📅Mexico City: 6 reasons to spend your next vacation here💜

Here's why we think the largest city in North America should get a spot on your travel bucket list

Back in 2021 when Paul suggested that we visit Mexico City, all I could think of were the stereotypes—drugs, narcos, kidnappings, and murders. As it turns out, the way Mexico City is portrayed in US media isn’t exactly accurate. It’s a huge city known for its culture, food, history, people, charm, and more. We think it can even hold its own against some of Europe’s top destinations.

Here are six reasons we recommend it for your next vacation.

✈️ 1. Mexico City is more accessible

Where most European cities are five to eight hours ahead of those in the United States, Mexico City is only one or two hours off at most, depending on the day. (Mexico no longer observes daylight saving time, so this can vary.) Coming from the East Coast, as we do, Mexico City is always one or two hours behind.

This is a formidable advantage, especially for those—like us—well into middle age who can’t tolerate the discomfort of air travel as well anymore. Flying to Europe requires an overnight flight of several hours from the east coast of the U.S. But you can fly to Mexico City in 4 to 4.5 hours, and that flight happens during the day.

It’s impossible to overstate what a difference this makes.

When we fly to Europe, we arrive tired and grouchy, having slept poorly if at all. And then we struggle to find any energy over the next few days. But when we fly to Mexico City, we hit the ground running. We’re relaxed and refreshed, and there’s no downtime needed to acclimate.

If you live elsewhere in the U.S., this advantage is even greater. The further west you are, the longer your flight will be to Europe, and you may have to deal with connecting flights. With Mexico City, that’s less likely, and your total travel time will always be a lot less.

💲 2. Mexico City is more affordable

This one is easy, irrefutable math.

Where most European cities are considerably more expensive than all but the most expensive U.S. cities, the opposite is true in Mexico City. Your dollar—or euro, or whatever—goes a lot further than it does at home or in Europe.

How much further?

According to Numbeo, the cost of living in Mexico City is 47.2 percent lower than that of Philadelphia, the close big city to us in the U.S. Restaurant prices are 40 percent lower. And grocery prices are over 51 percent lower.

While the numbers will vary depending on which city you compare, most U.S. cities compare similarly. And these are not small differences.

This reality opens up new possibilities for visiting Mexico City. You can stay longer, for starters. You can eat out more, afford more experiences, and come away with more and better memories.

🍴 3. The food is amazing in Mexico City

If your understanding of Mexican food is defined by experiences in chain restaurants like Chipotle, Qdoba, or—God help us—Taco Bell, then there’s no kind way to say it. You’ve never had Mexican food. Indeed, you might need therapy after you discover how good real Mexican food can be.

But it’s not just Mexican food. Mexico City is a big, diverse, cosmopolitan city, and it offers every kind of food imaginable and at all levels of quality. From sushi to street food to Michelin-class fine dining, Mexico City has it all.

What strikes us most obviously, though, is the quality of the food supply here. Where we’ve undermined our health with factory farms and ultra-processed foods in the U.S., Mexico City benefits from its location and status and provides its residents and visitors with an astonishing array of high-quality meats, seafood, vegetables, fruits, and other foods that are sourced from all over the country.

You’ll also find far more homemade food in Mexico City than is typical in any city in the U.S. From the street food stands and family-run cocinas económicas you’ll find all over the city to the larger restaurants, most chefs are buying meat, produce, and other ingredients locally at markets and passing the quality along to their customers.

Don’t worry, there’s plenty of processed food, including candy and soda, all over Mexico City and the rest of the country too. But eating well isn’t at all difficult.

Possibly the 2nd-cheapest way to eat lunch in Mexico City

📜 4. The history and culture of Mexico City is incredible

Growing up in the northeast of the United States, we were taught that our country’s history began with the Pilgrims. But there is more to our history than that, and a lot of it is tied to Mexico, which was similarly “discovered” by Europeans and then subjected to outside rule for an even longer time.

Today, Mexico is an independent presidential republic just like the United States. But it has an even richer pre-colonization history than our country. It was the home of the Olmecs, the earliest civilization in the Americas, as well as the Aztecs, Mayans, Zapotecs, and other notable indigenous civilizations.

History is ever-present in Mexico City, which was established by the Spanish as the capital of New Spain on the site of the conquered Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. The two cathedrals that dominate the northern side of Mexico City’s main square—the 👁️Plaza de la Constitución, or Zócalo—were built using stones from former Aztec temples, one of which was rediscovered in the early 20th century and turned into the 🎨Museo del Templo Mayor y Zona Arqueológica (Templo Mayor museum and archeological site).

And just outside Mexico City, you can find the incredible 🏛Zona Arqueológica de Teotihuacán (Teotihuacan archeological site), a World Heritage Site whose Pirámide del Sol (Pyramid of the Sun) is the second-largest pyramid in the country.

Teotihuacán, as we call it for simplicity’s sake in our book, is reason enough to visit Mexico City. But if you love history as much as we do, there is so much to learn in here and elsewhere in the surrounding country.

🧍🏽 5. The people in Mexico City are nicer

Mexico City offers many happy surprises to visitors, but none will surprise you more than the friendliness of the people here. Where the French are (fairly or not) infamous for being rude to outsiders, Mexicans—and, in our experience, especially those in Mexico City—are quite the opposite. They are the friendliest people we’ve ever encountered, and it’s not even close. (Sorry, Ireland.)

We weren’t prepared for this. But as our experience with Mexico City grew, so did our collection of stories about locals—Chilangos, as they call themselves—going out of their way to help us.

On our first trip in mid-2021, we foolishly elected to take the Metro from the airport to our hotel because we love subway train systems and missed them from Europe. We didn’t really need help, but in orienting ourselves in the unfamiliar station, a resident stopped to ask us if we needed help. And then told us to follow him part-way because we were heading in the same general direction.

When we boarded the train, a group of young men saw us referring to our phones and scanning the in-train station stops and asked if we needed assistance finding the right stop. And when we almost missed that stop, they all reminded us it was time to get off. Stepping out into the sunny street near the hotel, we again spun around to get our bearings, and another person stopped to see if he could help us on this final leg of the journey.

(Note: Do not take the Metro when you arrive at the airport in Mexico City. As with the subways in any major city, its stations are multi-level rabbit holes with many stairs and occasionally working escalators for you to lug your bags up and down repeatedly.)

Those day-one experiences provided us with our first collective example of Mexico City hospitality. We’re both a bit ashamed to admit that we were, of course, suspicious of all three encounters as they occurred. (Among other things, Paul has been pickpocketed on a bus in Rome and had an iPhone stolen in Lisbon.) But every encounter we’ve had with locals since then has only served to bolster our growing conviction that something special is happening in this city. The people here are incredible.

👄 6. The language in Mexico City is easier to learn

Like the United States, Mexico doesn’t have an official language, but Spanish is spoken by almost everyone. In fact, the prevalence of Spanish in Mexico is far greater than that of English in the U.S.

Given this, it’s on the visitor to grapple with whether to learn Spanish to some degree. And while the Mexican people are incredibly warm, friendly, and welcoming, as noted above, it’s unreasonable to visit another country and expect everyone to speak your language. So our advice is to make an effort.

Learn some basic Spanish words and phrases—hola (hello), adios (goodbye), and si (yes), of course, but also por favor (please), gracias (thank you), and ¿habla inglés? (do you speak English)—as a bare minimum. But more is always better, and while we speak what we think of as menu Spanish, which helps us get by in restaurants and bars, we have lots of work to do before we can claim to be fluent.

It’s OK. You will meet people from Mexico City, Chilangos, who will claim to speak only a little English—un poquito inglés—and will then amaze you with their extensive English vocabulary.

And you will have to try hard to offend: Mexicans are as proud of their heritage as anyone, but unlike the French, they will never refuse to speak English when they can do so. And they will not be rude to you if you can’t speak Spanish. If anything, they will try to help.

There are some simple strategies you can employ to overcome the language gap, which will be more problematic outside of popular tourist areas and gentrified neighborhoods. You should be ready (listo) with language translation apps like Google Translate on your smartphone as needed. And pointing works well with restaurant menus if you know what you want but can’t pronounce it, or are too embarrassed to even try. But there’s so much more you can do to prepare.

Duolingo basics: Our strategies and tips to help you get started

🚨 But … Is it safe?

Of the many misconceptions that Americans and others have about Mexico and its people, none is more troubling than the perceived safety issues.

Mexico City suffers from an unfair reputation for being unsafe that’s propagated and exacerbated by histrionic and hypocritical U.S. State Department warnings, skewed portrayals in Hollywood movies and TV shows, and skewed, biased reports from U.S. news media.

Yes, the country of Mexico has more than its share of violence. But Mexico City is as safe as any major city in the United States or Europe. And some places in Mexico City, like those we recommend and frequent ourselves, are even safer. We have yet to see anything even remotely sketchy here, though we’ve had multiple security scares in Paris, Rome, and other European capitals.

We’re not naive. Bad things can happen to anyone, anywhere. You should approach Mexico City as you do any other big city, with common sense.

But your biggest worry in Mexico City will likely be finding the time to take it all in. Chances are, you’ll fall in love and want to visit again and again. We fell so hard for Mexico City, we bought an apartment in its 🏠Roma Norte neighborhood. Which, not coincidentally, is as safe if not safer than any place we’ve ever lived in the United States, day or night.