Mexico City — Week 3
After spending Monday-Thursday back home, and making sure things are more or less under control, I took a Thursday evening flight back to CDMX, through Madrid. Yes, it’s crazy to fly back to Israel for four days and then back to CDMX, but I had 3 reasons to make the return trip to CDMX, in priority order:
- Tal, Logan and Celeste are coming to CDMX on March 14th for my last 5 days here. Hopefully Gali will join them as well.
- I really enjoyed CDMX and there’s more I want to explore here.
- I usually like to finish what I started.
So landing in CDMX Friday morning, I slept for a couple of hours and walked to the Centro Medico metro station to take the train to Coyoacan, a nice neighborhood in the south of the city. The Coyoacan metro station is just outside one of the biggest and fanciest malls in CDMX: Mitikah Centro Comercial. Many of global and US brand stores with crazy high prices. There’s a lot to see and do in Coyoacan. If you are into museums you can visit the Leon Trozki home in Coyoacan (I only visited it from the outside), and the Frida Kahlo museum (I skipped).
I preferred to walk the busy streets around Plaza Jardin Hidlago and Jardin Centenario, and visit the two local markets:
Mercado de Coyoacan, which is mostly a food market plus items for the home, and the Bazar Artesanal Mexicano, which is an arts and crafts market.
I had a late lunch at La Casa de Los Tacos Coyoacan, with stuffed pepper on tortillas and rice, and two veggie gorditas. Awesome food.
Saturday is always the day for special sights, events or markets that only take place only on Saturdays. Today I decided to visit Tianguis Cultural del Chopo in the north of CDMX. But I had some things to do on the way there. First, Dina hooked me up with Adriana, a Spanish tutor, and we met for a one hour Spanish lesson at a Starbucks in Roma Norte, 27 minutes walk from the AirBnB apartment. It was a good experience to have and make my lousy Spanish a bit better. She even said my Spanish is OK, but hey, I pay her 😊. From there another 40 minutes’ walk to Hotel Ibis Alameda, where I collected my football tickets from Hugo, a friend of David’s friend who bought them for me. This ended up being way more complex than expected, as he had the tickets on his Ticketmaster mobile app, without any option to transfer them. So we logged into his account on my phone so that I can access them at the game. To be honest, I am not sure I would have done that for a stranger.
After the “errands”, it was time for a coffee break which I usually do at Starbucks. There are Starbucks coffee shops at practically every corner in CDMX. My daily splurge is a shaken espresso helado brown sugar con avena (oatmilk). Today I added to it a spinach and cheese tart I bought at a nearby bakery. From there a short, two stations metro ride to the Tlatelolco and to the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. Tlatelolco, similar to Temple Mayor in the city center, has remains of Aztec and pre-colonial structures, as well as post-colonial structures. In the middle of the Tlatelolco is the Plaza de las Tres Cultural. “Three Cultures” is in recognition of the three periods of Mexican history reflected by buildings in the square: pre-Columbian, Spanish colonial, and the independent nation.
About 20 minutes’ walk from there is the amazing Tianguis Cultural del Chopo. It’s a huge Saturday market dedicated to music and to… weirdos. In all my travel I haven’t see such a large outdoor market dedicated to everything music: CDs, records, posters, shirts, jewelry, belts, mugs, everything that you can imagine, bootlegged with band and music titles. It has been referred to as “The Punk Market”, “The Metal Market”, or “The Goth Market”, which are perfect names based on what’s on sale there. Somehow I didn’t buy anything. I guess I am not weird enough.
Late lunch at Merkava, an Israeli restaurant 10 minutes from the apartment. I got Salatim, a selection of 7 appetizers like tabuli, tahini, falafel, etc. It was incomparable to the real thing, but OK.
Saturday ended up bring a long day. Around 19:00 I took an Uber to the Estadio Azteca to watch the Mexican league game between Club America (4th place) and Tigers (8th place). Going to a sports event is one of my commitments in the 10 cities project. I initially planned to take the MetroBus, but it was a ride with 39 stops (!), so I decided to take an Uber. Estadio Azteca is huge, and the balagan is proportional to the size. Lots of merchants selling football stuff (I got a Club America scarf), long lines, very crowded, unbelievable number of cops, highly equipped. It took almost an hour to get from the entrance of the stadium to my seat, only to find someone sitting there. I try to tell him it’s my seat, but he said something in Spanish and it was clear he is not moving anywhere anytime. There were no attendants to go to, so I just gave up and went to sit elsewhere. I pick up my fights. If you care, Club America won 2–0, which took it to the first place in the Mexican league. But to be honest, I didn’t care much about the game. I came for the experience. The way back to the apartment was tougher that the way there. I couldn’t get an Uber of any kind, and eventually gave up and took a combination of MetroBus, Metro and a walk to get back to the apartment. It took an hour with two connections and a 20 minutes’ walk, which put me back at the apartment shortly after midnight.
I was exhausted after a long day in Saturday that included walking over 20km, so Sunday was a semi rest day. I woke up late, made breakfast and spent the next 4 hours in front of my laptop, some of it in work meetings, some of it in trying to solve a work-related crisis, and doing email. It was already 4pm when I was finally ready to leave and given the little time left, I decide to just walk around Condesa and Roma Norte for a couple of hours, until I met Adriana for another Spanish lesson at the Starbucks in Plaza Luis Cabrera. Today we focused on past tense, as if I already remember everything in present tense… But there were some verbs I always wanted to know to say in past tense. Like “I went”, which in Spanish is “fui”, an odd for of the irregular verb “ir” (to go). Then it was already dinner time, and since Adriana’s recommendation for a Mexican restaurant (Chamorros de Mérida) was already closed, I picked up Tacos la Guera La Roma, from Google maps.
Total km walked this week: 80km (48km in CDMX)
