A city built on a lake, on top of a city. Start with the pyramids.
Which Teotihuacan trip gets you through the gate before the coaches. What a balloon over the Avenue of the Dead really costs. Whether Xochimilco on a Saturday is worth the noise. Reviews of every tour you can book in Mexico City.
Four bookings that carry a first week in Mexico City.
The pyramids, a canal, a blue house in Coyoacan and a night at the arena. What each costs, and what the travellers who went say about it.
01The long first dayTeotihuacan, Guadalupe Shrine & Tlatelolco Day Tour with LunchTeotihuacan, the Guadalupe shrine and the Tlatelolco ruins in one run north, lunch included. More travellers take this than anything else on the site.
02Before sunriseBalloon flight + Breakfast in cave + Pyramids + Pick up CDMX.Up over the Avenue of the Dead at first light, then breakfast in a lava cave. Lift-off is around six, so the pickup is brutal and nobody regrets it.
03The Saturday oneXochimilco, Coyoacan and Frida Kahlo with Optional LunchA trajinera down the Xochimilco canals, then Coyoacan and the Casa Azul. The day that ends with mariachi playing at your gunwale.
04The night oneLucha Libre Experience in Mexico CityRingside at Arena Mexico for the lucha libre. Masks, folding chairs, a crowd that has followed these characters for decades, and no idea what is happening.
Balloon, early gate or the long northern loop. Pick your Teotihuacan.
Everybody goes. The only real decision is how you arrive and how early you are willing to get up for it. Three kinds of pyramid day, what each costs to board, and who it suits.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Balloon flight + Breakfast in cave + Pyramids + Pick up CDMX.
From the airDawn lift-off over the Avenue of the Dead, breakfast in a cave after.
Through the gate firstEarly access with a guide, before the coach parties reach the causeway.
The full northern loopPyramids, the Guadalupe shrine and Tlatelolco in one day, lunch included.
All 188 ways to see the pyramids →
Mexico City’s most popular days out.
Every tour we have reviewed here →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the city, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Teotihuacan, Guadalupe Shrine & Tlatelolco Day Tour with Lunch
See Tlatelolco, Guadalupe Shrine, and Teotihuacan in one day, with transport, a guide, tequila tasting, and optional buffet lunch.
From · $39
Read our review →
2
Xochimilco, Coyoacan and Frida Kahlo with Optional Lunch
from $34
3
Balloon flight + Breakfast in cave + Pyramids + Pick up CDMX.
from $172
4
Teotihuacan pyramids morning or afternoon without tourist traps
from $64
5
Teotihuacan Early Access Guided Tour with optional Lunch
from $39
6
Balloon flight + pick up in CDMX + Breakfast in Cave + Pyramids
from $169
7
Balloon Flight + Cave Breakfast + Pick Up from CDMX or We Fly
from $166
8
Teotihuacan, Tlatelolco & Guadalupe Shrine Tour
from $49
Six days out that decide how you remember Mexico City.
A pyramid city an hour north, canals the Aztecs dug and nobody filled in, a cobalt-blue house in Coyoacan, the biggest pilgrimage church in the Americas, a castle on a hill in the middle of a park, and the museum that holds the Sun Stone. Start with one of these.
Xochimilco is what is left of the lake the city drank.
Tenochtitlan floated on water and the Spanish drained almost all of it. What survives is thirty kilometres of canal in the south, worked by farmers on floating plots and crossed by flat painted boats that hold a party of twenty. A trajinera is poled, not motored, so it takes as long as it takes.
The Centro Historico is Aztec, viceregal and art deco within four blocks.
Everything in the Centro →
The Templo Mayor sits half-excavated behind the cathedral, both of them sinking into the old lakebed at their own speed. Walk it in the morning, while the Zocalo is still being swept and the organ grinders have not started.
- 1Historic Downtown Walking Tourfrom $26
- 2Historic Center Food Tour in Mexico Cityfrom $115
- 3Hop-on Hop-off Bus Tourfrom $21
Zocalo, Templo Mayor, the murals
The cathedral, the ruins beside it and Diego Rivera’s staircase in the Palacio Nacional, on foot. Everything is within eight blocks and half of it visibly tilting.
The Anthropology Museum, done properly
The Sun Stone, the Aztec halls and a Maya tomb rebuilt underground. It is enormous; a guide is the difference between two rooms and the whole civilisation.
Al pastor, and the four tacos after it
A trompo carved onto a tortilla with pineapple, then suadero, then whatever the guide swears by two streets on. Standing up, on the pavement, past dark.
The Casa Azul sells out days ahead. Plan the rest of Coyoacan around it.
Frida Kahlo’s house is a cobalt-blue courtyard with her bed, her brushes and her corsets still in it, and a ticket queue that runs down Londres street. Book the slot, then give the afternoon to the market, the churro stand on the plaza and the Anahuacalli further south.
Every Coyoacan day out →
Every road out of Mexico City lands somewhere older than the city.
Puebla and its Talavera tiles two hours east, with the widest pyramid on earth buried under a church at Cholula. Silver streets stacked up a hillside at Taxco. Turquoise hot-spring terraces cut into a canyon at Tolantongo. Most of it is a day, and most of it leaves before seven.
- 1Puebla, Cholula & Tonantzintla Day Trip with Optional Lunchfrom $49
- 2Full-Day Tour Exploring the Waters of Tolantongofrom $134
- 3Puebla, Cholula and Tonantzintla Day Tripfrom $89
What a day out in Mexico City actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A museum ticket here costs less than a coffee at home, and the pyramids come in under most people’s guess.
Museum entries, the Centro walks, a trajinera down the canals and the standard run out to Teotihuacan.
Food crawls, lucha libre nights, cooking classes and the full days out to Puebla, Taxco and Tolantongo.
Balloon flights over the pyramids, private guides for the day, and the winter run to the monarch reserves.
Three nights that only happen in Mexico City.
Street food and live music exist everywhere. Masked wrestlers in a purpose-built arena, a square where two hundred mariachis wait to be hired by the song, and a city that spends late October building altars do not.
Lucha Libre
Arena Mexico holds sixteen thousand and fills most Friday nights. The wrestling is theatre with real damage in it: technicos against rudos, masks staked on the result, and a crowd that has followed these characters for decades. Seats are cheap, the beer is cheaper, and the camera rules change at the door, so most tours handle the block booking and the tacos afterwards.
- 1Lucha Libre Tickets & Tacos & Beer & Mezcal – BEST NIGHT EVER!★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,077 reviews
- 2Lucha Libre Experience in Mexico City★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 595 reviews
- 3Lucha Libre Tour and Mezcal Tasting in Mexico City★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 519 reviews
Mariachi for hire
Bands in full charro suit stand about the plaza from evening until well past midnight, waiting to be paid by the song. You pick the group, you pick the song, they play it to you on the pavement. It is loud, unsentimental and completely genuine, and the surrounding blocks are worth a guide after dark.
- 1Xochimilco Trajinera Party, Drinks, Mariachi & Tacos★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 56 reviews
- 2Garibaldi by Night – Mexico City★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 38 reviews
- 3Garibaldi Night Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 3.0 · 28 reviews
Dia de Muertos
The city builds altars for a fortnight, floats a parade down Reforma and fills the cemeteries at Mixquic with candles overnight. It is a family observance long before it is a spectacle, so the guided versions worth taking are the ones that reach somewhere other than the parade route. Dates are fixed and everything goes by September.
- 1Day of the Dead Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 3.4 · 97 reviews
- 2Day of the Dead Tour in Mexico City★★★★★★★★★★ 3.5 · 78 reviews
- 3Day of the Dead Tour in San Andres Míxquic From Mexico City★★★★★★★★★★ 3.7 · 52 reviews
Four Mexico City bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast for the same afternoon. These four run on calendars, capped slots and migration patterns that take no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Balloon flight + Breakfast in cave + Pyramids + Pick up CDMX.Baskets only launch at dawn and only in calm air. Operators cap each flight and cancel on wind, so the good mornings are spoken for weeks out.
- 02Butterfly Monarch Tour from Mexico CityThe colonies are only on the mountain from about November to March. Outside that window there is nothing in the fir trees to see.
- 03Xochimilco, Coyoacan and Frida Kahlo with Optional LunchThe Casa Azul sells timed tickets and caps every slot. Turning up at the gate in Coyoacan on the day is how people end up photographing the wall.
- 04Lucha Libre Tickets & Tacos & Beer & Mezcal – BEST NIGHT EVER!The card runs on fixed arena nights, and the ringside blocks the tours hold are the first thing to go.
On Mondays the museums shut. Point the day somewhere else.
Anthropology, the Casa Azul, Chapultepec Castle, the Templo Mayor museum: closed, all of them, every Monday. It catches out more visitors than the altitude does. Mondays belong to the things that stay open, which means the pyramids, the canals, the markets and the kitchen.
Al pastor at midnight, mole two hours east, mezcal poured from a clay jug.
This city eats standing up, late, and better than almost anywhere. Book the taco crawl for the evening, the market walk for the morning, and the mezcal tasting for the night you have nothing on after.
The days out everybody ends up taking
By kind of day — ruin, canal, kitchen or ring
Centro, Chapultepec, Coyoacan, Teotihuacan: four days, in that order.
The CentroThe newest Mexico City tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
PRIVATE TOUR Colonial Town Taxco and Cuernavaca from CDMX.
Read our review →
Multi-Variety Mole Class in a Condesa home or art gallery rooftop
Read our review →
Anthropology Museum, Chapultepec Castle & Cable Car Tour
Read our review →
Private Round-Trip Transportation to Teotihuacan Pyramids
Read our review →
Private Walking Tour Legends and Events Historic Center CDMX
Read our review →
Cholula Pyramid and Puebla: Small Groups From Mexico City
Read our review →
Balloon Flight with Breakfast and Transportation from CDMX
Read our review →
