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Mexico City: Your First Week

Mexico City, Mexico · First-timers · 12,000 words

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What this is

What a first-time visitor gets wrong about Mexico City, from someone who lives in it. Getting around, altitude, which neighborhoods deserve the hype, street food and how to judge a stand, and the museums worth a whole day. Written to be read before you book, not after you land.

Who wrote it

Written by a chilanga. Born there, still there, tired of bad advice about it.

What is inside

  1. 01Altitude, and the first two days
  2. 02Neighborhoods, honestly assessed
  3. 03Getting around: metro, bikes, and when to take a car
  4. 04How to judge a street food stand
  5. 05Museums worth a full day, and museums worth an hour
  6. 06Sundays in this city
  7. 07Safety, without the hysteria
  8. 08What to do when it rains at five every afternoon

Free sample

You are arriving at over two thousand meters. Most people feel it as being slightly out of breath on stairs and sleeping badly the first night. A few feel it much more. Either way, the fix is the same and it is boring: drink more water than you want to, go easy on alcohol for two days, and do not schedule anything ambitious for the first morning.

The second thing nobody tells you is the scale. This is not a city you can cross casually. Two neighborhoods that look adjacent on a map can be an hour apart at six in the evening. Plan by district, not by list, and do everything in one area before moving.

On street food: the stand with the longest line of people in work clothes at one in the afternoon has already been vetted by a hundred people who eat there every week. That is a better signal than any review.

The full guide continues for 12,000 words.

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