Final Transit » Street

On the road in Mexico city

Priyank — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 03:20:17 +0000

Typical scenes on the streets of Mexico city

Mexico travelogue: Chapter 21 | Read other chapters – See photo gallery

I was very surprised to see how diverse and mixed Mexico city was. My visit was short (just 9 days, with many day trips from Mexico city in between) so I only got a teaser of the whole deal. Still, since my couchsurfing hosts were scattered around the city, I was compelled to take the public transit and explore neighbourhoods; and I was glad to do that.

↑ Newspaper stand in Polanco with the mandatory semi-naked lady cutout.

Boroughs and Colonias

Mexico-city is divided into 16 neighbourhoods, called delegaciones, each with its own distinctive colonies.


Coyoacan neighbourhood and the Constitution Square (Zocalo)

The historic downtown (Cuauhtémoc) with one of the largest city-squares in the world gave me and idea of how it would have felt in the colonial era back when the Spanish were ruling (you have to ignore the crowd and noisy cars). The Coyoacan delegacion, not far from crowded downtown, felt like a village that escaped the mad growth that rest of Mexico city saw. Then there was the green Chapultepec park and business district, rich Polanco (Miguel Hidalgo), residential Benito Juárez, the huge Tlalpan to the south and canal maze at the Xochimilco borough.


City bikes parked near the city-centre and the Alameda Central Park.

When I go next time, I will try Mexico city’s free bicycles to go around during the day. It’s possible to rent these bicycles for the day for free, somewhat similar to Toronto’s Bixi program. In fact, some streets are closed for vehicular traffic on Sundays in order to promote cycling.


Newspaper and magazine stands. There is a huge selection of magazines and reading material. People like to read, it’s very evident when you are traveling in a bus or metro.

It was strange but newspaper stands carry lot of material that I thought was semi pornographic in nature. People seem to enjoy reading magazines with pictures of naked ladies (and sometimes men) on their covers. Quite odd in a conservative catholic country, especially seeing teenagers huddled around a magazine in a crowded subway. I bought few magazines to keep as souvenirs, but I lost them somewhere…


Paseo de la reforma (Reform Promenade) passing through the upper class neighbourhood of Polanco

↑ Shopping centre in the historic center

One convenient thing in Mexico city is the plethora of public telephones. Several of these use phone cards, but there are lots that just accept coins. Random observation: Public phone booths in richer neighbourhoods cost 1 peso more.

↑ Finally, since no tour is complete without a picture of food, here is one eatery serving Quesadillas in centro historico.

Bye bye Mexico city! I head for Yucatan next.

© RSS feed from Final Transit - Priyank's notes from the road.. If you are viewing this content on a website instead of your RSS feed reader, then the website you are on is guilty of stealing my content without permission. Please visit my blog (Final Transit) and let me know so that I can take action against this spam website. Thanks!

Toronto Tuesday 03.07: Queen West Murals

Priyank — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:20:57 +0000

Murals and artwork on Queen West

This post is part of the weekly Toronto Tuesday series

Queen west is sortof a bohemian and an artsy area of Toronto. Here are some murals you’d notice when walking west on Queen St. West.

↑ “West Queen West”

↑ Queen west art district

Unfortunately the city’s murals, paintings and graffiti are under attack by our right-wing mayor Rob Ford. His solution is to force commercial establishment to paint over these images. How cosmetic, myopic and ill-conceived strategy! Not only is this complete disregard for art, but also it fails to address the root cause of the problem.

↑ Parkdale Youth Initiatives Program

↑ One world

↑ Parkdale Youth Festival

I hope these installations survive the mayor’s ludicrous mission. Some more art festivals are lined up in upcoming weeks, I’ll keep you posted.

Nevsky Prospekt

Priyank — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:06:12 +0000

This post is part of a series of travelogues narrating my trip to Russia. Here are the other posts and pictures!
« Previous post: Vyborg | Next post: Peter and Paul Fortress »

Spend a whole day checking out sites along the Nevsky Avenue, St. Petersburg.

Nevskiy Prospect on a wet day

They say that St. Petersburg gets only 30 days of sunshine and this makes the city unfriendly. I noticed right from the time I arrived at the Moskovsky Rail Terminal (RU: Московский вокзал / MR: मोस्कोव्स्की वोक्झाल) after an overnight train from Moscow that St. Petersburg is better suited to handle foreign tourists compared to Moscow. One can see several signboards in English and there is even a tourist information office.

Nevskiy Prospect on a wet day

The Nevsky Prospect (MR:नीव्सकी प्रस्प्यक्त) is the main thoroughfare of St. Petersburg and runs from the Admiralty (ex-Naval headquarters) to Nevsky Monastery (Nevsky is the patron saint of the city). The chief sights include the Rastrelliesque Stroganov Palace, the huge neoclassical Kazan Cathedral, the Art Nouveau Bookhouse, half a dozen 18th-century churches, Ostrovskogo plaza, a monument to Catherine the Great, an enormous 18th-century shopping mall, a mid-19th-century department store, the Russian National Library, Anichkov Bridge with its horse statues and the Hero-city monument among several other sites. One can easily spend an entire day walking on the by lanes or shopping on the pedestrian walkways while exploring the landmarks.

Kazan Cathedral

Kazaan Cathedral at dusk

Dedicated to Our Lady of Kazan, probably the most venerated icon in Russia, the Kazan Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church was converted to house a museum of the ‘History of Religion and Atheism’ during Soviet times.

National Library

Nevskiy Prospect on a wet day

Libraries say a lot about a city’s interest in culture and education. This is the oldest library in Russia and has collected rare books and documents from all over the world. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to go in.

Anichkov Bridge

Horse sculpture

The Anichkov bridge is mostly known for its four famous horse sculptures (1849-50). These beautiful sculptures depict the stages in taming of a horse. During the German attack in WW2, the sculptures were removed and buried, in a series of similar measures taken by the city to protect its decorations and architecture.

Hero-City Obelisk

Monument

Located in the Vosstaniya Square, next to Moskovsky rail terminal is this obelisk dedicated to the resilience of Leningrad (old name of St. Petersburg) during world war II. The monument is made from granite that was quarried near Vyborg. Opposite side of the train station is a big hotel with Cyrillic letters that say “Hero City Leningrad.”

Information

Nevskiy Prospect on a wet day

Nevsky Prospekt has three metro stations (fourth one is under construction) on the green line and offers convenient transfer to all other subway lines. Moskovsky Vokzal, the long distance train terminal is also located on this street and is a great point to start the trans-Russia rail trip. Being the central street, there are large number of buses that connect it to the rest of the city. A car or taxi is not required to explore this stretch.

The street is lined with large number of cute cafés, bars and restaurants that serve diverse European and even World foods. There are plenty of shopping options, but in a casual conversation with a local, he revealed that “We’d rather go to New York or London to shop, this place is too expensive.” Ahem!

This post is part of a series of travelogues narrating my trip to Russia. Here are the other posts and pictures!
« Previous post: Vyborg | Next post: Peter and Paul Fortress »

Toronto Tuesday 02.14: Gardiner Expressway

Priyank — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 05:01:42 +0000

Gardiner Expressway in Spring and Fall

The Gardiner Expressway passes through downtown Toronto and connects the city to its suburbs. It is a fast way to get to the core of the city, however in the process it isolates the waterfront and I think of it as one of those ugly but practical urban structures.

March 2009

October 2010

I live quite close to the waterfront and often walk over this bridge to get to lake Ontario. It is interesting to watch traffic on the highway during rush hours.

Toronto Tuesday 02.05: College Street

Priyank — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:05:30 +0000

A rainy summer evening

College Street

The weather is quite bizarre… in last ten days alone the weather changed from a sunny 27ºC weekend to few damp weekdays to a cold -4ºC weekend. Today it is springish 11ºC again!

Arbatskaya Ulitsa

Priyank — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:52:38 +0000

This post is part of a series of travelogues narrating my trip to Russia. Here are the other posts and pictures!
« Previous post: Stalin’s Seven Sisters | Next post: Russian Orthodox Church Bells »

Things to do in Moscow’s artist’s block

Arbat Street is a 1.25km pedestrian mall and is one of Moscow’s most famous streets. It’s an art market, with instant portrait painters, craftsmen, jugglers, buskers and little cafés offering nice treats.

Arbat Street, with poet Pushkin’s house

Arbat St and little picture exhibits

There were a number of performers who were handing out discount coupons for circuses and music shows and other gigs.

Wall of peace

This friendship wall at the east end of the street consists of individually painted tiles on the theme of international friendship. A section of it is covered in spent chewing gum, forming an interesting but sticky mosaic.

Café. I can’t quite read cursive Cyrillic alphabet

шоколадный торт и кофе с молоком

Sports Bar (near Arbatskaya)

At night, I went to a sports bar to have some local beer and watch a football (called soccer in USA) game between Moscow and St. Petersburg (I think). I was meeting someone I found on couchsurfing, and she told me it was important to get out of the place before the match ended. The place was getting louder as the match was drawing to an end. I did encounter drunk football fans in the subway later on.

So as you can see, I had fun on Arbat street and it definitely deserves more attention that I gave it!

Toronto Tuesday: 01.11

Priyank — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:44:58 +0000

Volume 1, Edition 11

‘Toronto Tuesday‘ is a weekly photo feature about random stuff (landmarks, people, culture, seasons, etc.) in the city.

The long weekend was beautiful!

Queen Street West
This is from my neighborhood which I love a lot.

Dundas and Bathurst: A streetcar against an incinerator chimney
Toronto Western Hospital is located at the intersection of Dundas Street West and Bathurst Street.

What did you do on the weekend? I dealt with my annoying website host who had suspended my website for a strange reason. I also went plant shopping, took a very long walk across the town, had vegan Chinese food and some Chilean wine.

Toronto Tuesday: 01.10

Priyank — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:57:31 +0000

Volume 1, Edition 10

‘Toronto Tuesday‘ is a weekly photo feature about random stuff (landmarks, people, culture, seasons, etc.) in the city.

Bike Stands

City of Toronto has a good infrastructure for cyclists. Off-street bicycle racks like these are present every few meters on most (if not all) sidewalks in downtown Toronto.

Bike Racks. It says ‘Lock Bicycle’ and ‘City of Toronto’

This is the standard post-and-ring bike stand. But then it starts getting creative! …

Bike Lock. Looks like ugly lamp posts, no?

What’s that, a lightbulb?

Bike theft is very common in Toronto. People spend a fortune ($50, or $100, or…) on a good lock.

From spectacles to bicycles

A scary monster face?

Just like any other parking facility, it becomes impossible to find a bike parking spot during summer!

My personal favorite!

There are several ‘bike rack sculptures’ in my neighborhood (Parkdale / Queen west). All these pictures are taken from places less than two minutes from my apartment. I hope you liked them.

Toronto Tuesday: 01.03

Priyank — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:12:48 +0000

Volume 1, Edition 3

‘Toronto Tuesday’ is a weekly photo feature about random stuff (landmarks, people, culture, seasons, etc.) in my city.

Puddle @ Queen West

Last weekday was very rainy and dull. The Valentine’s day – Family day weekend was thankfully very beautiful. Sorry for not posting frequently on the travel blog, hopefully I will resume soon…