We spent May 15 – May 25 in Mexico City

What we did

• Bosque de Chapultepec – we lived next to this massive park and visited it daily
  • Runs – running in Mexico City was hard. We didn’t know how high up Mexico City was (7000 feet!), and as a result any form of aerobic exercise was much harder. Our first day we eked out an 11 minute walk/jog to try and get a feel for the air.  We tried getting out the door to run at 6:00, and we constantly saw the park filled with people walking, running, working out in small groups, you name it. Right next to the park was a Mexican bakery – we weren’t familiar with any of the pastries but went based off of what looked tasty, and that proved to be a pretty good heuristic. 
  • Browsing the stands – every weekend, the main road through the park would be lined with stands selling all kinds of yummy snacks and little trinkets. There were so many new things and bright colors, it was kind of overwhelming. We got matching axolotl keychains and then admired without eating (for fear of more food poisoning) all the dorilocos, big cotton candies, dried snacks and chips, and homemade mango ice cream. There were a lot of families there, and the kids’ favorite toy seemed to be this long-limbed monkey that you can wrap around your head. This seemed like a pretty boring toy at first until I realized it could be filled with water that it would “spit/pee” out when a little pump was squeezed. 
• Anthropology museum – this was recommended to us as being “unexpectedly good”. And it really was quite good, with distinct sections for each major civilization that existed in Mexico. However, the various civilizations began to blur together by the end of our visit, not helped by the fact that we probably visited the exhibits out of order. It felt like all of them could be loosely summarized as “rose to prominence due to agriculture, had various gods (the sun, the moon, the water, rain, etc) that they pleased by playing ball games and sacrificing themselves for, before collapsing in 200 AD due to economic reasons and civil war. 
• CDMX Zoo – the park also had a free (!) zoo. They had a huge primates section, which we got lost in and only realized it when we saw the same monkeys with poop smeared windows more than once. Tony wanted to see the axolotl exhibit but we were 5 minutes too late (the exhibit closed at 3:00). Rain ended our trip to the zoo early, but we were just able to swing by the panda exhibit on the way out; however there unfortunately wasn’t much to see because there were no lights, the windows were tinted dark, and the pandas were hiding
• Teotihuacan tour and Pulque tasting – Our one splurge of the trip was doing an airbnb experience for a tour of Teotihuacan with a traditional Mexican meal. To our pleasant surprise, it also included a pulque tasting. Pulque is a traditional hispanic alcoholic drink made from agave that has fallen out of favor in modern times, and the family that ran the tour (and also owns an agave farm) is trying to bring more attention to pulque. Traditional pulque tastes basically like Makgeolli (korean white rice wine) which we both liked. They also played around with distilling pulque to be stronger, which tasted like extremely smooth tequila. 
• Walking around the city center – Rick steves wasn’t available for Mexico city, so we found an app that had a tour of the historical city center. While the content was good, the audio of the app struggled and the overall experience was pretty frustrating. We still did get to walk past all the historic buildings, churches, and ruins pretty efficiently. We also detoured to go to the unofficial, small, and densely-packed pokemon store to buy a pack of Spanish pokemon cards. 
• Tony’s food poisoning episode – we had been told earlier to avoid drinking tap water due to sanitary reasons. We tried our best – lugging liters and liters of water to the apartment, boiling our water before cleaning plates, and showering with our mouths closed. But alas, Tony – through either being of weaker disposition or being careless with the water (most likely some combination of both) – got food poisoning. It was pretty bad. Tony has napped a single digit number of times since high school, and he had to take multiple naps.  We doped him up on ibuprofen and pepto bismol, but the pain and nausea lasted for 4 days. Eating anything would cause the runs. Drinking anything would cause the runs. Hell, existing caused the runs. We had to move the pyramid tour because of this and Margaret got to do some solo exploring while Tony was at home, existing and in pain.
• Zelda Tears of the Kingdom – We’ve been waiting for this game to come out for forever – we had snuck in a few hours on the flight from Rome as well as while at Pittsburg, but Mexico City was the first place where we would truly have time to settle in and play. Through an act of god, our apartment had a TV that was perfectly situated in the bedroom, so we spent so much time in there exploring and experiencing Tears of the Kingdom, with more than a few drinking game sessions to liven things up

Where we stayed

We stayed in an Airbnb in the La Condesa neighborhood. It was a nice, hip neighborhood with a lot of parks and little restaurants. We mostly chose it because it was near the Bosque de Chapultepec and at this point we know that having a park to run in is a huge plus for us.

What we ate

• Cooking carefully – we still cooked many meals in our Airbnb, especially when Tony had food poisoning and was only eating bland starches. We disinfected all fruits and veggies and made sure to use boiled water when washing dishes. It’s possible we were being too cautious, but making food like this was a lot harder than normal
• Breakfast at Dona Blanca – This place was basically a block away from our apartment, we ate here so many times. They had a great deal with pastries + coffee + entree for 120 pesos, and all 3 parts were good. The coffee had a bit of a cinnamon-y taste to it, the pastries were big and they were delivered by the pastry man who had a basket full of options. 
• Azul Condesa – We splurged a little to go to Azul, which was a fine dining restaurant in the neighborhood we were staying at. We mainly ordered their classic dishes – fried duck dumpling in mole dish , some really good mango guac (cricket guac is the classic), and a beefy tortilla dish that was Tony’s favorite. It is possible Tony got his food poisoning here, but who knows.
• Tequila – There was a liquor store across the street which we used to get our drinks. We got recommended a local tequila for cheap (~25 dollars) whose label looked very “industrial” but was really smooth.
• Tacos – We had so many tacos. Our first day, we went out to get seafood tacos that were fried to order, and we continued to eat tacos throughout our trip. The last night of our stay, we had the best Al Pastor tacos we’ve ever had. Everything was good – the place we ordered from did not skimp on the toppings, the onions were good, the salsa was good, Tony even had quite a bit of the spicy salsa it was so good
• Hot chocolate and churros – Margaret chanced upon here once while Tony was bedridden, and we went here again after our trip to the pyramids. The chocolate was literally chocolate, incredibly rich and tasty, but hard to have more than a sip at a time. The churros were unlike the costco shaped ones we were accustomed to, wispy, super crunchy, but also dusted in brown sugar and cinnamon. 
• Bottled water – since tap water wasn’t drinkable, we drank and cooked with 65 liters of bottled water. Which we had to buy from a store 10 minutes from us. In big, heavy 20L jugs. Tony’s forearms regrettably did not get larger

Thoughts

Mexico City felt homey and a lot like China, from the somewhat worn out buildings/streets dotted with large parks to the vendors using loud audio recordings on a loop to advertise goods. Due to Tony’s bout with food poisoning, we were unable to explore much of the city, but were able to make the most of our time holed in (playing tears of the kingdom) while making an effort to explore when Tony was better. It’s important to remember that there’s no right way to experience a place, and to be flexible with whatever situation we’re put in