So you’ve decided to visit Mexico City. Excellent. Now you have decisions to make.
Some are common to any trip, involving your budget, the time frame, and some list of sights and experiences you don’t want to miss. But Mexico City introduces some unique choices as well. For example, you could stay in a major hotel chain, as many do, and stick to the touristy areas in the city center.
Or you could immerse yourself more in the day-to-day Chilango lifestyle by choosing a 📲Vrbo or another vacation rental in one of its many friendly suburban neighborhoods, venturing out with the tourists during the day and returning to the safe, walkable, tree-lined streets of 🌴Condesa or 🏠Roma Norte at night, where you can enjoy local restaurants, bars, and cafes.
We strongly recommend the latter approach. Living like a local, even temporarily, is the only way to truly learn a place.
We’ve made a few mistakes booking vacation rentals, and you can learn from our mistakes:
We understand that new places are unfamiliar and can feel scary, and that these uncertainties only serve to undermine a trip. And we know from our own experiences that you can easily escalate your immersion in Mexico City over time.
A first quick visit based in a Hilton or other major hotel chain near the historic center might be followed up by a second, longer trip with a vacation rental base in Condesa or Roma Norte. (And then, you could even buy an apartment and really amplify the immersion! It happens.)
Everyone has their own comfort level, but travel is all about finding yours and stretching it a bit. And there is no better place to confront and then exceed your personal comfort level limits than Mexico City. You will warm to the place, just as it will warm to you. This isn’t a one-and-done destination. You’ll want to return again and again.
This is an excerpt from our downloadable book, Eternal Spring: Our Guide to Mexico City, which is designed to work seamlessly on your phone, e-reader, tablet, or computer. Use it to plan your itinerary, and refer to it any time you need to when you’re in Mexico City.
🗺️ Where to stay in Mexico City
Here, we focus on where to stay, the neighborhoods to search with 📲Vrbo or another vacation rental. And this is a short discussion: For the first-time visitor, in particular, there are really only a handful of neighborhoods at the top of the list. As your experience here grows, you can expand the search to less gentrified and tourist-filled spots.
🏛️ Centro
The touristy, crowded, and European-style center of Mexico City consists of two adjoining neighborhoods, Centro Histórico and Alameda Central, plus a bit of the surrounding area. We refer to this area simply as Centro.
Collectively, it’s home to many of the city’s best sights, and it’s the logical starting point for those visiting the city for the first time. It extends from the 👁️Plaza de la Constitución—Mexico City’s vast Zócalo (main square)—in the east, past the 🏛️Palacio de Bellas Artes ands the 🌳Alameda Central park in its center, and out to the 🏛️Monumento a la Revolución (Monument of the Revolution) that’s technically in a tiny neighborhood called Tabacalera in the west.
The whole area is quite walkable, and it could be traversed in just over 30 minutes if you could ignore the beauty around you. But you could—and should—spend days exploring its many sights. Fortunately, it’s also amply stocked with terrific restaurants, bars, and cafes, so there are many choices when you need a break.
🌸 Juarez and Reforma
This area encompasses the neighborhoods of Juarez, San Rafael, and Colonia Cuauhtémoc on either side of 🚶Paseo de la Reforma, to the west of 🏛️Centro and north of 🏠Roma Norte.
It can be grittier than the neighborhoods we recommend the most—🌴Condesa and Roma Norte—but it’s also entirely authentic and safe. And thanks to the neighborhood straddling Reforma, it’s where you’ll find many of the city’s biggest hotels and other skyscrapers.
This area is most interesting on Sundays: That’s when Reforma closes its streets to car traffic so that walkers, joggers, bicyclists, and others can enjoy its monuments and fountains from a unique perspective. You’ll also find Mexico City’s best art fair at the 🌳Jardín del Arte Sullivan on Sundays.
🛍️ Polanco
Upscale Polanco is a luxury shopping destination full of expensive hotels, restaurants, and embassies. It’s even more Americanized and gentrified than 🌴Condesa, and is considered a sort of Beverly Hills of Mexico City.
But Polanco is also the home—sort of—of one of Mexico City’s best museums, 🎨Museo Soumaya, and some excellent restaurants. It’s a bit remote, however, because it’s not served by the Metro and there is a traffic choke point separating the area from the rest of the city. It’s worth seeing, but the incommensurately long Uber rides to and from elsewhere in the city make Polanco less desirable as a base for visitors.
Museo Soumaya is technically located in Miguel Hidalgo, just outside of Polanco. But we cover this museum, and the 🌳Bosque de Chapultepec (Chapultepec Park) area along with Polanco.
🌴 Condesa ⭐
Quieter and less chaotic than 🏠Roma Norte, Condesa is also more gentrified and Americanized. This makes it attractive to outsiders who are uncomfortable or unwilling to learn Spanish.
The center of Condesa is full of cafés and the home of some of our favorite restaurants and bars, and there is even some terrific street food if you know where to look. It’s a good choice for those who want a quiet base from which to explore the rest of what can often be a loud and chaotic city. Indeed, it’s our top pick for visitors, especially on a first trip.
Condesa is really three separate neighborhoods—Colonia Condesa, Colonia Hipódromo, and Colonia Hipódromo Condesa—but like everyone else, we consider them to be a single place called Condesa.
🏠 Roma Norte ⭐
To us, Roma Norte is the perfect Mexico City neighborhood. It’s walkable, safe, and friendly, and home to some of the city’s best restaurants, bars, cafés, and street food. To fans of even more gentrified places like 🌴Condesa and 🛍️Polanco, it may also feel grittier, which is a pointed way of saying that it is more authentic and less gentrified.
But Roma Norte is also inundated by expats, just not to the degree we see in Condesa and Polanco. And the further south you are, the less English you hear. If you’re looking for a risk-free, traditional local experience, Roma Norte is it. We love it so much that we made it our home.
🍸 Roma Sur
If 🌴Condesa and 🏠Roma Norte are too gentrified for your tastes, you’ll love the rough and tumble Roma Sur to its south. This busier, grittier, and smaller neighborhood is light on sights, but it’s full of incredible, authentic restaurants, bars, and street food.
It’s also the home of our favorite park, the enormous 🌳Jardín Ramón López Velarde, our favorite farmer’s market, 🛍️Mercado El 100, our local market, the authentic and diverse 🛍️Mercado Medellín, and our favorite bar, 🍸Café Tacobar del Sur.
It’s perfectly safe, but 🍸Roma Sur is perhaps a bit too real for most Americans to consider staying there. That’s fine: Its proximity to Roma Norte makes it a no-brainer for the occasional foray on foot too.
🐺 Coyoacán and San Ángel
Geographically separated from most of the areas we recommend, 🐺Coyoacán and neighboring San Ángel are very much worth the 25 to 30 minute Uber ride to the south, at least to visit. Both feature traditional markets, gorgeous parks, and wonderful restaurants, bars, cafés, and weekend art fairs.
Coyoacán is also home to one of Mexico City’s most popular sights, 🎨Museo Frida Kahlo, a museum dedicated to the country’s most famous artist that’s located in her former home, the walled Casa Azul (the Blue House).
San Ángel is home to two of our favorite restaurants, 🍴Oxa and 🍴San Ángel Inn. We love these neighborhoods, but we don’t recommend staying in either because they’re so far from most of the places you’ll want to see.
📅 How long to stay
How long you stay in Mexico City will depend on several factors. Most people can’t drop everything and head south of the border for months at a time, of course. That’s OK. You can get a good feel for what makes this place so special in 5 to 7 days. So we recommend that most first-time visitors try and spend the better part of a week here if possible.
That said, those who live close to the US/Mexico border might consider shorter, long weekend-type trips because of the convenience, especially if they can get good deals on flights. And those with more time on their hands, especially empty nesters and retirees, should consider longer trips of two weeks or more.
More Mexico City travel tips:
Last time we were in Mexico City my husband wanted to stay close to Bosque de Chapultepec so we stayed in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood. It was a short walk to La Condesa.
That museum is outstanding looking. Not sure why I've never heard of it. I'm surprised that you can't get there on the Metro.
These are all lovely neighbourhoods to live in. Especially for the majority of people who want to be in the thick of it 😉
If someone wanted a proper suburb feel I might recommend Pedregal. If they want family vibes but well within the metro map, I'd send them to Del Valle or Narvarte.