Visited: April 2019
Mexico City was the first stop on our RTW trip, and it would have been difficult to pick a better city to start! The culture shock was fairly low, though little English was spoken. We were happy about this, as it gave us a chance to practice our Spanish, but we had expected English to be more prevalent given that we were staying in a pretty touristy area.
If you’re planning a trip to Mexico City (or considering whether it would be a good destination for you), check out this guide to visiting the city, including our recommendations for where to stay, what to eat, and what to do/see. Scroll all the way to the bottom for the nitty-gritty about visiting the city, including whether you can drink the water, how much to tip, etc.
Getting There & Getting Around
Benito Juarez International Airport (MEX) is the city’s major airport and has reasonably priced flights from the United States. Once in the city, Uber is very cheap (our Uber from the airport to our apartment in La Roma was only $5.57), but we were honestly able to walk almost everywhere we wanted to go (see “To Stay” below for neighborhood suggestions).
When we did need to go somewhere that exceeded walking distance, we used the Metrobus system. It was very affordable (6 pesos per ride, regardless of transfers or distance) and easy to use. You can buy a Metro card at any station and refill it throughout the trip. (Note: The machines don’t give change! So if you put a 100 peso bill in the machine, you’re getting a card with 90 pesos on it; the card itself cost 10 pesos.) You can also share a Metro card (just swipe, go through the turnstile and pass the card back to your travel partner). The Metro card works on the big red Metro buses (they have their own lanes and the stations are located in the medians) and the subway system. You can’t use the Metro card on the other city buses (purple, green, etc.).
To Stay
We stayed in La Roma for the first week of our stay in CDMX, and that was our personal favorite area. I would recommend getting a room in the Roma, Condesa or Hipódromo neighborhoods if you want to stay in a fairly residential, trendy area with an amazing food scene.
If you are only visiting for a few days and plan to do all the “touristy” stops, you might want to stay in Cuauhtémoc or Zona Rosa for convenience. (We were also able to walk to most of these stops from La Roma, but it depends on how much you want to walk!)
We also stayed in Coyoacán, which was nice for a short return visit to Mexico City, but I think the above options are better for a first-time visit to CDMX because they are located closer to the major attractions.
To Eat & Drink
First, let me just say that when we were going to Mexico City, so many friends told us, “Don’t even bother Yelping restaurants. There are food carts on every street and they are delicious.” They were right! We went grocery shopping on our first day in Mexico City, and after trying the street food, we wish we had just eaten it every day. And it probably wouldn’t have been much more expensive than buying groceries, either! That being said, here are some of our favorite places to eat and drink (including food carts!) in CDMX:
Coffee
The best iced coffee we had in Mexico City was the cafechata (horchata with coffee) from BUNA Cafe Rico in Roma Norte. Our favorite hot coffee was from El Beneficio de la Duda in Coyoacán. But really, I don’t think we had a bad cup of coffee our entire time in CDMX. If you walk around any of the neighborhoods we suggested above, you’ll see tiny coffeeshops on every street. Just pop in and order a drink—”para llevar” if you want it to go!
Breakfast
El Maque in La Condesa is a delicious brunch spot [pictured above]. For a lighter and quicker breakfast, grab a guava roll from Panaderia Rosetta. (We visited the original location at Colima 179 just south of Plaza Rio de Janeiro and got our pastry to go, but there is also apparently a newer, bigger location if you want to spend some time sitting at the bakery.) If you want street food for breakfast, a tamale (we like pork with green sauce) and an atole (hot drink) is your best bet.
Lunch & Dinner
For street food, we highly recommend the seafood tostadas from Mariscos Orizaba on Puebla between Orizaba and Jalapa, the cemitas from Cemitas Poblanos on Rio Sena between Rio Lerma & Reforma (there are a LOT of amazing food carts on this stretch!), and the tortas from La Tortuga Roja near the corner of San Luis Potosi and Medellin [pictured above—definitely share with a friend!]. But again, we really didn’t have any street food that wasn’t good. If you’re worried about food safety, look for street carts with long lines (this means the food isn’t sitting out too long), and for carts that have different people to handle the money and the food.
If you are in the Coyoacán area, we highly recommend the tostada counter inside Mercado de Coyoacán [pictured above]. Just walk around inside until you see the bright yellow signs and counters of heaping tostada toppings—you can’t miss it!
For a fancy meal, Mexico City boasts two restaurants considered to be some of the best in the world: Pujol and Quintonil. We didn’t visit either of these places, but we did have a lovely dinner at Contramar, including their famed tuna tostadas as a starter [above left]. (Tip: When you order your after-dinner coffee, say yes when they ask if you want liquor in it. So delicious.)
If you get tired of Mexican food (is that even possible??), grab a pie at Pizza del Perro Negro (multiple locations, we visited the one in Roma Norte). Don’t worry, you can still get Mexican ingredients on top [above right]. Yum!
Drinks & Dessert
La Clandestina is a popular place for mezcal [pictured above left]. They don’t offer flights, but you can buy shots of several different kinds of mezcal and make your own flight. Our waitress spoke English (the bar is very touristy) and was great at helping us choose different mezcals to try. We would also recommend trying a pulque during your trip (available at many bars and taquerias). If you prefer fruity drinks, order a pulque curado.
For dessert, be sure to order mini-consuelos (tiny ice cream sandwiches made with churros) from El Moro Churreria. We visited the counter in Mercado Roma [above right], but El Moro also has its own shop in Centro Historico.
To Do & See
Street food tour with Eat Mexico
This was probably our No. 1 favorite activity in Mexico City (we wrote an entire blog post about it, if you want to learn more). If I could do it over, I would have done this tour the first morning we were in CDMX. I feel like we missed out on a few days of excellent street food because we weren’t familiar with it yet!
Visit a mercado (or two, or three)
Shopping and/or having a meal at a local mercado (market) is one of our top recommendations for visiting CDMX. In addition to all the groceries, clothing and gifts you can buy at the markets, they often have counters where you can order prepared food (like the tostadas at Mercado de Coyoacán!). Don’t leave Mexico City without exploring a few markets and sitting down to eat in at least one.
Day trip to the pyramids
If you have at least three days in Mexico City, we recommend making the short trip outside the city to explore the Teotihuacán pyramids. We would suggest hiring a guide if you want to learn the history, as there is little written information available at the site, and many of the signs that do exist are so weather-damaged they are impossible to read. (If you just want to admire the pyramids and get pretty photos, we heard it is easy and affordable to Uber out and back to the pyramids.) We did an early-morning tour through TripAdvisor, and we actually did have the pyramids all to ourselves when we first arrived!
Visit all the bookstores
Okay, maybe not all the bookstores, but this city has some great options! El Péndulo is a bookstore cafe with multiple gorgeous locations across the city [above right]. If you want to condense your bookstore-hopping to one location, walk on Alvaro Obrego between Córdoba and Jalapa. You won’t be disappointed!
Learn about Mexican culture & history at museums
Mexico City is home to many renowned museums. We don’t usually like to spend too much times in museums when traveling, but we did visit the National Museum of Anthropology (which we highly recommend, especially as a complement to visiting the Teotihuacán pyramids) and the Leon Trotsky Museum (located just a few blocks from the famous Frida Kahlo Museum, and therefore very underrated, in our humble opinion).
If you enjoy museums, you might also want to check out the Frida Kahlo Museum or Soumaya Museum (for art lovers), the Museum of Natural History, Chapultepec Castle and/or Templo Mayor.
Buy stamps at the prettiest post office in the world
Okay, so I haven’t been to that many post offices around the world, but I’m betting the Palacio Postal (also called Palacio de Correos) deserves to be in the top ten. Despite its glitz and grandeur, it is a functioning post office, and we really did buy stamps and send some postcards from here. It was also the best part of visiting the Centro Historico (in our humble opinion). You’ll notice we didn’t recommend this neighborhood as somewhere to stay in CDMX. There are a lot of tourist sites here, but you could easily bus to this area and knock it out in one day, or even a half-day. We preferred the welcoming atmosphere and multitude of green space in the other parts of Mexico City.
If you do venture to Centro Historico, you might also be interested in visiting the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Zócalo and/or Templo Mayor (mentioned above). The biggest market in Mexico City, Mercado La Merced, is also nearby. (Eat Mexico offers a guided tour at this market, which may be worth considering because we’ve heard the market can be very overwhelming.)
Free fun: Parks!
One of the first things we noticed upon arriving in CDMX was the amazing parks in the city. Even during our Uber ride from the airport hotel to our apartment in Roma Norte, I noticed so many huge, colorful playgrounds from the window. I thought they might be school playgrounds or privately owned, but nope—Mexico City just has awesome playgrounds, usually located in beautiful public parks! Along with great playgrounds, many parks in Mexico City include workout areas with simple exercise machines that use your body weight for resistance (pull-up bars, presses, ellipticals, etc.). We stayed close to Parque Mexico [pictured above left], where we enjoyed dog-watching with our coffee in the mornings.
El Bosque de Chapultepec is the largest park in CDMX, and it’s actually one of the largest parks in the Western Hemisphere (even bigger than Central Park in New York City!). It is free to visit the park itself and the zoo [pictured above right], but the museums and other attractions inside the park often have separate admission fees.
More free fun: Urban walks!
As mentioned above, we walked a lot in Mexico City. Especially if you’re staying in one of the neighborhoods we recommended (particularly La Roma and surrounding areas), there are lots of cute coffee shops, pretty homes, colorful plants, street art and other sights to admire while you’re getting your steps in. For the most part, we found Mexico City to be very pedestrian-friendly.
What to Expect: General Travel Tips
Drinking Water
The tap water in Mexico City is generally not safe to drink. We did have ice in our cocktails, and a few restaurants served us tap water, which was fine. But, we typically bought bottled water or filtered our own tap water to drink while in our apartments. We also found potable water bottle fill stations at Parque Mexico, which we used when convenient.
Bathrooms
Public bathrooms usually cost about 5 pesos. Carry coins to use at the public bathrooms. Also, many bathrooms (public or private) will have signs asking you to dispose of your toilet paper in the wastebasket instead of the toilet. This was a hard habit to develop! But this seemed to be general practice throughout Latin America, so keep it in mind. Also, you often need to get your toilet paper from a dispenser outside the stalls; I went into a stall so many times and was stuck without toilet paper. Sigh. Fortunately, I carried a small pack of tissue paper in my purse; I recommend doing this!
Money
Mexico uses Mexican pesos. When we visited, the exchange rate was about 20 pesos (MXN) to 1 USD. Check the current exchange rate before you go. ATMs (cajeros) are pretty easy to find in the city. We recommend keeping small bills to buy street food and coins to use public bathrooms when needed. Most restaurants we visited accepted credit cards, but there are a decent amount that are cash only (efectivo). Tip is not included; standard is 10 – 15 percent. Like in most countries outside the U.S., the waiter will bring a card reader to your table to process your payment. They will ask you what you want to leave as a tip (propina) when they process the payment; some restaurants asked for a number and some asked for a percentage, so pay attention to which figure they want.
Language
Of course, it’s always best if you learn a few useful phrases in the local language before you visit somewhere. As we mentioned in the introduction to this guide, English was not widely spoken in Mexico City, aside from a few popular restaurants and tourist attractions. Even in the anthropology museum (one of the city’s major museums), written information in English was limited, so we used the Google Translate app to read the placards in the museum. Most bus drivers, taxi drivers and restaurant staff (in our experience) did not speak English. We knew a little Spanish, which helped, and as long as you are making an effort to communicate (don’t just speak English louder—that doesn’t help!), we found the people in Mexico City were generally very tolerant of our poor language skills, and we were usually able to understand each other through hand gestures and our very limited vocabulary.
Street Vendors/Performers
We didn’t experience any problems with street vendors while in Mexico City. People may approach you in the plazas or on the street to sell goods, but if you say “no, gracias” and keep walking, they weren’t too persistent. Overall, we didn’t notice much solicitation, even in the markets. Mariachi bands or other performers will often come by to perform at restaurants (especially outdoor cafes) and walk around after to collect tips from the tables. You don’t have to tip, but you can if you enjoyed the music. (However, if you take any photos or videos of the performers, please tip them! Photos and videos are not and should not be free.)
Overall, we loved Mexico City. It has a lot to offer for both first-time international travelers and experienced globetrotters, and it’s definitely on our list of cities we would visit again! In case you missed it, we shared our personal favorite moments from Mexico a few weeks ago.
Have you been to Mexico City? What did we miss? Share your recommendations in the comments below! Questions? Ask away!
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