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Arrival and orientation
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An almost uninterrupted stream of
buses
leaves Mexico City's Terminal Poniente for Toluca throughout the day; the journey takes about an hour. Toluca's modern bus station is right by the market, about 3km south of the centre: local buses run into town.
De paso
services from Mexico City to Zitacuaro and Valle de Bravo usually stop on the bypass 500m south of the bus station. To return to the bus station, pick up buses labelled "Terminal" on Juarez, just west of the
portales
.
Moving on
from Toluca, there are frequent buses from the terminal to Mexico City, Chalma, Cuernavaca, Morelia, Ixtapan, Malinalco, Queretaro and Taxco during the day (at night the terminal virtually closes and services are much less frequent).
Unusually for Mexico, the heart of the city is formed not by an open plaza but by a central block surrounded on three sides by the nation's longest series of arcades, built in the 1830s and known as
portales
, lined with shops, restaurants and cafes:
Portal Madero
is on the south along Hidalgo;
Portal 20 de Noviembre
is on the east along Allende; and
Portal Reforma
is on the west along Bravo. The fourth side is taken up by the nineteenth-century
Cathedral
and, to its east, the mustard-yellow church of
Santa Cruz
. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Mexico,
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