Mexico City - Overview and kickoff - Feb 2025

Hola, Mexico City - February 4, 2025 

Overview

Mexico City or CDMX (Ciudad Mexico) has been on Travis's list for a bit. After two European trips last year, I was ready for somewhere with a shorter flight. February is a good travel month for us based on our kids' school schedule, and many places are not good in February. We are from Texas and cannot drive on the snow and ice, so other US places, besides being too cold, may be undrivable. I also watched flights to Mexico City, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica (though sort of crossed Costa Rica off since we get to stop here on our November Panama Canal cruise), but with CDMX leading since it was on the list. I found a reasonably priced, pseudo-reasonable-times, direct flight from DFW to MEX. As far as my normal trip planning goes, we booked this flight very close to the trip -- Dec 30, 2024. 

Many things in Mexico are cheaper, but not everything. Twenty Pesos to $1 USD. 

MetroBus - 6 Pesos per ride 
Metro - 5 Pesos per ride
CableBus - 7 Pesos per ride
Metro card - 15 Pesos
Uber from Juárez to the MEX airport - 130 Pesos 
Museum entrance - 100 Pesos
Tacos (first ones that we found and had) - 13 Pesos
Churros - 5 Pesos
Plate of Chilaquiles - 40 Pesos 

Snack food at Walmart was priced more inline with what we are used to at home. The bakery at Walmart and other bakeries were very affordable. The bakeries were interesting. You grab a tray and tongs, put everything that you want on it, then take it to the counter where someone bags and prices it for you. I was not super impressed with the baked goods; I think Travis liked them better than I did. 

Despite food being affordable, the challenge is having enough small change/bills to buy street food. From our experience, the ATMs only gave $500, $200, and $100 Peso bills. The $100 Peso bill was not too hard to use, but the $200 and $500 were crazy to try to use. To get change for a tip for the airport driver, Travis spent the $200 in 7-11 for a soda; the cashier asked if he had anything smaller. We feed a $500 to the Walmart self-checkout machine (it cannot complain). Another $500 we used at a museum that was $100 each; he did not bat an eye. $20 and $50 Peso was the lowest bills; then they had $10, $5, $2, and $1 Peso coins. Apparently, they also have a 0.50 cent coin. Until one grocery store, we had not seen anything priced in cents. We expected them to round up, but they gave us a 0.50 cent coin for change.    

I was nervous about crime in Mexico City/Travis was not, but it was much better than I expected. Our first day we went up near the Monument to the Revolution. The vendors were not aggressive and more stands had prices. The next day, we went to Centro District where the vendors were more aggressive. In other parts of the city, vendors were also missing prices, so that they can charge different people different prices. I only worried once about someone following too close, but I don't really remember the situation. So, I recommend Mexico City as reasonably safe. I signed up for the State Dept Travel STEP program with our travel dates before going. The State Dept site had very detailed travel information for Mexico -- by state with its travel warning, what to watch out for, and whether and where government employees can/cannot travel there. 

We had MC Suites in the Juárez neighborhood booked for our six night night trip. I researched which neighborhoods were the safest to pick one to stay. The stay included a trip from the airport to hotel after landing from Booking.com. The company texted to reply when we had our luggage; however, our Mexico data only eSIM (JetPack) did not allow us to contact a Mexican phone number (really Google voice did not without some account credit for the call). So, we just checked for a sign with my name again, and luckily found it. We checked when we first came out, knowing that we wanted to go to the ATM for a driver tip. 

Kickoff

We had an early flight and did not get to see our teenager before the trip. He could not get up early for us; we had to say goodbye the night before. My brother stayed with him over the nights. Travis received a coupon code for DFW terminal parking, with terminal E being the most affordable, so we had this booked after confirming that it was not very full when we booked. It noted that we would pay more if we parked in another terminal. The license plate recognition worked, and the process all went smoothly. We went through terminal E security, which had a long line that moved slowly until they opened another bag scan lane. We were not in a big hurry, so it was not an issue. After security, we rode the intra-terminal train, Skylink, to terminal C. The international terminal for DFW is terminal D, which we returned too, but I guess not required for the outbound to Mexico. We were on a Boeing 737; we had a power port but needed to use our phones to watch the American Airlines entertainment. This was a short flight -- 2:10 minutes in the air, which the Captain kept repeating, while I'm thinking, "well, if you never leave than it does not matter how long in the air".  Though it was a quick flight. 

After landing, we went through passport control. We read not to bring Sudafed so did not, but finding what not to bring was difficult, so I wondered about each over the counter medicine that I considered taking. Lines were short, and she asked a few questions. But, there was no baggage search or drug dogs like I expected. She stamped our passports. We then went to look for our ride sign (right outside the exit) and an ATM. After we found an ATM, I got on the wifi and had a message from our ride. We tried to call and text with no luck. We then found them and were on the way. 

The drive was crazy (but less crazy than in Rome). At the hotel, we were too early for check-in, so she let us pre-register and leave our luggage. We walked to the Reforma bus stop and bought metro cards; this was about 1:30pm. The first machine was not taking the credit card payment from Travis's phone, but the other worked. Somehow Travis got a card with $45 Pesos after the $15 Pesos card fee, and mine only had $6, or one ride, after the card fee. We scanned in, which showed the current balance after that use, and boarded a northbound bus. We felt like Travis's card that a lot of money, so later we tried using the same card by handing it back. Some city's transport allow this and some don't, and I did not research that before. It worked, allowed two scanning in a row, and no one said anything. When his was empty, we refilled both. 

We got off near Biblioteca Vasconcelos (library) and Walmart. We went to the library first; this was a very cool looking library that we found pictures of online. It was very cool to see; we did not go into the book section since we had our snacks and water bottles in our backpacks. There was security at each book entrance. We found that security guard was a very common job in Mexico City. See; isn't it awesome?! As part of the library, but outside, they had tables that we planned to have a snack realizing that we had not had lunch yet. All the tables were taken, so we went out of the library. They had bag check when you exited to be sure that you had not taken any books. Outside there was not really any good places to sit for a snack. The potential seating space was really fountains that were not on. We had a quick snack and headed to Walmart.   

We had a quick snack and headed to Walmart. We got snacks for the room and to take out walking the town and for breakfast. We used our backpacks for our the sacks; like some US states, there were no bags available at the register. I did not even see the option to buy any. 

Near the Monument to the Revolution, we found a vendor area and got two $13 Peso tacos. Travis got a ham called chuleta, and I got bistec, both with onions and cilantro.  

Walking back to the hotel, this was cool with stained glass and another cool circular building. 

Back at the hotel, we collected our luggage and finished our check-in. They did not accommodate an extra towel or extra keycard request. There were elevators, and sign pointing to a gym. I did not see that there was a gym before, so had Travis not bring gym clothes. We never checked out what it had in it, but we did plenty of walking around the city exercise. No breakfast included. The room was very nice. There was a safe, three pillows, two bath towels, one hand towel, rug, no washcloths (like Europe), lotion, bar soap, bodywash, and shampoo. They also included daily coffee to make in the room and a daily bottle of water each, which was very nice. We had two balconies. It was a good location. It was noisy, but I guess anywhere in Mexico City would be loud. We through that a couple of times a night until at least 9:30 pm that a tour bus making announcements over a loud speaker came by until Travis looked out and saw that it was actually a guy on a bicycle making announcements to sell something.

We went to a sit down restaurant with wait service for dinner. Dr. Pizza was very close to our hotel. We shared a pizza of salami, hot honey sauce, and multiple cheeses. It was good and the crust was very good. The hot honey sauce was too hot for me. I also got a pink lemonade that came with raspberry. I didn't like it, so Travis drank it. There was an OXXO convenient store at the corner near our hotel where we stopped to get some water. Travis read not to drink the water in Mexico City due to the pipes. Depending on country, but I normally follow this rule after getting sick in Italy in 1999. After the early rise for the flight, we went to bed early.  

Next up...Centro

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