I have traveled a few times to South America, and for some reason it never dawned on me that I was just skipping over Central America Altogether. So this brings us to our next adventure to Mexico City. Along for the ride is the homie Daniel. At the time the homie had a friend who was a flight attendant and they were on standby for Mexico City, and asked if I wanted to tag a long. If you have been keeping up with the blog posts, we all know the answer to this. Say it with me, "hell yeeeeeees!"
I was able to book an early afternoon flight from Austin to Mexico City, which is about a 2 to 3 hour flight direct. My first stop was to check into my hotel at Krystal Grand Suites Insurgentes. We came here with no plans really, so the first night we kind of just wandered around the area near the hotel. After getting settled in I met up with Daniel downstairs and we grab some street food. Which there are several vendors along the roads in this area. I had a torta with chorizo, lettuce, mayo, and queso blanco, but even after eating the torta I was still a bit hungry. We decided to head over to Porfirio's to get a bite to eat and have a couple drinks. After our meal we decided to just roam around for a bit, the night we arrived there wasn't really much opened at the time, and we eventually headed back to the hotel to rest up and get an early start the next day.
The next morning we got up early to get a head start on the day, and we decided to go closer into the city to the Frida Kahlo Museum. The Frida Kahlo Museum, or The Blue House, is a must see for anyone traveling to Mexico City. It's a fairly cheap option at about 230 Mexican pesos or about $12 USD. The house of Frida Kahlo is full of her life's work, paintings, personal artifacts, and wardrobe. Around the outside of the museum you can find several vendors, for food and souvenirs. We decided to get some agua fresca and a few souvenirs to take back home with us. Next on our adventure in downtown Mexico City we made our way to the Wax Museum, or Museo de Cera. Entry to the wax museum is about 170 Mexican pesos or $9 USD. You can expect to see all kinds of things in here, there is also a Ripley's Museum you can bundle with your purchase. For our trip we only visited the wax museum. I have been to Ripley's Museum in a couple other places and it is for sure a bizarre place to see, and I recommend you check it out if you haven't before.
After checking out the wax museum we headed to grab a bite to eat at Burger Haaus, which is about a 5 to 10 minute walk from The Wax Museum. Burger Haaus has outside seating and an open barn door like entry to a spacious interior, we chose to sit out side, as it wasn't too hot this day. Usually when I'm in a new place and eating, I want to try a bit of everything. We decided to share a plate of nachos, these small potatoes with sour cream and chives, and some Mexican street corn, I also ordered a burger with brisket and cheese, and an oreo shake. After stuffing our faces, we walked around downtown a bit just checking out a few shops and stumbled on the Angel of Independence, which is a steel statue covered in 24K gold of an Angel. It represents and honors the heroes of the Mexican War of Independence. The Angel is definitely a must see when visiting Mexico City. Next we gathered some churros and chocolate sauce at Churreria El Moro, and they were so delicious, although I am biased towards anything cinnamon flavored. One of my favorite things to do while traveling is getting a tattoo, and we so happened to stumble upon a pretty cool tattoo shop with tons of dope art and artists. The shop in particular is called Indestructibles and got a pretty dope Skull Eagle Warrior tattoo, from the homie Blunter. After spending some time chatting with Blunter we roamed around a bit more and then decided to head back to the hotel to rest.
The next day we woke up a bit early as we were headed a bit away from the city to go check out some Pyramids at Teotihuacan, and get some knowledge on Mexican history. There are several ways to travel to Teotihuacan, including Uber, guided tour buses, or hired drivers. We chose to go with uber as the ride was about an hour and 20 minutes away from where we were. The ride was fairly cheap considering the distance traveled and came out to about $920 Pesos, which is about $49 USD. Our Uber driver was so nice she actually waited for us to finish up our tour at the Pyramids to take us back to Mexico City. Teotihuacan, or City of the Gods is one of the largest ancient cities in Mesoamerica. Keep in mind this is technically a city you are walking around and there is very little to no shade, so I recommend you bring a hat, or umbrella, sunglasses, comfortable shoes, and sunscreen to protect yourself, I did not and found out the hard way that even I can get sun burn.
Entering Teotihuacan is about 80 Pesos or about $4.30. Once inside there is a suggested route you can take to visit various sites, including the Pyramid of the Sun, Pyramid of the Moon, Temple of the Feathered Serpent, a small museum, and plenty of vendors to see. I won't give all the info on these sites just in case y'all want to visit and learn about it yourself, but by far my favorite of the bunch is the Temple of the Feathered Serpent or Quetzalcóatl. Just the design of the pyramid is so intricate, with carved feathered serpent heads, and other detailed pieces of this pyramid are breathtaking. You can't climb much of this one but just looking is perfect. Temple of the Sun is by far the most taxing on the body, its 216 feet, and the steps are very small, I wear a size 14 shoe though, once atop the pyramid you can literally see everything Teotihuacan has to offer. The Temple of the Moon is about 141 feet tall, and was believed to be used for sacrificial rituals of humans and animals. While walking through the Avenue of the Dead which connects all the sites, you will come across so many local vendors, with all kinds of things you can buy, from obsidian knives, chess boards, small and large clothes with Aztec calendar, and many other items. After we were done exploring Teotihuacan, we met back with our driver to head back to the city for dinner at Barrio Sur restaurant. Barrio Sur is a intimate restaurant, and we made it there a little bit before closing so we did our best to order fast and get on our way. On the way back to the hotel we stopped by a small bakery to get pan dulce or Mexican sweet bread, and a few snacks for the night.
Mexico City is such a beautiful and affordable place to travel, with so much history, great food, and friendly locals I can not wait to go back again to explore more of this beautiful City.
*Have you even been, or want to go to Mexico City? If so let me know what are some of your favorite places, or what places you want to see in the comments below.
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