We’ve officially been in Mexico City, aka Ciudad de Mexico, aka CDMX, for a week and a half and it certainly feels like home. We fell in love with this city when we stayed a week in December 2018 (read all about it here) and now that we’re here for a longer stay, we love it just as much, probably more.

Our activities of the past week reflect many of the reasons why we love it. First, our Airbnb apartment in Polanco is very comfortable. We paid more than we’d hoped to (because our Condesa host canceled on us) but it is absolutely perfect in layout and includes weekly housekeeping. Ok, the kitchen is a little small, but it has a washer/dryer in the apartment! We almost never have a dryer (and actually, I still like using the rack instead to save energy). It also has 24-hour security and the host set us up with initial coffee and breakfast items (rare) and two sets of keys (even rarer). 

It’s funny, we didn’t even visit Polanco when we were doing our neighborhood search on our last visit. While it is a bit farther from our favorite places that are more central and south (especially Coyoacan and the Cinemateca Nacional), we can get pretty much anywhere with a connection from our 7-line metro (still for only 5 pesos per ride!) and the neighborhood has good places to walk and grocery stores and parks. However, we’ve determined that one of our primary criteria for our apartment, having heating, is really just done by space heaters in CDMX and they are sold very cheap in lots of stores. So that will widen our search when we come back in 2021. And yes, we already plan to come back in 2021! 

Chad has joined a gym in the neighborhood and I’m taking one-on-one Spanish lessons (although that requires a metro ride to Roma Norte). My Spanish lessons will wrap up next week, but I think they’re helping, though I wish I learned faster. After the lessons are over, I want to commit to spending at least 30 minutes a day on Spanish and I’m trying to speak to Chad more in Spanish, which will help him learn too.

We’ve already been to three movies and gotten together with a friend from home who lives here once. We’ve been to Parque Chapultepec once and plan to make it a weekly (minimum) thing. There is a huge free zoo in the park and we saw about 20% of it last weekend, including the giant pandas and an enormous “tigre blanco.”

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Last night we visited the Soumaya Museum, which is in our neighborhood and free. We only visited two of its five floors, because we know we’ll be able to come back. It is a great museum!

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We had a great vegan meal out in Coyoacan (which is where the cover photo of this post was taken, enjoying some local beers) and went out to a local comida rapida restaurant here in Polanco last night called El Farolito, which is quite popular. We had enough food to bring home leftovers to throw into our migas this morning which we ate while watching a Liverpool soccer match, continuing on two of our favorite traditions from home.

We will do much more of the touristy stuff (much of which we did when we were here last time) when my sister arrives on Wednesday. There are over 150 museums in CDMX, so we have a lot to choose from. I’m so excited to have my sister visit – one of our favorite things about CDMX is that it is relatively easy to reach from Missouri, and in the same time zone.

CDMX is working out for us just as well as we hoped! We’ve both had plenty of work we’ve needed to do preventing us from seeing as much as we’d like – there’s so much to do in this city. But we’re comforted by the fact that we know we’ll be back again soon for another long stay. CDMX truly feels like home.