Cowboys and Indians, communists and ice-picks, Aztecs, artists, mariachis and masked wrestlers. We saw all of those, as well as colonial mansions, baroque churches, teeming markets and great museums.

We climbed pyramids, made guacamole and re-enacted human sacrifices. Then we went to the beach.

We had wanted to go somewhere hot and exotic with our two children, but not to have to spend ten days in a resort. We definitely wanted a bit of pampered, palm-fringed luxury at some point, but dragging the kids halfway round the world just to flop by a pool seemed wasteful.

I knew that Mexico, a vast and deeply civilised country, might provide the perfect adventure. What I didn't appreciate is quite how intense that adventure would be from Day 1.

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Mexico City is the sort of place that most people either avoid entirely or leave immediately. That's a big mistake. This is one of the most tumultuous urban experiences imaginable, a monstrous megalopolis of about 23 million souls, too many to count, certainly, and almost all of them in vehicles that belch fumes and clog the roads.

But it is also one of the most exciting, rewarding and thoroughly cultured places on Earth. If you want your children to learn stuff on a trip, and take away memories that may even enrich them a little, then the city that Mexicans call simply Mexico is ideal.

We came armed with a long checklist to be crammed into our three days in town, and had a guide and a driver to help us to find our way through the insanity to our hotel - the splendidly trendy La Condessa.

First on our list was to check out the museums devoted to Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, who were neighbours (and lovers) in a leafy quarter called Coyoacán. These museums are the actual houses where they lived, so they were small and personal with great stories to reveal.

We followed that by joining scores of Mexican families taking a floating promenade on the lake in Xochimilco. We boarded gaily coloured boats - they looked like big gondolas - bought food and drink from others floating by and then stopped a craft full of mariachis in their full regalia to serenade us.

After an hour sitting in honking car chaos we made it back to our hotel and rushed up to relax in the hot tub on the roof.

Next day was Aztec day. This entailed an early drive (before the heat and the madness) to Teotihuacán, an hour outside the city and one of the most impressive archaeological sites in the world.

Even our philistine offspring were slack-jawed at the scale and wonder of this place (especially when we climbed the giant Sun pyramid and volunteered Alfie as a sacrifice to ensure that the Sun would rise). They were even eager to go to the mighty Anthropological Museum, where the civilisation we had clambered over was placed perfectly in context and packed with pre-Colombian treasures.

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