Reasons to fall in love with Mexico City

There’s a newness every morning in Mexico City, as store owners wash their sidewalks and prepare storefronts, the sun peeks over the horizon into the cool blue sky, and vendors take their bikes and carts to the streets to sell tamales, coffee, and more, filling neighborhoods with sounds and smells like urban birds singing. Opportunities to experience this unique and beautiful culture are served up, rolling by, on street corners and peeking out of unexpected places – yours for the taking.

The beginning of my Mexico City love affair

My senior year of college, with and insatiable sense of curiosity about my heritage and claustrophobia in my home state, I decided to study abroad. Not only is it frowned upon to study abroad your senior year, but I also decided to pursue an unofficial study abroad program. The university sent dozens of students each year to Guadalajara, but I didn’t want to hang out only with Americans in Mexico. I discovered that the university had a dormant architectural exchange with a school in Mexico City, so I found the loophole and jumped through it.

I was the only American from my university in Mexico City that year, taking business and design classes. Immediately I made friends with a small group of French foreign exchange students, and shortly thereafter formed lasting friendships with my classmates in business and design. I found the people in Mexico City or Ciudad de México (CDMX) to be incredibly inclusive and welcoming. My first day in accounting, on break, a group of girls got up to go to the cafeteria. As I sat there, one of them whipped around to me and said, “Aren’t you coming?”

I lived a block away from the school with a host family. I’d lived with a host family on a previous exchange in Querétaro, where the mother was a heartless engineering professor, one of the sons (a politician hog of a man) hit on me, and I shared a room with a sweet six-year-old who would wake me up at the crack of the dawn on the weekends. In CDMX, my host family – wonderful intellectual, former clergy parents and a wild, beautiful, and talkative high schooler – quickly became real family, inviting me into their lives and caring for me as their own. I’d found my tribe.

I’m from a very small border town, where for better or for worse, everyone knows everyone. Even when they don’t know you, they know your family and thusly think they know you. You bear the baggage of things that happened decades before you were even born and everything since. When I got to CDMX, I had a shiny clean slate.

Every day’s a shiny opportunity in CDMX

There is a lightness that comes with the anonymity gained in a big city. The opportunities, like the urban sprawl, are endless. You find your people, the places you like, and the things you like to do. Literally each new day is a chance to live the life you want to live. Anything’s possible in Mexico City.

It’s an amazing combination of third-world chaos and unpredictability with European architecture and style; high culture to low-brow (entre más corriente más ambiente); from present-day use of pre-Hispanic language and traditions to ultra-modern advances; from delicious, cheap food on every corner to world-renowned fine Mexican cuisine… Harmonious dichotomies. There’s a tremendous sense of national pride in the country’s heritage, legacy, and culture that is alive and well, woven into the fabric of daily life in the city.

When I studied in CDMX, I lived it up and got to be the person I always wanted to be. And she was cool. Other people thought so, and so did I. I love the Mexico-City-me. Over the years, I’d lost track of her, but I still see her reflected in my CDMX family’s eyes. So, going back to CDMX on vacation 20+ years later, a different person from the kid I was, would I love the city as I once had?

My husband and I planned a five-day trip. We’d stay a night with his bestie from our hometown and the rest of the time with my host sister, or my Mexican sister as I’ve always referred to her, now a grown, successful entrepreneur and creative with a family of her own.

Traveler’s pro tip

As with every trip I go on, I built out an agenda – literally a list of possibilities, with loose geographical groupings, day trips, an attraction wish list, and well-researched places to eat. Then I pencil things in by day, and I make sure to take an eraser because everything is fluid. This is an agenda to maximize the fun in a limited amount of time – nothing more, nothing less.

Every night, my husband and dear friends would humor my OCD and we’d regroup over (mucho) mezcal into the wee hours of the morning on the plans for the coming day, checking things off the list and shifting plans to accommodate our whims.

I must add that my week’s agenda left very little time to sleep, and so we slept very little. But I am also witness to the fact that you can spend a week in CDMX and not see everything.

Again, these are possibilities – not a plan. Go with the flow, CDMX-style.

The first image is the agenda we began the trip with. Very different from the one we ended up with (second image). 100% worth it. The yellow items on the right are sights we got to see, and the blue ones on the left weren’t on the original list. Feel free to use this list to help plan your trip.

A week’s agenda in CDMX

There were hiccups in the plan: protests downtown (as there often are) so stores and attractions closed, and it was drizzly the day we went. We didn’t spend a whole day in the Zócalo, but it was beautiful nonetheless, and we had an amazing dinner overlooking the city at Paxia by Daniel Ovadía. Also, many of the museums we wanted to see were closed the day we wanted to go.

Definitely the biggest highlight for me was being reunited with my Mexican sister and spending time with her and her amazing family. Nothing had changed since the last time we were together, except for the sense of completeness I suddenly felt being there and my expanding waistline.

Second of the happy surprises was how the city has developed and improved since I lived there, both in terms of infrastructure, public transportation, and sightseeing opportunities.

And last, I was very happy about our deviations from the plan (going to the top of the Monumento a la Revolución and a fantastic meal overlooking the Monumento at Arango) and unscheduled time, connecting with our loved ones – family and friends – having meaningful, soul-igniting conversations.

Bonus points: my husband did not spend all his time on social media, and even forgot to post during our stay, un verdadero milagro. Because he was busy living his best life!

So was CDMX as great as I remembered it?

All of the things that captivated me about the city remain: the culture, the cuisine, the beauty, and the warmth of the people – the warmth of my people. To a certain extent, my worlds collided, but our visit revived a part of me that had dulled over time.

The key to a memorable vacation, whether it’s in the gloriousness of Mexico City or another place where you can be your best self, is to find your people and your sanctuary. It’s the chance to discover, find, inspire, and be who you want to be. For me, by now you probably know where that place is for me.

CDMX inherently urges you to abandon your prejudices, with every new day and in every moment. When you visit, leave your small-town baggage behind and bring a half-empty suitcase and open mind, because you’re going to want to bring some of the magic back home.