Girl Trip 2024: Ciudad de México (Nov 16 2024)

Saturday, November 16, 2024

Greetings from Mexico City / Saludos desde la Ciudad de Mexico

For those of you who follow this travel blog series, you know that I participate in an annual “girls trip.” There are about five of us, with two who are the regulars (and probably considered the instigators and planners) and there are another three who join in from time to time, depending on availability, timing, and interest in the particular location. Over the years, we have gone to Marfa, Texas; Santa Fe, NM; Detroit, MI; Washington DC; NYC; Toronto; Amsterdam and surrounds; Montreal; Provence, France; and more. So this time it’s Mexico City and there are three of us. I’m the only one who’s been to Mexico City; the others have been to Mexico but not Mexico City.

My flight was fine except for my seatmate – an Aussie who went to Harvard Biz School and who thinks Trump will be great for America… and the world. Thinks Trump will “shake things up.” I rarely talk to anyone on the plane and usually just have my Earpods on and shuffle papers if anyone wants to talk. But he asked a question and somehow we chatted a bit… just as the food came, so that I couldn’t really hold any papers. And he started to talk about the US election and it was downhill from there. Fortunately after he made a few statements about his point of view (which I naturally objected to), I decided it was enough and put my Earpods in and that was that. At the end of the flight as I stood up to leave he wished me well and he said that he had never talked to anyone who was so opinionated about politics.

I managed to find my two friends at the airport despite landing at different terminals, so that was a good start. We had decided to stay in Coyoacán as the starting point; we will relocate after a few days to be more central. Once we decided on Mexico City and realized we only had about 5-6 days, we decided we needed a “theme” for our trip. Given that Mexico City (to my mind, having been here several times before, for longer periods than this trip) is like NYC on steroids, we thought having a focus would be a good way to see specific and also other things. Our theme is Frida Kahlo (and Diego Rivera), so the plan is to visit Frida’s house and museum and several of Diego’s extraordinary murals. And then, in between going to these destination places, I’m sure we’ll be stopping at many markets and walking different neighborhoods. Still it’s a very short time.

We arrived at about 7:40 pm tonight and taxied to our hotel in Coyoacán and were delighted when we arrived at the hotel: H21 Hospedaje Boutique Hotel. It’s a wonderful, very small (I think only 6 or 8 rooms (and we have three of them!) located on a narrow street about a block from the main plaza which was totally bustling when we walked there at about 10:00 pm to get some dinner. I love that it is easy to get dinner really late and that most restaurants are open until at least midnight every night—- my kinda town! We had dinner at Corazón de Maguey— foodie alert. Food was great, especially the guacamole with grasshoppers; plantains stuffed with brie cheese, sitting on black mole with cream and a sort of goat cheese. We also had little empanadas and chicken sous vide.. oh and of course dessert –a corn cake with vanilla cream, blueberries, and vanilla ice cream. We finished at around midnight and strolled through the plaza which was still buzzing… and then settled into each of our rooms.

By the way, Coyoacán is Mexico City’s oldest neighborhood and what I remember is that it is totally charming. In the 1500s Cortes made Coyoacán the capital of “New Spain.” Then the capital was moved to Mexico City which is a bit north. Originally there was farmland and lake waters that separated Mexico City from Coyoacán. But by the 20th Century this physical gap between the two “cities” was overcome with urban sprawl and Coyoacán got incorporated into Mexico City… Still, Coyoacán retains a very distinct feel amid the many neighborhoods of Mexico City and is less of a tourist destination than many other neighborhoods (or at least that used to be the case, so I hope 10 years hasn’t changed it much). When I last stayed in Coyoacán (about ten years ago on one of my many efforts to learn Spanish) it was a bit sleepy and had only a few really good restaurants. Well I know that has changed. It’s flooded with great restaurants and I think we will be challenged trying to figure out which to choose.

Coyoacán means something like place of the coyotes and that brand (coyotes) is everywhere.

More tomorrow. Need to unpack and get to sleep.
Fern