A Week in Mexico City

Hello friends!! I’m feeling inspired to write here again. So here is the much requested Mexico City itinerary blog. Also just to preface this, it will mostly be a food and drink blog – so if that’s not your thing keep on scrolling. My post on the Grutas Tolantongo is here.

Mexico City Best Time to Visit

According to the Googs, the best time to visit is between March and May. Luckily that happens to be the time we went! We visited April 10th ish weekend and that happened to be a holiday weekend (Palm Sunday) so we were told that the city was actually pretty empty compared to the usual. The cons however was that the airport was crazy as heck and our flight was cancelled and we waited around for 7 hours for a new one. Moral of the story – Palm Sunday is a good weekend, but book a direct flight.

Where to Stay / How to Get Around

We split up our time in CDMX between the Ritz Carlton Mexico City and the Roma neighborhood at an Airbnb. I won’t be linking our Airbnb because I personally wouldn’t recommend it. The walls were super thin and we could hear our neighbors coming back at 2AM and chatting in their unit. The Ritz in CDMX is a relatively new property with an amazing view from all rooms and cool bar. We used our points for our stay from our Marriott Bonvoy card. If interested in applying, my referral link is here (you can earn get 3 free nights with $3000 spend in 3 months).

If you have the time I definitely recommend splitting your time this way because the Ritz is right by Chapultepec Castle and other touristy areas. While the Condesa/ Roma neighborhood has all the restaurants, bars and cute cafes. Theres so many cute Airbnbs in the area like this one here and here that I have bookmarked for next time.

As for getting around, Uber is super affordable in the city. It was our main method of transportation around the city if it wasn’t walking distance. (To Kevin almost everything is walking distance though 🥲🥲)

Tacos in Mexico City

Ok now to the BEST part heh heh – the FOOD!!! So first off, we did our first walking food tour on our last night in Mexico City and I super recommend it! We booked here with Club Tengo Hambre and did the After Dark tour. We went to a bunch of places and tried different variations of tacos, drank tequila Bandera style, and its also how we discovered the bombest churro stall ever!

Okay lets start of with taco spots – our unanimous top top taco restaurant is Taqueria el Torito. Make sure you get the right one, google map location here. I mean look at all the tacos we got at a dollar each 🤤🤤. I always ordered the Campechano which is a combo of meats. It was a perfect blend of juicy, fatty and crunchy.

Our second pick for tacos would be Tacos los Alexis. We sat at the counter and had the best time with the chef Gino! We decided to let him just make whatever and did tacos “omakase” style with some tequila sips (ok fine they were shots) on the side. Check out their insta here.

And before this becomes a short novel on tacos in CDMX the other taco spots we loved are:

• El Pescadito – bomb seafood tacos and a good change from heavy meat
• El Vilsito – a bit further out of the city with hefty tacos that are v cheesy.
• Los Cocuyos – featured in the Netflix show Taco Chronicles. solid tacos all around.
• Taqueria Orinoco – a popular spot but tbh I didn’t enjoy it but pretty sure we ordered the wrong thing.

Bonus spot:

Throwing in a bonus spot, the best churro stand in the city. Google approximate location here. Across from the Hilton Reforma hotel. They have filled churros in 3 different flavors for about $1USD. I had two heh heh. The stand looks like this:

Fine Dining / Restaurants in Mexico City

In addition to bomb street food CDMX has so many top restaurants – and we got to try a couple!

First off, the famous Pujol Restaurant, ranked no. 9 in top restaurants in the world. If you know you’re going to plan a trip to Mexico City I recommend booking this first as it can be hard to snag. (Pro tip: if you have a chase sapphire or AMEX platinum you can try to use their concierge service to book a spot for you) Famous for their aged mole, their whole tasting menu was delicious to me. Especially their churro dessert.

Some other sit down restaurants we enjoyed:

• Nicos – another top restaurant, home style Mexican food
• Meroma Restaurant – good food and drink cute vibes
• Rosetta Restaurant – book this in advance as well it gets packed
• Rosanegra – could skip. Party vibes good for large parties/ celebrations
• Contramar – seafood restaurant we wanted to try but couldn’t snag a res.

Drinks in Mexico City

What to do in Mexico City

Okay so if eating and drinking your way around town isn’t enough to do for you 🤣. Heres some touristy activities for you to check out.

• Chapultepec Castle – go EARLY!!! the line wraps like crazy to buy tickets. We got there right when they opened, got in quickly so I wondered if I read wrong online about the crowds. We walked around for an hour or so and when we came out, BAM! crazy lines.
• Casa de Azulejos – reminded me of Portugal!
• Hot air balloon over the Pyramids – we booked this tour via viator. They also have tequila after lol.
• Frida Kahlo Museum – didn’t make it to this but definitely want to go next time.
• Day trip to Grutas de Tolantongo – find that post here.

And whewph, just like that it basically almost covers our amazing week in Mexico City. Hard to believe we weren’t originally going to visit Mexico City. But K was going to have to go back into office part time so we wanted go some where we could work remote for the last days of remote work. Originally we wanted to go further somewhere in South America but the time difference wouldn’t work with our schedules. So glad that we decided to visit Mexico City and fingers crossed we get to go again in 2023, maybe with our family!

If you want to add on to this trip, you should check out my Grutas Tolantongo post!