Overheard on my flight from San Francisco to Mexico City, two men talking one row behind me:
“If you and your lady want to sit next to each other, I can switch.”
“Nah, man.”
“Alright.”
“We’re going to be together for ten days.”
“So this is your time to chill…”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
As I was trying to decide whether to dislike these two guys or not, they continued their conversation, talking about their favorite places in Mexico. I couldn’t help but be impressed with the number of places they had been to. I thought about all the places my family had visited in Mexico and thought maybe the one guy with the “lady” had us beat. He hadn’t mentioned kids—either they didn’t have any or he was trying to get as much mental separation from them as he was from his lady. So of course, if he was kidless he could travel much more than we could in our past 20 years. But it impressed me that it seemed these guys were quick to come to Mexico if they wanted a vacation. Why hadn’t we done that more? I was also impressed with the other possibility, that this guy had so much vacation time that he was going to Mexico that often and was hitting a few other destinations on vacations. I wanted to know what he or his lady did for a living.
Americans get a bad rap for not being well-traveled. That only 10% of Americans have passports (not true—it’s more like 40%). I recently saw an Instagram story of an Irishman living/traveling in the US and he was taking his fellow Europeans to task for believing this sentiment about Americans. His punchline was, “Have you been to America? This country is so big 1) most non-Americans have no appreciation for how big it is, 2) every state is like a different country, and so 3) you can travel just within the US and be “well-traveled.”
That is definitely true. I could spend the next decade or more just traveling within the US, there are so many places I’d like to experience. But I was also happy at that moment to be doing my part to help dispel the “not well-traveled” myth; I was on my way to CDMX (Ciudad de México, Mexico City), a city I had heard fantastic things about but had never visited. An acquaintance who is an artist travels there all the time for the art scene. A blog I follow, written by a world-renowned photographer and music video producer where he posts about his worldwide travels, had a recent post entitled “OVER FIFTY REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD BOOK A TRIP TO MEXICO CITY IN THE NEXT SIX MINUTES (Mexico City just may be the greatest city in the world to visit…)” So when my husband had to travel to Mexico City for work, I asked if we could go a few days early so I could join and see this amazing city. And here we were.
And Mexico City did not disappoint. That is perhaps for another post. The BEST street tacos EVER. From the blog I referenced earlier: “When you think food capitals of the world your mind probably goes to Paris, New York, Rome, Copenhagen, and Tokyo. Well, your mind is wrong. Mexico City is the most fun your palate will ever have.” And I am very tiquismiquis (please read my book Tranquila to understand)…so for me to say this, you know it’s legit.
In addition to the food, it is also a great people-watching city. There are over 22 million inhabitants of Mexico City; that’s a lot of people watching. I liked sitting on my own at a café and seeing locals come and go—an elderly woman enjoying her concha, a man my age accompanying his father for their morning café, digital nomads working from their computers. I loved strolling through the shady, leafy streets of La Condesa and Roma Norté neighborhoods, watching couples and families strolling with their tiny dogs—so many tiny dogs!—and admiring the boutique shops and bars and bookstores.
I was hoping to people watch at a higher-end hotel where I treated myself to the “ancestral massage”—how could I pass up a massage that starts with a drink of melted chocolate mixed with mezcal, followed by a cleansing with white smoke that “brings the spirit to the higher dimension,” and concluded with a heat and cold therapy with a mezcal rub?—but the hotel was either so high end or I was too low end that my massage did not allow me access to lounging by the pool. That’s ok because judging by the woman from British Columbia who now resided in Dubai whom I chatted with in the changing room, the people by the pool would be of the international crowd—a different type of people watching than what I was looking for.
The day before I flew home and my husband started work, we took a walking tour of the city with his colleagues. The tour was fantastic—local markets, historic locations, and many excellent street taco locales—mainly because our guide was amazing. Olín was a local who had also lived in NYC, LA, and either lived in or spent time in SF, London and Paris and many other cities. He said if he knew the world was going to shut down again, or had to stay in one city for a few years, he’d choose Mexico City, without a doubt. His reasoning: Mexico City has better food than London, nicer people than Paris, it’s cheaper than NYC, and has better weather than any of them. I understood his point and agreed with everything he said. While Mexico City wasn’t cheap, it was cheaper. The people were super friendly. The food was ridiculously good. And it was 83 degrees in February (though my cab driver to the airport explained these temperatures were abnormal for the past two years…it was calentamiento global, global warming).
So much more of Mexico to explore, but I would not mind at all if my next trip to our neighbor to the south was back to CDMX.