Mexico City Musings

Traveled to Mexico City about two weeks ago, and it has been on my mind ever since. Such an adventure in the world’s fifth largest (or largest depending on who you talk to) city.

This post has taken me a while as it has taken a while for all of my thoughts from my latest whirlwind adventure to settle (and, I’ve had to edit all of those pictures *smiley face with tongue out*). If you have been following me on Instagram @LivingNimbly, you know that I have been eating lots of good food, but I wanted to lay out all of the context here. I left Minneapolis for nearly two weeks to spend a little time in Baltimore with the family and friends back there, but also, my long-awaited trip to Mexico City!!

Traveling Abroad. This was my first time really spending time in another country (besides Toronto Trip 2014). In college, I had a bunch of friends who travelled or study abroad, and I am still living vicariously through them by scrolling through the gram or Facebook albums of beautiful ancient structures, unbelievably tall buildings, and animals that I’ve only seen at zoos. I’ve always wanted to take that step, but there was always a reason for me to postpone.

I was very lucky to have my amazing travel buddy, Val, who was a joy to travel with. She helped me navigate the Spanish language (literally couldn’t thank her enough), but she also was down to eat all of the amazing food with me (a la Dev and Arnold from Master of None) and help me check all of the big itinerary items off of my list, except for eating tacos…. that ever happened… lol…

Language. In high school, I took three years of Spanish, but you know… six years is a long time to clearly remember the nuances of conjugation and the lists and lists of vocab terms. I tried to brush up using Duolingo and reading this guide of useful Spanish travel phrases a few times, but I think my efforts were too little too late.

As a someone who communicates for a living, not being able to communicate much was such a challenge. I was far outside of my comfort zone. This was a HUGE HUGE wakeup call for me. We live in such a large beautiful world in which people speak different languages… AND I CAN ONLY HAVE CONVERSATIONS IN ENGLISH??!?! How does this make sense?!?

So, long story short. I am going to start with Spanish and I am going to learn more languages. I am going to travel more places, because I want to understand other people. And, because I’m writing it on LivingNimbly, I am going to hold myself accountable.

Food. Oh gosh the food in the city was amazing! I could talk about it, but if a picture is worth 1,000 words, get ready for about 5,000 more words to this post. Food photos taken at La Casa de Toño, PEHÜA, Resturante San Angel Inn, Comedor Jacinta, and J by José Andrés (in that order).

Just want to jump in here really quickly. This was the most balanced salad that I have ever had. It was ideal in every way. The way the the fresh citrus interacted with the kale and the salty hard cheese. Also, the vinaigrette was perfect. That is all, resume the drool fest.

I am so fortunate to have gotten the chance to go on this trip, learn about a new city, and eat at all of these amazing places. Shout out to work for being chill with me taking time off. Shout out to all of the restaurant patrons for not staring at me too much while I threw my hand up in the air to get an aerial shot. Shout out to Verizon for not being unreasonable with traveling to Mexico. Shout out to Val for being awesome. Shout out to the Mexico City for being amazing. Shout out to you for looking through my pictures.