrito Federal — AKA Mexico City), partly because it's a lot calmer than the centro historico, and partly because there is an abundance of good coffee shops.