Mexico City - The Day of the Flag and the Guadalupe Basilicas

The city of Mexico has about 28 millions inhabitans. You must imagive the rest for yourself because it's impossible to desrcribe.

Today is the Day of the Mexican Flag - a day off work, so there are many picnics in the main squares and streets. In one of them Adek decided to get his prolonged cold get treated. See how he did it.

Not far from ths city centre there are The Old and New Basilica of Our Our Lady of Guadalupe, where John Paul II has been many times. He is worshiped here as much as in Poland, if not more.

'Our Lady of Guadalupe (Spanish: Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe), also the Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe) is a Roman Catholic icon of the Virgin Mary. The tradition relates that in the 16th century, on 9 December 1531, Juan Diego, a recently-converted Aztec (indigenous) peasant, had a vision of a young woman, a lady, while on a hill in the Tepeyac desert, near Mexico City. The lady in the vision asked him to build a church where they stood on the hill. Juan Diego told the local Bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, of the apparition; doubtful, he asked for proof. Juan Diego later returned to the Tepeyac desert hill; again, the lady appeared to Juan Diego, who told her of the bishop’s request for proof of her apparition. The lady then instructed Juan Diego to go to the hill top, where he found Castillian roses — native to Durango, the bishop’s Spanish home town — and which did not bloom in winter. Juan Diego cut the roses, placed them in the apron of his tilma cloak, and delivered them to the bishop; an imprint of the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared on the tilma, formed by the soil and the Castillian roses.

The shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage destination in the world. Over the Friday and Saturday of 11 to 12 December 2009, a record number of 6.1 million pilgrims visited the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the apparition.'