We’ve been in Mexico City for one week now and we have managed to check off a number of firsts:
Find a local dance scene, and dance!
Take the bus
Get prescription medicine
Visit a doctor in another country
Ride in a Chinese car
Stay in an Airbnb for more than a week
Airbnb, day 8
Until today the longest we’ve ever stayed in a furnished rental was in Saint John USVI where we stayed for 7 days. So today on day 8, our place here in CDMX is now our longest stay. I’m quite pleased with the place that we’re staying. It’s a lovely first floor apartment in the somewhat posh neighborhood of Polanco. It’s very comfortable here and I especially appreciate the small outdoor space we have. It’s been fantastic for breakfast.
Dance
I’m really enjoying the small west coast swing community. It’s a very small scene here. Probably similar in size to the Zouk or Kizomba scenes in saint louis. The scene is being managed by an expat from Detroit, Nicole, and a long time visitor from Argentina named Flora. Flora is an amazing dancer and a great instructor too. Nicole is also an instructor but more importantly she is excellent at social media and is dedicated to building a scene here.
P.S. If any of our West Coast Dancing friends are traveling though Mexico City makes sure to connect with West Coast Swing CDMX!
It’s kind of surreal to be in a place where Cuban salsa, Casino, is a bigger scene than West Coast Swing. We’ve managed to do a bit of Casino as well and hope to do more this weekend.
I’m still searching for Zouk but so far it’s been elusive. There is a park near our place called Parque Mexico where multiple dance scenes have outdoor social events. Last night we went over to do some West Coast but found folks doing Argentine Tango and another group doing something that we couldn’t identify!
Tacos
We had our first tacos at a local chain called El Fogoncito. Tasty tacos al pastor and great guacamole.
Ride in a Chinese car
Ok, this is a bit random but I’ve been somewhat fascinated by the Chinese brand BYD. BYD stands for Build Your Dreams and it is a rapidly growing Chinese car manufacturer. I saw them for the first time in China back in 2017. But they don’t sell them in the US. I’ve seen them in a few other countries but they are very common here in Mexico. We’ve ridden in 4 different models already as Ubers. Last night we rode in a BYD minivan. I can’t remember what it was called but we rode in a very sleek sedan that had a very modern interior. I think that it was the BYD King.
Ride the bus
Ok, we’ve only done it once so far and that was last Saturday. The weather has been so nice, and Ubers are so reasonable that we’ve just not had a lot of need. Most of our uber rides around town have cost about 90-150 pesos. ( 4-8 dollars ). Quite reasonable in my opinion, but the bus is dirt cheap costing 7.50 pesos (like 36 cents US). Since we’re going to be here for a few weeks I thought that it would make sense to get a metro pass for our rides, but the first time we took the bus we learned that the metro cards that work on subways don’t work on all buses. Some buses don’t have electronic payment systems and only take coins. Speaking of the metro, we’ve not taken the subway yet. So far it just hasn’t been the Google suggested option for the places we’ve gone.
This afternoon we had lunch at a Ramen shop which was probably the most complicated meal to order since we’ve been here. You had to choose spice level, salt level, protein, noodle type, etc. I mostly winged it but what I had was quite delicious. So far, I’ll say from this limited experience that CDMX has better Japanese food than Germany. I’ll expand that to all more of Asia after we check out the Indian / Pakistani place down the street from here.
And of course what visit to a new city would be complete without a cooking class. We found our class on Viator. It was Cooking with Chef José. He was great. The class was educational, fun and tasty. I especially enjoyed going shopping for the fresh ingredients and learning to make Tortillas.
In this week of so many firsts we also attended with our first Go With Less meetup! It was awesome to finally connect in person with some fellow nomads.
So far this first week of international nomad living has been a resounding success. Most of the things that I was worried about have either not been an issue at all. I’m very glad for the time that Chrissy and I have spent studying Spanish. It’s been extremely helpful to be able to communicate our wants and needs. I’m more of a nature and mountains kinda person, but being in a big city certainly has its perks. I really didn’t know what to expect from Mexico City but I’m pretty comfortable saying that this city is awesome and it definitely rivals the big cities in the US.
