Violet Sky

Mexico City! Much like Québec City last year, Mexico City has been on my husband’s bucket list for many years. It is the largest city in North America, with approximately 22 million people in the metropolitan area, but somehow tends gets lost in the fog of misunderstandings about what Mexico has to offer.

Similar to the trip last year, the trigger for going on this trip was a Google Flights alert. We had loosely decided to go to Guatemala for spring break, but were tracking prices waiting for them to come down a little. On a whim, I also started tracking flights to Mexico City. One day, first class tickets dropped in price, so I jumped and booked the flights – we were doing it!

Our flights down were uneventful, with a reasonable layover in LAX. The first leg was Delta, followed by Aeromexico, thanks to their partnership. To our surprise, they actually served a dinner that we could eat – the bagel and smoked salmon (leaving out the cream cheese) was a good holdover, especially when paired with the salad. We also met another American couple with a wife who worked in tech and a husband who worked in education, which was kind of fun.

We landed in MEX at around dinner time, so it was good that we’d had a bit to eat. Having done research ahead of time, I knew that Uber worked normally in Mexico City, but also that they had a nice metro system. The metro system was going to take an hour to get us to the Airbnb, so we went with the 20 minute Uber trip given that it was dinner time and we’d spent most of the day traveling at that point.

We booked our Airbnb for the view, and wow, it did not disappoint. I’ve been, as I mentioned in previous posts, trying to move away from Airbnb as a platform, but this was one of the first places I saw when I took a peek at Airbnb prices and it was absolutely perfect – high rise, giant bath in the middle (my husband loves baths), fairly close to Roma Norte, a prominent expat/tourist neighborhood. Unfortunately, something I hadn’t thought of when booking is that floor-to-ceiling windows in a high sunshine area means floor-to-ceiling heat absorption, so we pretty much immediately had to run down to the closest La Comer to buy a fan to circulate the AC doing its best on the other side of the room.

The next day, we set out to explore Roma Norte in advance of the Lucha Libre match we were set to watch. I had been anxious watching Instagram reels of the jacarandas in Mexico City flowering, hoping that we would arrive in time to see them, so imagine my delight when we got there and they were still in bloom! I have probably 50 photos of flowering jacarandas in my camera roll, but I’ll spare everyone the deluge. We walked around Roma Norte, visiting a book store, a record store, and an alley market that had, among other things, kittens for sale, vintage clothing, and Delta-8 gummy worms. I usually use international trips as an opportunity to take a tolerance break, but couldn’t resist trying the gummy worms when the opportunity presented itself.

After a day of exploring, including visiting the gorgeous Angel of Independence, we took the metro over to Arena Mexico an hour early to go to our Lucha Libre show. There, since we had so much time, we let a man beckon us over to his taco stand, where we had some absolutely excellent tacos at a somewhat elevated (but not unreasonably so) price. I think it was something like $0.83/taco at the exchange rate at the time. The taco stand was cash only, but he waved off our concern and let us roam to an ATM to pull out enough pesos to pay for the meal after we’d eaten.

Once we were ready to enter Arena Mexico, we were separated: women were all being patted down and bag-checked by a couple female police officers, while men were being handled by the abundance of male police officers guarding the entrance to the arena. Once inside, an usher rushed up to us, asked to see our tickets, and then beckoned for another usher to bring us to our seats. We were asked for a tip by this second usher once we were led to our seats; luckily for him, we had some smaller denominations, because the two minute task was not worth the MX$500s in my wallet.

Now, I’m not an American wrestling fan, and had little context for Lucha Libre outside of the 2006 Jack Black film, Nacho Libre, so my husband and I watched the Lucha Mexico documentary on YouTube prior to this trip. The event had five matches, starting with what seemed like the least experienced/prestigious and working its way up to the main stars of the event. The final match, from the video above, was easily the most entertaining, but we found that some of the more novice wrestlers were more entertaining than the matches mid-way through the event. The whole thing was a lot of fun, and I was glad that we were able to make it work with our schedule.

Leaving the venue afterwards was a bit of a madhouse, so we worked our way away from the crush and found a quieter side street to hail our Uber from and head back to the Airbnb.

The next day, we embarked on a food tour that I had seen recommended on Reddit. Eat Like A Local is a woman-owned company that also runs a sort of scholarship program for local young girls. I had briefly emailed them to ask about egg and soy in the tour food, and they were very quick to get back to me that both were minimally present, so we chose the Mexican Food 101 tour.

We met at a coffee shop in Condesa, a neighborhood not too far from Roma Norte, and started the tour, first stopping at a tacos de canasta, or basket tacos, vendor. Tacos de canasta are put inside a basket and have hot oil poured in with them, which steams the tacos. The next taco stand had steamed lamb meat tacos, which were served with pickled cactus. After that, we made our way over by foot to the first market.

La Merced Market has been in Mexico City for over a century and is the largest market in the city. Here, you can buy pretty much anything – clothes, trinkets, candies, fresh fruit and vegetables, dried produce, flowers, and more. We had a sampler of pambazos and quesadillas as we wound through the different stalls.

Next, we were taken to a stall that served fresh honey pineapple juice (with or without tequila, we both chose “with”) and deep-fried insects. Most of our tour group was very brave, save for one lady who couldn’t be talked into it. I had the most trouble with the scorpions and the largest black beetle – the scorpion was setting off some lizard brain “don’t eat that, it’s dangerous!” warning, while the second one was just so big that it was hard to imagine eating it. For both cases, I turned my brain off, picked one up, and put it in my mouth before I could think too hard about it. The scorpion tasted like parmesan cheese and the largest beetle tasted like cocoa, but my favorite was the smaller black beetle, as it had a little spicy and lime seasoning on it like a Taki.

After this, we hopped on the metro and took it to a second market, Jamaica Market. This market is not nearly as old as the previous market, being established in 1957, but is known for its huge array of beautiful flowers for sale. It also had several restaurant stalls, including one with pork prepared in a variety of ways (we both especially loved the pork cheek tacos). Our final taco stop had us trying green chorizo, which typically has green peppers and cilantro added; this taco instead used spinach and ground pumpkin seeds.

Of course, we had to take a look at all the flowers! There were tons of cut flowers, ready to arrange, as well as enormous bouquets – I didn’t get a picture of the largest one, but it was easily the size of a medium-sized dinner table. We were given time to wander around looking at flowers and buying anything we might want. When we met up again, we were given a taste of esquites. We had a choice between the traditional preparation, with mayonnaise and cheese, or an alternate preparation with lard and peppers; since we both are lactose-intolerant, we chose the latter option and were both really happy with the choice. After, we got back on the metro and headed back to Condesa, where our final stop was at a popsicle stand.

The tour took approximately 4.5 hours, so we had a little time to fill after it was done. We hoped to make it to the anthropology museum before it closed, but didn’t quite get it done. There’s a park and a botanical garden nearby, so it was still a nice walk, replete with jacarandas.

Now, I’m going to be honest with you. At this stage of the trip, I was experiencing some digestive distress. I have IBS, so my digestion is usually in a manageable amount of distress, but this was above and beyond the normal noise. A good portion of the time after the market tour was spent trying to locate public restrooms that were open. I learned quickly that public restrooms that were open and stocked with anything more than a toilet seat was a tall order, but I luckily had some tissues in my purse. We had dinner that night in a very tourist-friendly and very pricey (for Mexico City) restaurant that nonetheless had some good al pastor tacos from the trompo.

On the plus side, an advantage to all this meandering around looking for bathrooms is that I found this amazing flowering agave plant – it was enormous!

Having come that close to making it to the national anthropology museum, our first order of business the next day was to go back to it. I love history, and I especially love looking at Old Things that long-ago people used to interact with, so having a museum specifically centered around Mexican anthropology was especially exciting.

At this point, my husband was also experiencing digestive distress, so I had the opportunity to flex my minimal Spanish by buying our tickets while he visited the museum’s facilities. “Dos personas, por favor!” The museum starts with an enormous foyer that gives access to the gift shop, and then directs you towards the actual exhibits by sending you back outside. The centerpiece of that entrance is this sizable fountain, which is also holding up the roof providing shade for that section of the courtyard.

Directly behind it is the Aztec exhibit; to the left is the Mayan exhibit, and to the right is the exhibit about Teotihuacán. After getting me some lunch (my husband wasn’t hungry), we bee-lined for the Aztec exhibit, in hopes of beating the large tour group who was lumbering en masse towards it.

The centerpiece of the Aztec exhibit was this massive stone carving, pictured first in the slideshow. Originally, anthropologists had thought it was a calendar, but later figured out that it was a representation of the sun. The next photo shows another massive stone carving; this one had a small well in the center and a drainage line carved out from the well, as it was used for holding the hearts during human sacrifice. The exhibit also featured a miniature representation of what their sacrificial altars looked like, a diorama of the ceremonial complex at the center of the Aztec city, and a large photo of what Mexico City looked like before the Spaniards arrived.

The Mayans had a noticeably different art style from the Aztecs – even as I’m sorting through these photos to write this post, it was immediately apparent to me when I had exited the Aztec exhibit and entered the Mayan exhibit.

The Mayan exhibit was not quite as large as the Aztec one, but it was close, and it had several very large preserved facades that the Aztec exhibit didn’t. The most interesting part of the exhibit was the tomb and burial garb of Pakal the Great. The last two slides in the slideshow show the jade-encrusted garb his skeleton was found buried in, as well as the actual sarcophagus. The sarcophagus was enormous and must have been built first, with the pyramid he was found in built around it.

At this point, we had been at the museum for an hour and a half. On trips like these, we tend to blast through all the activities like a locomotive on the loose, with a, “We’ll sleep when we’re home,” mentality. But after we finished the Mayan exhibit and started walking across the courtyard to the exhibit on Teotihuacán, I took stock of how I was feeling, turned to my husband, and said, “Man, I’m not doing too good. I think I need to sit for a bit.”

We found an unoccupied, shady bench and sat, and I googled altitude sickness for the first time. While I didn’t have headaches or dizziness, I had some of the other symptoms, including uncharacteristic fatigue, nausea, and overall lack of appetite. My husband had those same symptoms, plus insomnia. What a fun way to learn that you get altitude sickness!

With this realization, we decided we were going to look at the Teotihuacán exhibit and then return to the Airbnb to rest.

The most exciting part of this exhibit was this 2500 year old carving. This matches the age of the Greek walls I saw in Naples during our 2023 Italy trip, which is interesting to think about. There were also lots of little figurines; some represented motherhood, and others the duality of life and death. I’ll admit that I didn’t absorb as much from this section because I was flagging pretty hard.

After we rested at the Airbnb for a couple of hours, we decided to take an Uber to the historic center of Mexico City.

The historic center is dominated by a large plaza, which on this day happened to be hosting what looked like a public chess tournament. The plaza is lined with government buildings, and also the church built by the Spaniards on top of the Aztec civilization that was originally here. There are even windows in the ground leading up to the stairs of the church, showing the original steps from the Aztec pyramids that had been torn down and built over.

The church itself was actually two attached churches, one larger and more ornate than the other. The larger church had two enormous pipe organs that I only wish I could have heard in use, plus a variety of highly decorated prayer areas around the perimeter of nave. I’m a sucker for an enormous, ornate church, so I enjoyed the first half more than the second.

After we emerged from the church, we sort of wandered away from where we had entered the plaza, and immediately found preserved Aztec ruins, which ended up being the Templo Mayor, a UNESCO world heritage site. It also was the site of an even bigger flowering agave plant. Absolutely magnificent.

For a nominal entry fee, we immediately went underground into the start of the museum, then wandered through the temple complex enjoying what was left of the facade and painted stone. Snakes, frogs, and skeletons dominated the decorations here. On some parts of the stone, you could still see the original red paint that they preferred.

The museum sort of guides you in a loose circle around the perimeter of the ruins, so eventually you get some fairly picturesque views of the Aztec ruins in the foreground and the Spanish church that supplanted them in the background. It then guides you into the museum building itself, where more artifacts and explanations of the history here can be found.

It feels silly to say this now that I know, but I thought that the knives with the eyes looked like fish the first time I saw them, without a placard. It turns out these were not fish, but faces, because these were knives used for human sacrifice. Oops. The temple here had several different walls made of skulls carved into stone, which were represented both in the original setting and as a standalone wall inside the museum itself.

While we didn’t have time to go inside the Palacio de Bellas Artes, we still went out of our way to go by the outside and check out the building itself. The plaza it was in was bustling with people, and we walked by a trio rap battling each other in Spanish as we made our way to our Uber pickup spot. We had to get back to the Airbnb to rest, because we were going to the Concacaf quarter files game between Cruz Azul and Club America!

As an aggressive pre-planner, I found myself stymied when looking for tickets to this game. First, it seemed like they weren’t for sale anywhere two months before the event, which seemed incredibly unlikely – had they sold out the entire stadium already? I found some resale tickets online, but at suspiciously inflated prices. Eventually, digging around on Reddit, I learned that tickets for the event go on sale much closer to the event. I also read some advice about how far down to sit (rows 1-3 have an occluded view), which was nice. The day before we were supposed to leave for Mexico City, the tickets finally went on sale, and I grabbed these nice, close-in seats.

I’ve been to MLS games in the past, but MLS is lower on the social totem pole than other American sports, so I was curious what the environment in soccer-focused country would be. Both teams playing were based in Mexico City, so there were no travel or elevation considerations for either team. The streets immediately surrounding the stadium were blocked off by police, so our Uber drive got us as close as he could and told us to walk to the numbered entrance gate from our tickets.

There wasn’t much of a line to get into the game, and after going through security, where my husband had to throw away his belt, we were led down the very steep, particularly narrow stairs from the upper level down into the lower part of the bowl. A tip was requested for this unprompted service, but after Arena Mexico, we expected it and were ready to fish some pesos out. The stadium had a somewhat sparse but regular police presence observing the stands from the sidelines. The supporter’s section had the usual flags and drums that you’d expect, but eventually I noticed that the entire section was closed in by barbed wire fences, and inside the fences, the perimeter was lined with police. Definitely the biggest difference between this game and any MLS game I’ve been to!

The section we were in was mostly made up to Club America fans, who seemed very confident that their team would win, though there were a few Cruz Azul fans sprinkled in. Not wanting to have to navigate the steep stairs and find the bathroom, I didn’t take advantage of any of the enormous beers, prepared Top Ramen, or other treats being peddled around us the entire game. It was not the most thrilling game, and ended with a 0-0 tie.

The next day, we were scheduled to go out to Teotihuacán. I had gone back and forth about whether or not my stomach and fatigue could handle an hour car ride each way, but decided to load up on Imodium and force myself through it because I had been looking forward to this part of the trip the whole time. We pre-scheduled an Uber for pick up at 10 am, since everything I had read online about Teotihuacán said that if you show up before noon, you’ll miss most of the crowds. I also made sure to go get some more pesos out of the ATM, because I had read that it was common for Uber drivers who drive you out to offer to wait around for the drive back, but paid in cash.

The pickup went off without a hitch and we settled in for the long ride. Immediately after getting in the car, the driver, sure enough, asked if we wanted him to drive us back for cash. We agreed and, an hour later, showed up at the gates of Teotihuacán.

We entered the complex, dodging the people offering a paid tour of the grounds, and made our way into the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. One of the temples was available to climb, and had very deep steps – walking up was challenging, but coming back down was scarier as we had to shuffle sideways to maintain balance.

We continued down the Avenue of the Dead towards the Sun Pyramid, admiring the cacti as we went. Since our driver was going to wait for us, we were able to take the slower pace that the altitude sickness required, and found ourselves resting near the bathrooms and vending machines for a bit. Nothing in the vending machines worked with our food restrictions, but luckily I had grabbed a sleeve of Oreos at Oxxo the night before so we were able to have a small snack while I tried to convince the local lizards to let me catch them.

It used to be that you could climb to the top of the Sun Pyramid and see the whole view, but at some point, that seems to have changed. Nonetheless, there was an opposing platform that made it easy to get a good picture of the largest pyramid. The Sun Pyramid had a guard standing at the top of it, thanks to an incident with a German tourist earlier this year. Interestingly, the inner layers of the pyramids had small, dark rocks stuck into the binding agent holding the larger rocks together.

The Avenue of the Dead finishes at the Moon Pyramid, which you also cannot climb but which is surrounded nicely by additional temples and structures. Some of them still have the original red and blue paints used back in the city’s heyday. For one of them, we had to go underground to look at the decorations on the inside of the temple, which were painted parrots and flowers. I really liked that you could see the layers of the walls in this area, since much of what you see now lacks the original facades.

Our phone call to the waiting Uber driver had him showing up at the Moon Pyramid’s entrance fairly shortly, and we had an uneventful ride back to the Airbnb. Moreover, nobody had any unsolvable emergencies while we were away from our home base (toilet), so I was glad that I had powered through the experience, though I was definitely exhausted and needed a few hours of relaxation to recover after the fact.

Our final day in Mexico City was fairly open-ended. I was grateful that we had blasted through most of the trip in our usual fashion, as the only thing left on our wish list was visiting the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and seeing a small market in a different part of town. I was still struggling quite a bit today, so we wandered over to a very nice mall, where we had a lunch that I couldn’t finish thanks to my persistent lack of appetite. Afterwards, we went to Coyoacan Market. This was very similar to the markets from our food tour, except much smaller and with many of the stalls asking for no photos or videos taken. We intended to go to UNAM next, but after a deeply unpleasant paid bathroom experience that neither of us had the option of skipping, we threw in the towel, went back to the Airbnb, and readied ourselves for our morning flight home the next day.

I usually wait a while to start writing these trip reports, mostly because I’m exhausted from the trip and want some time for things to settle before I start pecking out my thoughts. In this case, I’m glad that I took the extra month+ for things to settle and to get some of my thoughts in order. When we left Mexico City, my husband intimated that he might never want to come back because of how miserable the combination of Moctezuma’s Revenge and the altitude sickness made both of us the whole trip. While that resonated emotionally with me at the time, I’ve found that my sentiments about a location tend to soften over time, so I wasn’t ready to commit quite yet to writing off the entire city. He did, for the record, change his mind after a few days at home.

Our location, overall, was good. Next time, I’d pick a spot closer to a metro station, as it was just a little too easy to call a cheap Uber when the other option was a 20 minute walk to the nearest metro station. I’d also come better equipped for stomach upset, and now that I know that I get altitude sickness, I’d also make sure that we had a longer trip so that the effects could fully wear off after a while. Maybe a week of relaxing in a nice hotel followed by a week of adventuring, for example. Teotihuacán was the highlight of the trip, followed closely by the two sporting events we saw, and I feel like Mexico City has a lot more to offer both in terms of sports and history. I think we did the best we could with a trip that ended up being tougher than both of us expected, and now that the intestinal cramps are a thing of the past, I can say that I would, indeed, come back to Mexico City.

As a side note, I told my mom that I got altitude sickness while we were there, and she said, “Oh yes, you used to get it every time we’d go up to {neighbor}’s ski cabin.” I do remember spending those trips always laying around doing very little while other people went out and had fun, but I didn’t remember why, so imagine my surprise that this was a known quantity about me after all. It’s certainly moved Lima, Peru a touch further down on my list of places I want to go!