Note: read post directly below this one first.  We got up around 4am, after a rough night for me (I got about 3 hours of interrupted sleep and had back pain much of the night) and left for the airport around 5am for a 7:05am flight (the airport is about a half hour's drive, less at that time of day but we had to stop at the airport valet parking service we use and wait for a bit for a driver to bring us on to the airport). The security lines were really long, but we got to our gate in time for boarding. After boarding the plane and sitting there for a while they told us all to get off the plane, there was a mechanical problem that needed to be fixed. We were told that it would probably be 45 minutes to an hour, but they started boarding us again about 30 minutes later. Luckily we had a 2 1/2 hour layover in Houston, so the delay was not a problem for us (it was for a lot of other people though). We had time to eat "lunch" (it was lunch food, but probably closer to breakfast time) in Houston before going to the gate. The flight from Houston to Mexico City went fine and we arrived pretty much on time (around 2:20pm Central time).   We got through immigration and customs pretty quickly and easily. N. had told me to call her cell phone when we were through customs and they (I wasn't sure who they would be at this point) would come meet us. So, A. and I try to call her only to discover that our cell phones won't work, (no signal, no carrier, calls failed). Oh boy! So then we decide to try and get some money from an ATM. A. does this himself and comes back with $500 pesos, about $50, definitely not enough for the next few days but we shelve that and decide to try calling N. at a pay phone. A tries to use a credit card (remember when pay phones actually took money?) but it ended up that they only took special prepaid cards. This was hard to figure out as none of us know Spanish (well, I took it in high school, but that was a long time ago, and Z.'s been taking it since Pre-K but wasn't much help, and A. only took French in high school). We're starting to get cranky but I suggest we just walk around and see if we can find her, and sure enough, we turn around and start walking towards the customs exit and there she was!   So, our greeting party consisted of N., son J. (they have both been in Mexico for 3 weeks at this point), brother A-Sr., SIL L., nephews A-Jr., and A.. N. hands me a big bouquet of pink flowers and tells Z. they are for both of us. Z. decides that she wants to carry them, for a little while at least, then hands them off to someone else. We go off with the nephews with our luggage to the parking garage to a minivan (which was borrowed from a cousin, G. who is mentioned in the cast of characters in the previous post). We get out of there and manage to find the rest of them in the gigantic rented 12 person van, switch drivers (A-Sr.) and go to the rental place to sign papers. It was a bit of a ways from the airport, down an alley with no sign. Hmmm, our first introduction to the ways of Mexico :-)  We are driven to the hotel ( Hotel Stella Maris , I see from the photos that there is a pool, but we never saw it), which reminded me of a boutique hotel you might find in a major city in the US. It was the hotel that A. Sr. and L. stayed usually stayed at when visiting Mexico City. We check in and relax in our room while the rest of them drive back out to the airport to pick up N.'s dh R., and kids M., V., & J., and R's parents whose flight was due to arrive about 3 hours after ours. Our room faced a park with a playground and was right over the front entrance to the hotel. At one point I said to Z., you should look and see if they are here, and she went to the window and looked down and sure enough, they had just pulled up and were getting out of the van!  After everyone was settled in we all piled into the two vans for a drive around Mexico City. A. Sr. drove one van and L., drove the other, keeping in contact with each other by cell phone (actually they were using those Nextel things that are cell phones that act like walkie talkies). A. Sr. drove the big van, where we were, and would tell us about the various neighborhoods and buildings we were passing while N. would translate.   Some notes about driving in Mexico:  -Ay yi yi!! Our drivers were good, we never got in an accident, but there was a lot of zipping in and out of traffic with cars and buses barely inches from each other. The circles in Mexico City were a trip, the traffic didn't enter and go around in the same direction, it would enter and go in both directions (at least on two sides) with at least 4 or 5 "lanes" of vehicles doing this at one time. There was a lot of oohs and eeks coming from the Americans as we drove around all week LOL.  - There were speed bumps all over the place, we were told that without them Mexicans would never slow down. There was this rhythm of speeding up and driving fast for a bit, then slowing down to almost a stop to go over the speed bump (some were small, maybe 2 or 3 feet in depth, others were very long, maybe 10 to 12 feet). It was tiring at first but we got used to it.  - Intersections were always interesting, often times there were no stop signs (and even if there were, they weren't necessarily adhered to). Someone asked how they knew who should go first at an intersection (these are smaller streets, not the big multi lane ones) and they said "whoever gets there first" or "intuition". Okay!       Eventually we stopped for a late dinner at a cantina ( La Opera ), which was a very traditional type of place, famous for the bullet hole in the ceiling said to have been shot by Pancho Villa when the revolution was over. There was a small group of Mariachi type musicians serenading the tables.  It had a beautiful bar and tiled floors and an ornate ceiling. There were 14 of us, so we sat at a very long table (a bunch of tables put together). Our menus were in Spanish so we took a while trying to figure out what they meant, eventually we discovered that there was an English menu at the other end of the table so passed it around. My nephew M. and I were like, "oh, now that would have been nice 10 minutes ago" but ended up ordering the same thing we had picked out in Spanish (with the help of our hosts). I ordered this marinated flank steak with a side of beans and guacamole (I can't remember the name of it, something like acherrera) that was amazing, so soft and tender and flavorful and a beer ( Negro Modelo , yum!) and a diet coke (sin hielo, no ice). A. had a thin steak with melted cheese on top, and Z. had spaghetti bolognese (which she barely ate because she had eaten a ton of bread before it got to her). A. also joined the drinkers at the table (of which there were many- but not me!) with not only Negro Modelo but also shots of tequila and shots of something else I never got the name of (the idea was to do one after the other and then suck a piece of lime). He was a bit sorry the next morning LOL! The food portions were huge and everyone shared bites with each other, a couple people ordered desserts which also got passed around. In general the desserts in Mexico were just okay, not very sweet and mostly without chocolate.  After dinner we all walked a few blocks to go look at a church. We were told to keep our purses safely in front of us, and watch out for this person or that as we walked along. Mexico City is known for not being a safe place, but we were all fine. It smelled awful in front of the church and there were lots of people hanging around, so we got about 3 seconds to look before we turned around and left. On the way back to the restaurant (where our two vans were in valet parking) we stopped and walked through a bookstore to get to look at another restaurant that had a beautiful mural, handmade tiles on the walls and a quaint charm. Getting 14 people in and out of a bookstore (even if most of the people did not read Spanish) was no easy feat but eventually we corralled the cats and got back to the original restaurant and in the vans and drove back to the hotel. The adult travelers were beyond exhausted at this point and we collapsed in bed shortly after getting to our rooms. For the most part the teenager/young adults went out every night after the rest of us went to bed (the Mexican nephews taking my niece and nephew out on the town). Needless to say it wasn't always easy to get them going in the morning, but to their credit they did pretty well.