The “dangerous” capital city of Mexico. It’s not on anyone’s radar, but it should be. It’s got beautiful parks, delicious food, volcanoes, pyramids, and everything you need for a cultural adventure!
How we got there.
Cheap flights. How do we find them? We got you. Check out our post.
We were able to get these tickets for $250 round trip. It costs more to fly to California than it did for us to fly to Mexico City.
What we did.
For the first time in a long time, we took it easy. We walked through parks, we ate street food, and we enjoyed every minute.
Chapultepec Park. It’s huge, it’s green, and it’s full of touristy markets and food. It’s a cool park to walk through and has lots to see. Chapultepec Castle is here as well as the Mexico City Zoo.
The zoo is free and actually has a lot to see. Including giant pandas. It’s one of only a few zoos in the world that have pandas. People gave us a little smack for going here but it was well worth the visit. We’d recommend it to anyone.
The Reforma. We stayed on the Reforma so we spent a lot of time here. It’s a very nice and modern area with monuments and restaurants. If you’re looking to go to Mexico City but you’re afraid of the “danger,” then this is the place to go. There are police officers everywhere and it’s a very nice area and street.
China town. It was kind of weird and we only happened to stumble across it, but it was kind of cool to see. It’s also next to another really nice park and the Palacio de Bellas Artes. A large beautiful museum. Well worth visiting and enjoying the surrounding areas.
Zocalo. One of the largest plazas in the Western Hemisphere. It’s paired up with the National Palace and ancient Aztec ruins. It’s also got the Mexico City Cathedral. An extremely old building that was built and added onto for hundreds of years starting in the 1500s.
The surrounding areas all encompass the historic city center of Mexico. There’s tons to see and should definitely be an area to visit if you’re in the city.
The city is humongous. It’s one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. That being said, there is so much to see that we were unable to.
Check out the Mercado Sonora (witchcraft market) as well as the Mercado de la Merced.
I really wish we could’ve seen the Teotihuacan Pyramids. They’re about an hour out of the city and we weren’t able to make it out there. Look them up and you’ll be blown away.
Where we stayed.
We stayed in the Holiday Inn Express Mexico City Reforma. It was really nice. It had a delicious breakfast buffet, great views of La Reforma, and super friendly staff.
We opened the IHG Premium card and used a small part of the opening bonus to book this hotel. We’ve never used hotel cards before and this was a great start to a new world of points.
Transportation
We had full intentions to use the metro but we never actually had to or ever got the chance. We got into the city pretty late so we took an Uber. It was a 20-minute ride that took an hour. Traffic is pretty bad as you can imagine.
We also used a hop on hop off bus. This got us to all the different sites we wanted within the city and also just used it as transportation for the day we had the pass. We always debate using these buses but we’ve never regretted it. These were double-decker open-top buses and they gave a really cool tour of the beautiful city.
What we ate.
Street food and lots of it. We did eat at two restaurants but the rest was just street food. It did unfortunately make us pretty sick. Sick enough Laynie was living in the bathroom and both of us have had issues since being home. That being said, I would 100% do it again. The food is delicious.
El Tizoncito is probably the restaurant we’d recommend. It was priced well, the staff was friendly, and the food was really good.
As far as street food there’s not a specific one that stuck out to us. It’s also important to note there are more stands than would even be possible to count. They are on the back streets though. You’ll walk down the main streets and be really confused because you don’t see street food, we certainly were, but as soon as you step off the main street they’re everywhere. Go explore.
A lot of these taco stands will have tacos as low as 5 for $45 pesos. That comes out to less than fifty cents a taco. There is a decent chance this is what made us sick to proceed with caution.
Gluten-Free in Mexico City.
Mexican food is fairly gluten-free to start with, but it’s important to be aware of what and where you’re eating. Most places will use both corn and flour tortillas so be aware. Other than that note, there really aren’t any issues with gluten-free in Mexico City.
What we learned.
Mexico City is so much more than some random “dangerous” city in Mexico. It’s an incredible city with so much to offer. It’s not on anyone’s list, but it really should be.
They don’t speak English. We were quite surprised to find very little English. In some places around the world, we’ve found that they’ll attempt or at least recognize that we were white English speakers, but they didn’t. They never spoke English to us and really I don’t think they even knew English. Thankfully Laynie speaks Spanish and we were able to get around and do all that we needed.
The main city streets and parks don’t have garbage cans. But, they have hundreds of city workers in green suits walking around with garbage cans. Take your stuff to them. It’s really quite clean and I think this is why, They are always out sweeping and cleaning.
There are lots of gays. Thought it was interesting
Mexico City used to be an island in a giant lake. It has an extremely fascinating history and you should look into it.
The city sits at about 7000 ft so the temperature is really nice all year round.
As all cities go, if they call you over to eat their food it’s not good and they’ll probably scam you. We know this, we’ve avoided this, and we did it again and got scammed..