I had a fabulous time in Oaxaca and would highly recommend it. Great art, great food, a wonderful plaza, and very cool ruins to see, not far from the city. But if you want to go somewhere even closer, there are also lots of great little towns to see within a 2hour bus ride of Mexico City, so if you like big cities you could go first to Mexico City (which is called D.F. in mexico – short for “Districto Federal” ) see the crazy big city sights in the DF (amazing Diego Rivera murals, cool plazas and colonial architecture, Frida Kahlo’s house) and then go to the pyramids that are only an hour outside of the D.F. too. And, if you want to visit a lovely and sleepy little town, very relaxed and gorgeous (and cheap) take a bus 2 hours from D.F to a tiny town called Taxco. It is a colonial silver-mining town from the 1500s. Amazing narrow curvy streets, on the hillside, white stone and silver and bouganvillea and the streets are so narrow that only VW bugs are allowed to drive there—literally—there are no other cars allowed in the whole city, just white VW bug taxis. The whole city is just one long curvy one-way street so if a car wants to go backwards it has to go back through the whole city. Amazing. I had a lovely 2 days of pure relaxation there. Not much to do but sit in the plaza eating icecream and watching the teenagers flirt with each other. It’s very quiet and lovely. You will either find it boring or completely magical, depending on what you like to get out of your vacations. I stayed in Hotel Los Arcos which was pretty cheap (maybe $40 a night) and very clean and nice.