Thursday in Queretaro and Mexico City!

Here is a view of one of our many rides on the Mexico City subways. This was the end of our trip from Queretaro to the Basilica of our Lady of Guadalupe! It was grueling taking our luggage through the subways, but we are getting better at it, thankfully! It is hot here, so that doesn't help that much actually!

Thursday marked the much anticipated pilgrimage to the most visited (or second most visited) holy site in all of Christianity, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We began around 9am with doughnuts in the park outside our hotel in Queretaro. Then we went went via city bus to the central bus station of Queretaro, a city of about 1,000,000 and the capital city of Queretaro state. We all felt badly for the locals, for as you can see, with our luggage we took over one of these small city buses, and made the locals quite uncomfortable. We were right on time for our 10am 3 hour bus ride back to Mexico City. Again, it was a pretty comfortable ride. Nice buses here, all made by Mercedes or Volvo. And better service than you get on an airline. If buses were like this in the US, more people would take them I am sure. What am I saying? I don't even know how buses are in the United States. I've never taken MegaBus or Greyhound or anything else.

Once back in Mexico City we put ourselves on high security alert. For some reason, the bus ride, as nice as it was, hit people the wrong way. Maybe there was something in our morning pastries, but almost everyone was feeling sick when we got off the bus, myself excluded. So we took a 30 minute break before attempting a subway ride, leaving our luggage under the protection of Our Lady of Guadalupe, since her statue was in the middle of the bus station. We finally got everyone feeling well enough to hit the subways with our luggage in tow. We didn't get a security escort this time, but we tried our best to be safe.

It only took about 20 minutes to arrive at the metro stop for the Basilica, and when we got off the subway we saw what we were in for. The vendors around the Basilica dominate the entire neighborhood. There are thousands of vendors - completely overdone. If Jesus wanted to overturn all the table in front of this temple, it would have taken him about 10 years. We thought our hotel was very close to the Basilica, but after walking in the neighborhood a little bit, we learned that the hotel was actually right next to the bus station. Can you believe it? We hauled our luggage unnecessarily through the subway, on top of our not feeling too well. Well, at this point we had a choice to make, either we could go into the Basilica with our luggage in tow, and make a short visit the first day, knowing that we would be able to return Friday, or we could go to the hotel and just call it a day, since it would be getting late by the time we got everyone checked in. Well, despite the sickness pervading our group, we decided to move forward. Our Lady would have wanted us to.

After everyone had had a chance to see the miraculous image of Our Lady via the moving walkway underneath the image, I was able to secure a chapel on the upper level of the Basilica for our private Mass in English. There are about 12 private chapels arranged in a semicircle as a balcony overlooking the main Basilica. There was plenty of room for our group and for our luggage. Apparently, the sound from the upper chapels does not reach the floor of the Basilica, but let me tell you, the sounds from the Basilica reaches the upper chapels quite nicely. The booming voice of the celebrant down below comes upstairs and makes it very difficult to have Mass. There is no sound barrier. But we did the best that we could. We celebrated the Feast of St. Joseph, spent some time in prayer, and then it was the consensus of the group that we would be able to pray much better tomorrow, so we headed to find our hotel.

It was just five minutes from the bus station. A short walk. We check in by 5 or so, then met downstairs to go out together for tortas and tacos in the surrounding neighborhood. Once again, even in Mexico City, things are so cheap because the dollar is strong here. We had to watch our backs somewhat as the neighborhood of the hotel has a few sketchy characters in it, but we stayed together and stayed safe. Mexico City, unfortunately, is dangerous. You have to be careful. We were inside the hotel by 7:30pm. Most people nursed their travel sickness, got caught up on journaling, and had some good conversation over some cold drinks. The big accomplishment of this day was getting 30 people settled in Mexico City once again and ready for a great day of prayer at the Basilica.