Driving to Guanajuato The City of Tunnels and Beyond

Since living in Mexico as of December 2009, I wanted to go and see a bit of the country that I now call home!  So this past December my Mexican friend Alvaro and I decided to make a whirlwind 4 day trip to areas beyond Guadalajara which I had been too a few times already.
So off we went at 6am and about 7 hours later arrived in Guanajuato, Mexico without any incident...not even a military or police checkpoint.  Mainly took the toll roads because of our need for speed to get to our destination.  We had pre-arranged our stay at the Hacienda D'Cobos Motel the GPS guided us there quite easily.  After a quick checkin we decided to find some lunch and explore this fantastic city before our planned city tour began around 3pm.  I find that taking the tour buses on the first visit to a town helps you get a feel of the entire place without missing some great and important sites.  Guantajuato literally means "Hill of Frogs" and was founded in 1548 as a silver mining town.  Since Guanajuato is such a difficult city to maneuver around, it was really the best choice.  The city is composed of 3 "levels"; the lower tunnels, the main streets, and the upper roads along the hill sides.  Due to the constriction of buildings, roads and the increase in cars the city had to build tunnels underneath itself to handle the traffic flow around town!  These are amazing places with entrances, exits, and underground parking.  The entrances and exits to the tunnets were scattered in cul de sacs and even with them getting around trafficd on the main streets took a long time.  The longest tunnel is about 1 mile long and our tour took us through many of them.  The design of the city was very European with many houses entrances only accessible via walkways and sidewalks.  We also had stops at the very upper street level to see the whole city from above, a great sunset spot, a working mine, a Torture Museum and of course the Mummy Museum.   All in all worth the price of 10.00 USD to see so much in about 3-4 hours! After returning to the hotel it was time to once again venture out and find dinner.  Since the city is a bit of tourist place restaurants were not cheap, so we found a reasonably priced one inside a hotel and had a great meal.  The next day we would get back up to the upper roads via taxi and take some more great photos of this picturesque and wonderful city during daylight.  We located the cable car and rode down back to the hotel that way.  And we are off to our next city of San Miguel de Allende!