Sundays in the City

Sept. 30

On Sundays, the city is given back to the people: some of the major streets are closed to cars from 6 A.M. until 2 P.M. and opened to bikers, joggers and pedestrians, who can travel safely all the way from Chapultepec Park to the Zocalo without traffic! This includes the most beautiful street in the city, the Paseo de la Reforma, which ends at Chapultepec. Modeled on the Champs Elysees, it's a broad, eight-laned avenue, adorned with five glorietas, roundabouts. Traffic coming into a glorieta can go both right and left, so it's a bit tricky to learn to drive around them without colliding with traffic entering from the other side. Each glorieta, except one that contains a single palm tree, has a statue, monument or fountain; from north to south, the monument to Columbus with a symmetrical rose garden on each side, then a statue of Cuauhtemoc, Aztec leader who fought the conquistadores, then the palm tree, followed by the Independence Monument, crowned with a golden Angel, and finally the Diana Cazadora (the Huntress) monument, a beautiful fountain. These five landmarks help people orient themselves in this part of the city. For example, the U.S. Embassy is near the Angel. On both sides of the Reforma are laterales, side streets that give easier access to other sections of the city, and broad sidewalks with lots of trees and unique, artistic, whimsical benches. Besides the Reforma, Avenidas Juarez and Hidalgo, on either side of the Alameda, are also closed, as well as a few other streets around the Zocalo. We've been regretting our decision to leave our mountain bikes at home, so today we went down to the calle San Pablo, with its dozens of bike shops, to look for bikes to join the Sunday rides.