Mexico: Mexico City

We LOVE Mexico City!  I can’t believe that we’ve never come here before – it’s so cheap to get here; super cheap once you’re here; and a great city on top of that.  ​

​We stayed at an Airbnb for $11 / night.  It was a shared Airbnb (so you have a room in someone else’s apartment, and they are there too), and it just so happened that our hosts were awesome.  We talked with them a lot, and we told them that they should come visit us when we settle down in the US. 
 
The food is cheap too, and delicious.  You can eat an entire meal of street food for a couple of dollars.  And there is street food EVERYWHERE!  It’s a little more difficult for me since I am used to using Google Maps to find breakfast, coffee, etc., and you can’t do that here since so many of the places aren’t on Google Maps.  It was also harder to find good coffee because a lot of the places use instant coffee, and we ate a lot of street food with no coffee.  But we made it work.  I’m used to the instant coffee from living in Tanzania anyway. 
 
The metro only costs about $0.25 for a one-way ticket, and it’s very easy to use.  The trains usually run about every 2 minutes, so you can usually get one quickly.  We also used the bus system once, but the bus stops were harder to find (some of them didn’t have signs), and we couldn’t tell which bus it was sometimes.  You need coins to ride the buses (not paper dollars), but when we didn’t have coins, one of the bus drivers just let us on for free.
 
People were very nice to us too.  I was surprised by this considering that our current president wants to build a wall.  If I were Mexican, I may not be as nice.  But people helped us when we were obviously trying to figure out which way to go, and they translated for us if they knew English and a server didn’t, etc.  It was a very pleasant experience.  I also didn’t feel unsafe, but we also didn’t put ourselves in too many dangerous situations. 
 
Oh, and another thing: surprisingly enough, a lot of people here do not speak English.  You should try to know the basics before you come.  Even waiters at fancier restaurants didn’t speak much English.  Don’t let that deter you from coming though!  We made it through, and we don’t speak much Spanish at all.  We had the Google Translate app which helped a ton. 
 
We mostly just walked around the city while we were here.  It’s a huge city with a ton to see.  The first day we took a free walking tour to get acquainted and learn some of the history.  The company we used, Yaxo, we found through a Couchsurfing post, and the tour guide was great!  She was super nice and very helpful.  She spoke English well too. 
 
We went to the Coyoacán area to go to a bazaar that’s only open on Saturdays.  It had a lot of little crafts but also beautiful art (paintings and sculptures).  I wanted to buy a ton of it (like I always do when I see art), but we didn’t buy anything on account of us being homeless and only having a backpack.  We walked around La Roma and Condesa (2 of the “hip” neighborhoods in the city) which were cool.  We had champagne and drinks in a couple of different cafes. 
 
We took a day trip to the Teotihuacán ruins.  They are pretty cool, but only if you’re into ruins.  I wasn’t interested in them enough to want to climb to the top of every one, but I do feel like you should see them if you are in Mexico City and have the time.  They were easy to get to with public transport, and didn’t cost very much at all.  I could write directions and prices, but I’d just be repeating everything from the blog that I used, so I’ll just forward you to that: Click here.

The thing that I am sad we missed is the Xochimilco which are floating gardens.  One of our friends suggested it, but it wasn’t right in the city and we had already taken a couple of trips outside the city, so we were feeling lazy.  I do think we will definitely be back to Mexico City though, so I will make sure to do it then!

​See our Mexico photos here.