I didn't expect to love Mexico City the way that I did. I expected to like it — I'd heard enough from enough people with good taste that I knew it would deliver. But liking something and having it rearrange something quiet inside you are two different things, and Mexico City did the latter, mostly without my permission.
We arrived in Condesa, which is where you'll likely land if you've done any research at all, and it took about forty-five minutes of walking before I understood why people move there and don't come back. It's the kind of neighborhood that feels like someone took Brooklyn, dropped it into a jungle, gave everyone a dog and a croissant, and said: go. The streets are lined with trees so big and so old they've started lifting the sidewalks. Art Deco buildings lean into each other like old friends mid-gossip. And the dogs — god, the dogs. I have never in my life seen so many magnificently behaved animals. They were everywhere. Cafes, bookstores, a black-walled restaurant where every dish arrived looking like an edible art installation and the cocktails came with more theater than the food. These dogs were sitting calmly at their owners' feet like they'd completed some kind of Swiss boarding school obedience program and were now simply living their best, most dignified lives. My own dog, at home, would have been escorted out of the country.
What you should know about Condesa — and what our local friends told us over mezcal one night — is that the whole neighborhood used to be a racetrack. The Jockey Club built it in 1910 for Mexico City's elite, who apparently found bullfighting a bit much and preferred something more European. The track ran for about fifteen years before the whole operation folded, and rather than tear it up, they turned the oval into what is now Avenida Ámsterdam — a tree-lined circular boulevard that still traces the exact shape of the old course. Parque México sits at the center, right where the infield would have been. You can walk the whole loop and feel, underneath your feet, the ghost of something that used to run.
I preferred Roma Norte, honestly. The architecture is even more beautiful there, the museums are good, and it felt slightly less excavated by expats — though that's changing fast. We visited a pop art museum that I can't for the life of me remember the name of and loved every room of. We stumbled into a piñata exhibition at a museum in the Centro that stopped me in my tracks. The Centro itself is a different city entirely from Condesa — grittier, louder, barely any tourists — and we felt completely fine. Exposed and alive in the way that good cities make you feel, not anxious.
Our friends, who are actually from there, took us to the lucha libre fights and I cannot stress enough that this is non-negotiable if you go. They made us buy masks at the door. I rooted for the villain. We drank cold beer and screamed our faces off alongside a crowd of families and grandmothers who were absolutely feral in the best possible way, and I thought: there is nowhere else on earth I would rather be right now.
The same friends took us to Shhhh bar on a listening night — a dark room, old fashioneds, and Björk coming at you from every direction through speakers that cost more than my rent. We sat completely still and I thought about how rarely I let myself just be in a room, held by sound, not performing anything for anyone.
On a Sunday we wandered into a park where a large group of senior citizens, dressed magnificently — we're talking heels, silk blouses, guayaberas ironed to a razor edge — were doing cumbia and salsa to a live band. There were lessons happening on one side, romances blooming on the other, and in the middle just total, uncomplicated joy. My partner, who is Colombian, was immediately and enthusiastically adopted by several women who wanted a turn. I stood there grinning like an idiot and felt something I can only describe as: oh. This is what it looks like when people know how to live.
The food situation deserves its own paragraph. The panaderías alone nearly broke me. Every morning we stuffed our faces like greedy raccoons — lemon curd donuts, chocolate croissants, pastries I didn't have names for and didn't need to. Rosetta and Odette were favorites. Our friends took us to divey taco spots that were better than our fine dining night at Contramar, which was lovely but proved the point that in Mexico City, the best food is often in the least assuming room. They also told us immediately: never eat the lettuce. Never. Street cart cilantro, also, use your judgment. We listened without question. These are the instructions you follow.
We made it to Coyoacán for a few nights near the end, and the shift in pace was exactly what we needed. It's about twenty minutes from Condesa and it is charming in the way of somewhere that knows exactly what it is and isn't trying to be anything else. Colorful buildings, flowering gardens, the kind of square where you want to eat outside and order slowly. You can walk past Frida Kahlo's house — the Blue House, La Casa Azul — and feel the particular weight of standing somewhere a person made their whole world. We stayed at Casa Tamayo, a small hotel that used to be a family home, and the daughter converted it into an inn with a kitchen guests can use, a living room bar where you end up talking to strangers until late, and a walled backyard where two enormous golden retrievers will sit on your feet if you let them. The rooms are simple. The hot water was consistent — which, after eight days at Hotel San Fernando in Condesa where the building was beautiful and the water was aggressively lukewarm and the noise never fully stopped, felt genuinely miraculous. San Fernando looks better in photos than it is. Book somewhere else and walk past it to admire the architecture.
We lucked into a cultural festival in the public garden — traditional dancing, color, the whole thing — and one evening caught the Festival de Luces, which is an outdoor light art installation that takes over the city and is, frankly, impossible to describe adequately. Just go. Find out when it is. Go.
Here's the thing nobody tells you clearly enough: eight days in Mexico City is not enough. It's enough to fall in love and enough to embarrass yourself with how much you missed. Ten days is the minimum to feel like you actually lived there briefly rather than passed through. A month would start to do it justice. We had eight, and I'm still grieving the things we didn't get to. A hot air balloon over the ruins at Teotihuacán. The boat through the canals. The Island of the Dolls, which is haunted and amazing and on the list for next time, non-negotiably. The drag brunch on a canal boat, which exists and is apparently spectacular. Parque Quetzalcóatl — the rainbow organic architecture park by Javier Senosiain that is all over your TikTok feed and very much on mine — is in the city but still a serious trek; file that one under "next time, with a plan." And then there's Grutas Tolantongo, hot spring pools carved into a mountainside in Hidalgo that look so impossibly turquoise and beautiful that you assume they've been edited. They have not. Also not close. Also going on the list. Mexico City is one of those places that keeps revealing new rooms every time you open a door, and eight days was enough to fall completely in love and not nearly enough to feel finished.
One last thing, because I can't not tell you: Mexico City is built on a lake. When the Aztecs were wandering the land looking for where to build their city, their god Huitzilopochtli told them to look for a sign — an eagle on a cactus, eating a snake. They found it on a small island in the middle of Lake Texcoco and built Tenochtitlán there, connected to the shores by causeways. The Spanish destroyed most of it, built their colonial city on top of the ruins, and eventually drained the lake. The eagle on the cactus with the snake is still on the flag. The city has been slowly sinking ever since — built on the ghost of something it covered over and built on top of. I think about that a lot.
Go. Stay longer than you think you need to. Eat the pastry. Pet the dogs.