Mexico's second largest city, around the 4 million
people as of 2006.
The city's geography can be divided in:
* East-central: mostly empoverished ghettos, famous locally for the Obregón St., the city's red light district.
* North: a strange blend of ghettos, middle-class houses and upscale neighborhoods. The zoo, the planetarium, the Department of Transit and the Jalisco Stadium are located there.
* South: lots and lots of
new middle-class neighborhoods, some ghettos (less than east-central though), a lot of pollution, and the place where you can find the city's biggest hills. The airport is located there, as
well as the exit highway to Chapala.
* Far southwest: a little town about to be engulfed by the urban sprawl, and lots of
big, posh neighborhoods, two of them in a hilltop. I happen to live in one of them.
*
West-central: lots of cafés, restaurants,
bars,
art galleries, night clubs, furnitures, boutiques and
big, tall buildings, as
well as a couple of theaters. The best place to go out on a
date.
* Eastern: this area is split in two: Tonalá and Tlaquepaque. Both of them used to be smaller towns absorbed by the urban sprawl. You can buy handicrafts here, but you can also go sight-seeing in Tlaquepaque.
* Western: mostly middle and upper class neighborhoods, also home of every
single big mall in Guadalajara.
* Downtown: the first place where most visitors go. Visitors usually go there for the awesome sights, events and places, while locals go there because of the San Juan de Dios market (aka "San Johnny"), a place where you can buy smuggled merchandise, pirated CDs/DVDs/console games, cheap staple
food,
local souvenirs, and bootlegged apparel.
When we came to Guadalajara, we arrived at the airport in the south. First, we went downtown to check out the monuments and buy some movies at San Johnny. Then we moved southbound to Galerías and went shopping. After that, we moved northbound and hung out at the zoo, before going to
west-central to a nice little pub. Before leaving, we thought it would be cool to get some hoes, so we moved to east-central and had some really wild
sex with the best damn
bitches in the
world. It was really
late already, so we ended up going to far southeastern and staying at my friend's house. Before leaving, we made sure to bring some handicrafts from Tonalá in eastern.