Last Friday, after spending some time downtown, I wanted to return to the apartment by taking the newly renovated Line 1 of the subway from the Pino Suárez station to the Glorieta de Insurgentes. From there I could take the Metrobus the rest of the way home. From the Zócalo, it´s less than a half mile walk to the Pino Suárez station.
However, the street is always crowded with people, and it was even worse than usual with holiday shoppers. So, I decided to take another route that I had not taken in years. I don't know if that many residents know about it, and I wasn't even sure if it still existed. There was an underground passageway that goes between the Zócalo station and the Pino Suárez station.
I descended down into the Zócalo station, and, before going through the turnstile, I asked a policeman if the passage still existed. He said "Sí" and pointed me in the right direction.
The cool thing about the passageway is that it is not just a tunnel. It is a veritable shopping mall of bookstores. It is called "Un paseo por los libros" (a stroll through the books), and the 650 meters are lined with several dozen bookstores.
The passage was opened in 1997 as a joint effort of the Mexico City government, the Public Transport System, the subway's Cultural Foundation, and the Chamber of Commerce of the Mexican Publishing Industry.
This route avoids all the hustle and bustle of the street above, but is not so deserted as to feel lonely and unsafe. There were a few stores that had gone out of business, and some were closed, probably for Christmas vacation. But there were plenty of stores that were open, and, if I had the time, I could have spent much of the day perusing the vast selection which ranged from children's books to tomes on Mexican law.
How ironic that in the United States bookstores are struggling to survive, but here beneath Mexico City's streets there is a booklover's paradise.
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