Mexico City

February 2-4, 2018

February 2.

My friend and I have now decided that once a month we're going to go somewhere, anywhere, and she decided to "give" me a trip to Mexico City, and she went to Oslo the weekend prior.  I needed warmth, sun, and Spanish.  She was originally going to go with me but her flight plans fell through, so it was just me.  Thankfully I'm totally okay being a solo traveler, even though the majority of my solo travels involves me going somewhere to meet up with someone.  It helps if there's no language barrier, but I can still find my way around regardless.  Language barriers are non-existent for me in Mexico aside from some dialectal differences, but no big deal.

I had already been to Mexico four years prior on a work trip that took me to Puebla for two weeks, along with a day and a half in Mexico City.  I fell in love with it; Puebla being absolutely gorgeous, and Mexico City was just as fascinating.  I called out sick that morning while at the airport (because it was a 6 am flight), and landed in CDMX shortly after 12, local time.

It was warm, sunny, and gorgeous.  I took the subway to the center and walked to the hotel where I waited to check in and for my room to be ready, and set off wandering around after settling in.  My hotel was about two blocks from the Plaza de la Constitución, or the Zócalo, so a very centralized location which allowed for optimal walking.  I like to walk, so it was a win-win.

Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Fine Arts Museum.  Which I didn't enter, but is still a lovely building.

I walked quite a bit, just getting to know the area and finding random streets to turn down, finding myself along the Paseo de la Reforma, the main artery of the modern city.  Finding places to eat is super hard for me when I'm by myself, since I am horrible at making decisions and I really hate eating by myself.  I don't know if it's an introvert thing or a social thing or I don't know, but I really just hate eating in silence.  I was starving though, and stopped at a sit-down place that turned out to be a chain that served Argentinian food, and it worked out okay.  I still really hate eating by myself, so my food intake on solo trips like this is minimal.

I headed back to the hotel afterwards since it was getting dark and cold, because even though Mexico City is pretty far south in the country, it's at a very high altitude (over a mile) and so the air is thinner.  It's technically tropical (it's further south than Cancún latitude-wise), but the nights are cold, especially in the winter.  It still felt amazing walking around however, and I love the sights, sounds and smells of city life.

Plus everything changes from day to night.

February 3.

I only had one thing on the agenda to see while in Mexico City that I wasn't guaranteed to see by staying in the center, which was the Vasconcelos library.  It's part of the university but is also public, and located farther north.  But I'd seen pictures and heard about it, and it looks absolutely spectacular.  While most large libraries have many floors that aren't always visible upon entrance, the Vasoncelos library has one central hallway and two floors, but everything's visible from the main hallway, with all the books being on shelves located on staircases and shelving on either side, going up hundreds and hundreds of feet.  It absolutely gives you this sense of enormity and the knowledge that this place has so many books it's my idea of what an ideal library should look like.  You go into this library and just feel so overwhelmed by all the books you feel like you should be reading because there are so many, and I'm not reading enough to do anything justice!  It was stunning.  I walked from one end to the other, just looking up, and enjoying the experience of simply being in such a massive and beautiful building architecturally, and from the perspective of a shameless book lover.

"Overwhelming" doesn't even begin to describe it.

I felt like a better, smarter person just for having gone in there.

When I left, I no longer knew what to do with my day, and considered taking the long way back to the hotel.  What ended up being "the long way back" took me a distance of about five miles, and then I went back to the hotel.  Because when I walk, I really really walk.  I took a road that gave me views of skyscrapers, so I went that way, which took me past the Monumento a la Revolución and back down Paseo de la Reforma, where I ended up walking past the Ángel de la Independencia, Fuente de Diana Cazadora, and into the Bosque de Chapultepec.  You'll see in the map at the end of the day just how much this encompasses.  But it was all worth it, because walking relaxes me, especially through cities.  I work in Manhattan, and I love to take my hour-long lunch break to walk around Chelsea or NoMad/Flatiron and just wander around.  It's always a very similar walk because there's only so far you can go in one hour (I usually take 40 minutes), but it's so nice to just walk around.  When the weather and temperature are nice I also use Friday evenings to walk through Downtown Manhattan.

So anyway, I really love walking, and it doesn't tire me out so much as it does allow me to just really experience places, especially if I'm short on time, as in this case.  I really only had one full day.

Monumento a la Revolución, or Monument to the Revolution

The business district of Mexico City

Ángel de la Independencia, Angel of Independence, the primary monument in Mexico City

Along each side of the main avenue there were these sculptures done by local artists using extremely intricate beadwork.

It was absolutely spectacular.

Along my walk, I found this patch of green space, which always attracts me in major cities, and that was how I discovered the Bosque de Chapultepec, which is this massive park area that houses a few museums and walking paths that covers a space about three or four times larger than Central Park.  I didn't have a whole lot of time, but I did manage to walk through a good chunk of the park, and it was so beautiful and relaxing.

Monumento a la Juventud Heroica, Monument to Heroic Youth

Facing the Paseo de la Reforma

After a while I turned back and headed in the opposite direction, back towards the city center where my hotel was.

Fuente de Diana Cazadora, Fountain of Diana the Huntress

Ángel de la República.  There is no actual crosswalk, so to get there, you have to wait for the cars to stop, as it's the middle of a massive rotunda/traffic circle.  Fun times.

Palacio de Bellas Artes

Pegasus in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, with the Torre Latinoamericana in the background.  It's a rather weird-looking Empire State Building-esque monstrosity that is located in the historic section and looks like it hasn't been renovated ever.  It's part of its charm and I suppose, as it's rather iconic.

I ended up back in the city center, and walked around the Zócalo, or Plaza de la Constitución in front of the cathedral for a bit.  It was completely empty but still barricaded, so I couldn't actually go into it and get better views of the Plaza.

It was on my way back to the hotel where I found a clothing store I recognized from Spain but that doesn't exist in the US (like a lot of nice things), so I did some shopping.  I'm not really big on "souvenirs" since I just take pictures all the time, but I do like to buy clothing and stuff every once in a while, because I actually use it (for the most part) and because I don't like to have obnoxiously "foreign" things.  But that's a personal preference.  I generally just prefer to take pictures as my souvenirs.

So I bought a few things, went back to the hotel, and didn't leave.  I'd been out for over five hours, had walked over five miles, and while I wasn't exactly tired, I really didn't feel like leaving.  So I didn't.

February 4.

I didn't go anywhere except to the airport for my nine o'clock flight.  It was sad to leave because I really do love Mexico.  It reminds me so much of Spain in a way, while also being so completely different and special in its own way.  Being able to speak Spanish certainly helps, but I'm generally not a very communicative person so it didn't make that much of a difference, though it was certainly a bonus in the hotel and in the restaurant.

I really don't believe in not going back to a place if you've been there once, because I'm also of the belief that every time you go somewhere you have a different experience.  Every time I go to Barcelona it's different, and even when I go back to the Basque Country I just love to experience that warmth I crave so much when I'm not there.  So you can certainly be sure I'll keep going back to Mexico and Mexico City, because both places are just so big there is so much still to experience and see, on both a cultural level and on the experience itself.

Flying past two major volcanoes in Mexico: Popocatéptl in the background and Iztaccihuatl in the foreground.

Popo-Izta