The best day trips from Mexico City by car, sorted by drive time

Mexico City is a great base for exploring central Mexico: within three hours you'll find pyramids, pueblos mágicos, hot springs and two of the country's prettiest colonial cities. What matters most when choosing is the drive time, so here they're grouped by distance.

An hour or a little more. Teotihuacán is about 50 km away: leave early and walk the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon before the heat kicks in. Tepoztlán and Cuernavaca are an hour and a half south, and Real del Monte, with its mines and pastes, is about the same distance north.

Two to two and a half hours. Puebla and Cholula pair well in a single day: Puebla's food, Talavera pottery and the Great Pyramid with Popocatépetl behind it. Malinalco has an Aztec temple carved into the rock, and Taxco has its silver workshops. Valle de Bravo works as a day trip too, but it's much better with a night.

About three hours. Querétaro and Peña de Bernal make a good full day, especially if you add a wine and cheese tasting on the way.

Better with at least one night. San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, the Tolantongo hot springs and Acapulco are three and a half to four and a half hours away: a same-day round trip means more time in the car than at the destination. Oaxaca, Veracruz and Zacatecas are multi-day trips.

One tip for any trip out of the city: leave early. You beat Mexico City traffic and reach the busiest sights before the big groups. And if you go on a weekend, expect the drive back into the city on Sunday afternoon to be slow.