Mexico City is a beautiful city. The capital of Mexico, it has so much history and culture to offer any style of traveler. From food, architecture, entertainment, and day trips, you have more than enough for weeks to keep you busy in this city. This is why if you have limited time, it is best to book a guided tour of Mexico City in order to get to accomplish the things you want or may not have known before visiting.
When you only have a limited time in a city, you need to make the most of every minute. Every hour. Every day. When traveling, you may not know exactly the places you need to see and how to get there. We have been to places where we look back and cannot believe we missed out on some things that we did not know about before.
This is where booking a guided tour comes in to play. When you book a tour, you have made a commitment. There is no accidentally sleeping in and missing out on part of the day. Otherwise you have wasted the money and the experience. You also know that you are getting a local to show you the places that you may otherwise have missed out on. And you get information from a local that you may not receive especially if you do not speak the language.
With all of these advantages, there is only one disadvantage. You have committed yourself to someone else’s plan and someone else’s schedule. Therefore, we do not necessarily recommend booking a tour every day of your travels. But strategically placing a tour throughout your trip will help take the pressure off of you knowing how to get from point A to point B and being able to just go with the flow.
Best Tours of Mexico City
Booking the right tours of Mexico City can really help you see everything that this city has to offer in a limited amount of time. Whether you want to get more comfortable with the city and its people before traveling it by yourself or you are just trying to see as much of the city as possible, these are the best tours of Mexico City that you need to go on.
-
Hop-On / Hop-Off Bus Tour
-
Tours in Mexico City
-
Xochimilco
-
Day Trips from Mexico City
Teotihuacan
If you have just one day or two to see as much as you can in Mexico City, then perhaps the Hop-On / Hop-Off bus tour is for you. We took advantage of this on our last day in the city to see as much as we could that we may have missed. The key to this bus is to make sure that you know the few different routes and where they connect so that you can get off and get onto the next bus to take you to a different part of the city.
Map out your route and get on the bus that makes sense for the things you wanted to see. One ticket gives you admission to all of the buses for 24 hours. This makes it the perfect choice for just one or two days in the city.
What is better than Mexican food? You NEED to go on a food tour in Mexico City to take advantage of all of the marvelous food that the city has to offer. Some of these places you would miss if you were not to go around with a local or if you had limited time in the city. Not to mention the markets that the city has scattered throughout that will provide so much to satisfy your senses and likely leave you a few dollars shorter.
Ever been to a Lucha Libre event? This is the perfect Mexican entertainment show that you cannot miss when visiting the country. Get a mask and enjoy the experience of a show you will not forget. The crowd gets so into it and the wrestlers are incredible performers.
Xochimilco is a party. But on a boat. It is an incredibly fun time that is essential when visiting Mexico City. Basically you get onto a wonderfully decorated boat and a person paddles you around a canal while other boats are doing the same. You can bring drinks and snacks onto the boat. Other smaller boats are passing by and you can hire a mariachi band to join you on your boat to sing, get snacks and drinks from passing boats, get your photo taken, and all of this while everyone around you is enjoying the same atmosphere.
This is up there on a list of things you must do when in Mexico City. Not only that, but also along your way to or from the canal you can also visit the Frida Kahlo Museum. This is Frida Kahlo’s blue house where she resided in Mexico City and is a great glance at her life and upbringing in the city alongside her partner Diego Rivera and the many guests they had in their home.
We loved visiting Puebla. It is an incredibly beautiful city full of historic structures and lovely markets. Not to mention the shrine and archaeological site upon a massive pyramid in the neighboring Cholula. The problem with doing this trip by yourself in a day is that you are so stretched for time and are constantly on your phone trying to get an Uber and rushing through each stop. Being able to book a tour that takes care of all of this for you is so worth it.
One day trip we missed was going on a Volcano hike. We were so close to booking this tour, but it just did not fit into our schedule. There is no way that we would miss this if we were to visit Mexico City in the future. Other day trips we missed as well was the trip to Cuernavaca, Taxco, and Hidalgo. You only have as much time as you have. If that makes sense. And we had to pick and choose the places we could visit.
We do not regret going to Puebla during our day trip, nor do we regret this next recommendation.
Though this could fit in the previous category, Teotihuacan is in our opinion the best day trip that you can make from Mexico City. Though it is not necessarily difficult to get to (get to the bus station, purchase a round trip ticket, wait for the bus, take the two hour ride, do your thing, and then find the bus stop near the entrance and wait for the bus to get back to Mexico City) it is definitely more convenient to have somebody else take you there and walk you through the massive archaeological site.
There is a reason that this trip is a full day trip. This site is so massive and there is so much that you can learn from somebody if you go with the right person. Unfortunately we did not. And I feel that we missed out on so much information about the history of this incredible piece of Mexican history. Looking back at it, we would have definitely booked one of these tours. Especially getting early admittance into the site before all of the crowds and being able to get some photos in during the perfect lighting of the early morning.
Conclusion
We stand by choosing a tour during your travels. It is not necessarily something we do every trip. However, every once in a while it is nice to be able to have someone show you around their country or city. To be able to not have to worry how you are going to get from one place to another and get to places you may not have been able to see.
These are all tours that you can use to make the most of your time in Mexico City. They also cover all of the bases that the city has to offer. A food tour to wet your appetite, a lucha libre event to entertain, a walking tour to learn more about the city, a bus tour to cover all the places you missed, and day trips to satisfy every traveler. By the time you finish this list, you will have completed what you wanted in Mexico City or be extremely comfortable to go anywhere and do anything in the city.
We loved Mexico City and a trip to the capital of Mexico will really complete a trip there. Never did we feel unsafe visiting this beautiful city and could not have imagined going to this country without seeing what this place offered.