Monterrey for two nights

Driving in Monterrey was our first experience with big-city driving in Mexico. It was pretty hard to navigate, and there was one point when we circled the same pattern of blocks four or five times before making the correct turn to get where we wanted. Our hotel room was small and dark - it had a big picture window, but it faced directly onto a brick wall with about a foot of space, and it had dark curtains that were backed with a heavy plastic sheet. But, it was a step up from the first hotel we went into, which was charging not by the day, but by twelve-hour blocks. We would have had to pay four times in order to stay for the planned two days!

At first Monterrey wasn´t treating us very well. I got a bit sick and we had to stay in the hotel room all night watching The Lord of the Rings on TV and eating chips and avocado for dinner. But the next day we were able to see the downtown pedestrian zone (a great place to get away from the unfamiliar driving style), the Museum of Mexican History (very little mention of the affects of colonialism, or the US-Mexican war), and the Museum of Modern Art (three travelling exhibitions - one beautiful, one scary abstract, one by Henry Moore; no permanent collection).

We ate dinner that night at a little cafe that served vegetarian lasagne, which was a treat in a place where vegetarianism is almost non-existant. After a second night in the dark room, we left for a long drive through the desert to Zacatecas.