Having just spent months planning, booking, and loving a different trip to France and Spain, we were less than helpful planning this trip to Mexico City in November. It's a trip with friends, and they planned it all, we just had to do was show up and tag along! Thanks, guys!

We flew Seattle → Los Angeles → Mexico City on a Delta AeroMexico code share to earn miles on Delta. The flight was due to land in MEX at 11:30pm but it was a little late. By the time we got through customs and checked into the Stanza Hotel in Roma Norte it was close to 1am. Just a travel day. We didn't even see any of our group. Most of them were staying through November 9; my wife and I extended until the 13th.

Stanza Hotel

Everyone stayed at the Stanza Hotel in Roma Norte. One of our crew hails from CDMX with family still living there so she gave us the inside story about where to stay.

The Stanza was fine; it was clean and relatively inexpensive and in a great location. It was safe and the staff was friendly and helpful (e.g. we changed to a larger room in the middle of the trip and had no issues). These are not a luxury accommodations, though, I am sure that there are much fancier hotels available in Mexico City. I think we paid around $100/night for the room in 2025. The Stanza has a restaurant and a gym - you will later hear from my wife, who tried both of these.

Wait, with that late check in I didn't really get much sleep... what are we doing tomorrow anyway?

Beep, beep, beep, beep....

I'll admit it. I thought about bailing and sleeping in... but only for a second. This is a big group day and we have a packed itinerary.

Pan Rosetta

First on the agenda: a trip to Teotihuacán (~an hour from the hotel by van) for a guided tour of the pyramids and ruins. We met our guide at 7am at a great breakfast spot right around the block from the hotel called Pan Rosetta. Grab a pastry for the road... but better get there fast because it's so good a line forms. Our guide is waiting for us; he's an actual archaeology student and he knows his stuff. He's friendly and will be both our driver and teacher for the trip.

On the way into the park we saw colorful hot air balloons being filled and made ready for their passengers. While my wife and I didn't ride one, two of our group did so on their last day in Mexico City and reported that it was a great experience... well worth their 4am wake up time and drive.

Teotihuacán

Teotihuacán was a huge city; at its peak (roughly 300–500 CE) over 100,000 people lived there, making it the largest urban center in the Americas at the time. The ceremonial core (where we started the tour with our guide) is thought to represent only about 12% of the site's maximum extent of roughly 20 km² -- a lot of the ruins are still buried to this day and the slow excavation work continues. Our guide lamented the glacial pace of the work and said there have been problems with local people profiteering in important stolen artifacts at the opportunity cost of studying them and placing them in museums.

Nobody really knows who actually built the city of Teotihuacán, or what they called it. The name "Teotihuacán" is a Nahuatl word meaning "the place where the gods were created" and was given to the site centuries later by the Aztecs, who had no contact with the earlier culture. They simply found the city already abandoned and in ruins. The Aztecs made pilgrimages to Teotihuacán and assigned names to its buildings, but the original inhabitants' language, ethnicity, and even self-name for the city are still unknown.

Archaeologists have evidence that when new groups came into power in Teotihuacán they would not tear down the work of their predecessors but, instead, they would build over top of it in a process called "superimposition". New rulers enlarged pyramids by encasing the old structure in a new outer shell (with their markings on it) rather than tearing it down. It reflects continuity of sacred ground rather than erasure of the previous regime — the site itself was treated as consecrated, so building up and even covering over preserved that.

Markings on the walls were designs and animals. Different animals represented different human houses or clans, and how animals were decorated indicated group's jobs. For example, the feathered headdress seen below indicates a politically or religiously important family. Tongues, which might be curled like a butterfly proboscis, coming out of mouths in the drawings indicate speaking. Artwork was signage in Teotihuacán. The most common animals, jaguar, eagle, coyote, butterfly, and quetzal, often appear in repeated processions, as if participating in society rather than just decorating it.

Such a large city needed long trade networks to support its people. There is evidence of active commerce networks trading goods with other peoples as far north as what is today the southwest of the United States and as far south as present day Panama. The strongest trading relationships were with the Maya city-states. The city sat close to two major obsidian sources (Sierra de las Navajas and Otumba) and centralized much of the obsidian trade across Mesoamerica so obsidian was a primary good offered by the city.

The end of Teotihuacán was thought to have been violent, and it was probably internal. Around 550–650 CE, the city's monumental core burned in a fire that targeted temples and elite structures specifically, while residential compounds were largely spared — a pattern archaeologists read as an uprising or purge against the ruling class rather than outside conquest.

Just as in ancient times, today there are a lot of people selling their wares to us tourists. You can get obsidian (though our guide tells us to make sure it's real, first... it is so hard that it will scratch glass and some of the vendors have conveniently brought some glass along for you to test the authenticity of their wares). You can also get noise makers, clothing, and other souvenirs. I didn't make any purchases though others in the group did; one friend bought a large obsidian piece to bring home.

Instead of shopping, my wife and I climbed the Moon Pyramid's steep steps to get a better view of the landscape and took photos. It's not a long climb but the stairs are definitely more tall than wide and you need to take some care climbing.

We also visited the site of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent (Templo de Quetzalcóatl) with our guide and climbed the shorter pyramid (err... ziggurat?). In 2003, a heavy rainstorm caused a sinkhole to open at the Templo pyramid's base. Archaeologist Sergio Gómez investigated and found a man made tunnel, thought to have been dug around 100 CE, running roughly 100 meters east underneath the pyramid. The tunnel was deliberately sealed around 250 CE, right when the pyramid above it was completed. Excavation of the tunnel took about a decade of careful work. Inside, they found thousands of jade and greenstone objects, obsidian blades, walls embedded with pyrite (which would have glittered like a starfield by torchlight), pools of liquid mercury, and mysterious carved stone spheres whose purpose is still unclear.

Evidence of human sacrifice has been tied to the Feathered Serpent Pyramid by excavations at its base that found the remains of over 200 sacrificed individuals, many bound, buried with obsidian points and shell ornaments. These remains are generally interpreted as sacrificed warriors, and isotope analysis of the bones suggests most came from central Mexico, though several different regions are represented. So they were not all locals. Some were children. Child sacrifices were reserved for dire situations like attempts to appease the gods to end long droughts.

After Teotihuacán, our guide took us to a less frequently visited site that, I think, he had access to because of his credentials as a student archaeologist. The site was more of the same, mostly: very similar wall decorations but was a living area of "apartment" rather than a large temple area. The red pigment used on the walls is vibrant even after 2000 years because they were shielded from the sun's UV light.

You can take photos of the walls (at least as of 2025) but they ask that you do not use flash so as to preserve the pigments' colors.

In total, we only spent a few hours on the tour. Afterwards, we rode in the tour van back to Roma Norte to be on time for the next event: a mezcal tasting. But we had just enough time to grab some street tacos so as to avoid drinking a bunch of mezcal on empty stomachs. I had the al pastor and it was delicious... but it (or the late night, or both together) was likely the thing that gave me stomach "issues" in the coming days...

Mezcal tasting

Our friends made all of the arrangements on this trip including this mezcal tasting. We took ubers from Roma Norte to the mezcal tasting in the Colonia Gabriel Ramos Millán Sección of CDMX. The traffic was a nightmare, like any big city, so plan accordingly.

The car let us out in front of what appeared to be an apartment, so we weren't initially certain we were in the right place. Our host greeted us and saw us in past the lower level warehouse to a bright upstairs room with a big square table to seat us all together. There was a lot of interesting artwork to admire.

The tasting was led by a father-son team. They go around to different rural areas in Mexico collecting their local mezcal along with recipes, processes and lore. They love mezcal and help people who are still making the spirit in traditional ways via knowledge sharing and distributing their product to tourists like us. They had photos and videos of different cacti, distilling methods, and stills used around Mexico... and they had 20+ mezcals for us to sample.

Most of these mezcals were "traditional" but it was amazing the taste variance even among the traditional varieties. The more exotic mezcal specimens included some where the makers roasted rabbit over their still and the drippings ended up in the final product giving it a meaty, earthy flavor. Other less traditional varieties included exotic spices in the mezcal including Indian flavors. My favorite mezcal was a smokey one that reminded me of an Islay whiskey and I bought a bottle to bring home. All in all this tasting was one of the highlights of the trip, for me.

Masala y Maíz

Our group are foodies and had made some great dinner reservations for their brief stay. Tonight's was for Masala y Maíz at 6pm. The food was good; I had an Ethiopian berberi chicken and I liked the spice blend so much that it has since entered my home chicken night rotation (along with homemade injera and rice to round out the Ethiopian theme).

I will say that I had a somewhat bad experience with a waitress here. Having ordered a bottle of Rioja and received something that was slightly fizzy, I said it tasted off and handed the glass to my wife who agreed. After much discussion they took the bottle back but were hesitant to let me order a different bottle (I guess they thought I was going to send back all the wine they opened). I hate to be "that guy" but I love wine, drink it too much, had actually just come back from la Rioja, and know when it's bad. Wine should not be fizzy and wait staff should swap a bottle when something's off.

Cafebrería El Péndulo Roma

In the morning we learned that people were having breakfast at Cafebrería El Péndulo just down the street. We decided to join since it was so close. Cafebrería is a portmanteau of cafe and librería, or bookstore, which is what this cafe is. It's a fun spot with a good breakfast. By the time we arrived, some of our group were nearly done, but then others came after us. There was nothing on our schedule until lunchtime so we learned everyone's plans for the morning.

Ciudadela Market

We decided to accompany a few friends shopping the local markets for souvenirs. One of the friends we're shopping with is originally from CDMX, speaks fluent Spanish, and still has local ties. She helped us negotiate the Ciudadela crafts market, about a mile walk from the hotel. The market offers artisanal textiles, jewelry, pottery, and other items. You can haggle the prices in the maze of market stalls but they are pretty affordable to start with. It helps to have a native Spanish speaker along!

Museo Nacional de Antropología

From there, we headed to the enormous Museo Nacional de Antropología. The exterior of the museum has the iconic "El Paraguas" sculpture (The Umbrella) -- a single concrete column in the central courtyard that fans out to support the roof with water cascading down it. It was designed by Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (with Rafael Mijares and Jorge Campuzano) for the opening of the museum in the 1960s. The building itself is an interesting, modern style architecture. The admission price is relatively low and the exhibits are amazing.

There are many separate exhibit halls here -- 23 to be exact. We only had a few hours to spend there so we couldn't see everything but we did see a lot. The museum is focused on a Mesoamerican civilizations before the European conquests, and each hall is devoted to a culture or region; there's one for the Mexica (Aztec), Maya, Oaxaca (Zapotec / Mixtec), the Olmec, and more. We saw the Aztec Sun Stone (Piedra del Sol), colossal Olmec heads, and reconstructions of life in Teotihuacán (where we were the previous day).

There were two burial recreations -- graves with skeletons laid out surrounded by dozens of ceramic vessels, figurines and other "grave goods" showing funerary practices and the belief that the dead needed provisions and offerings for the journey to the underworld.

I do not purport to be an expert on any of this but I will say that I think the museum was very well done, educational, interesting, beautiful and all in all a very worthwhile experience.

Pujol

After the museum it was time for a group lunch at Pujol, one of Mexico City's most celebrated restaurants and one of the main attractions for our trip. Chef Enrique Olvera is one of the most influential figures in contemporary Mexican cuisine. Pujol is fine dining and it's expensive... but it is also consistently ranked among the best restaurants in the world and is actually a good value compared to the typical fine dining prices elsewhere.

The food was amazing but the standout to me was the madre mole, their signature dish. A dab of freshly made mole encircling a core of the "mother" mole that has been continuously aged and re-cooked for over a decade.

Pujol requires reservations and they should be made well in advance because they go fast. Highly recommended.

The rest of the group went to the lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) at Arena México that evening but my wife and I stayed in. By this time I am actually starting to feel a little sick... the long days and the local street tacos are catching up with me. I opted for a local dinner and staying near the hotel and, ahem, the facilities there. Hopefully I'll feel better after a good night's rest.

I'm sick. Not ill, just "gastrointestinally challenged" and feeling a bit off. Montezuma strikes again. I want to be absolutely clear, I am certain this is related to me eating street tacos and not getting enough sleep. I'm not in any way insinuating that our prior dining experiences were to blame at all. I'm certain they aren't; kitchens run by professionals are not where I got this. But I don't feel great and I'm trying to rally because today is the marquee meal of the trip: the long tasting lunch at Quintonil.

Abarrotes Delirio

I slept in and, when I woke up, the group was having breakfast at Abarrotes Delirio, a bakery and provisions shop with a walk-up counter for ordering and outdoor seating. I only had bread and some tea, trying to settle my stomach.

Despite not feeling great, we did some walking around with a few other members of our gang. We meandered our way to the early afternoon lunch.

Quintonil

Our experience at Quintonil started around 1:30pm with the group split into two adjacent tables. Yesterday's Pujol was amazing and hard to get reservations for... Quintonil was incredible and is even harder to get reservations for; our friends booked months ahead and had to fight the bots and resellers for the spots. Like Pujol, Quintonil is consistently cited as one of the best restaurants in the world.

Chef Jorge Vallejo (who trained under Enrique Olvera at Pujol before striking out on his own) and his wife Alejandra Flores run the restaurant named for a wild, edible herb (a type of amaranth green) common in Mexican cooking. Their cuisine is built around native Mexican plants and produce. It's a small space, all in all, making finding a reservation even harder.

World class, modern Mexican fare with a seasonal menu and local sourcing. The food was amazing. We had the charred avocado tartare with escamoles (ant larvae) and it was delicious... even the squeamish eaters in the group agreed though they would have preferred to not know about the insects. Dishes were built around cactus, wild greens, and heirloom corn. The wine pairings were on point and delicious. Like Pujol, the price was expensive in absolute terms -- hundreds of dollars at both establishments. But, compared to the fine dining prices elsewhere in the world and the quality of the food and service, both meals were a bargain and were special memories to savor forever.

I hate to admit that I was not feeling well this entire dining experience, though. I could still enjoy the food but I think I visited the bathroom at Quintonil at least twice during the extended tasting menu seating. I really wish that I had been in better shape for this meal and need to return someday to revisit this experience because it was still among the best dining experiences of my life.

After lunch, I headed straight back to the hotel, I'm afraid. My wife set off on her own, tired of being a nursemaid (wife here: I was not yet tired of being a nursemaid; in fact I didn't even realize how bad he was feeling at this point), and had a nice walk around Roma Norte where she found a bar with a little lucha libre ring in the corner, stopped for a beer, and practiced her Spanish conversation with a friendly bartender.

Wife here, to tell you about my wanderings.

The rest of our crowd had gone to Xochimilco in the afternoon. I did want to visit this place, but it was going to be an hour-plus travel each way for a very short stay, so I opted out. I did plan to meet up with them later but needed to fill some time.

Luckily there was an OXXO shop just a couple blocks away - they're all over, really - and I made many trips there to pick up the Electrolit, cold from their coolers. We did not have a refrigerator in our room to stock up on it. I may at some point have put some on ice in the sink. I also found a ramen place in the same area and ordered some to take back to husband for some nourishment and fluid. It took a very long time, so long that I had to confirm that the order had even been put in. During this time a couple young men stopped by on the sidewalk and did a rap performance with a boom box. They were making up words and chiding some of the patrons (the restaurant was open-air). People were laughing and enjoying it. I dropped some coins that I had in their cup.

In November in Mexico City, the sun sets around 6 pm, so it was already fairly dark when I headed back out to wander. I was by myself so I kept my guard up and took care not to stray too far from the main street the hotel was on. I never felt unsafe. I walked past shops homes. I was drawn by the sound of fountains into Parque Luis Cabrera, but it was too dark to get good pictures or to linger very long.

I didn't want to stray too far so I thought I would sit and grab a beer. I found a little hole in the wall place and stopped in. I could not identify it later but based on my photo location and Google Maps it might have been La Nuclear Pulquería. There was no one else there and I was chatting with the two people at the bar. The owner came and we started chatting as well - I definitely need opportunities to practice my Spanish. Somehow lucha libre came up and I said I had opted not to go and I think he decided then he was going to make me a fan. He showed me around the corner into a tiny bar room that he had devoted to the sport, including a mini fighting ring. So fun!

Rayo cocktail bar

The group (including my wife) went to the avant garde Rayo bar. Wife here again: It's a trendy upstairs cocktail place where you enter into a mysterious lobby where you are greeted with a champagne or some sort of cocktail and escorted upstairs by means of a dark elevator ride. The bar itself is on a deep balcony open to the outside. Our table was near the edge so it was a bit windy and cool. They have a very interesting drinks menu, and interesting food too though we only shared some snacks. It was fun and cool to see, but we each just had one (fancy) drink then made our way back to the hotel. The braver of us stopped for some street food on the way back (myself not included).

Everyone else was leaving today; they had to get back to work. But my wife and I were staying on for a few more days. I was feeling a little better this morning but definitely still not well yet. I walked out to have breakfast with the group, to say goodbye, and to refresh my supply of Electrolit, a Gatorade-like "sports drink" that I found to be great for my stomach ills. It's available all over the place in Mexico City.

This was a quiet day for me and my wife; we explored the streets of Roma Norte on foot always staying near enough to the hotel that I could get back in an "emergency". We started by walking to a nearby pharmacy to purchase some imodium or other medicine. We travel with some in our kits but I had already exhausted the supply.

We had been awakened that morning by loud clanking as a bunch of metal bars were being unloaded onto the street outside our window. When we got back to the hotel, walking along that street, we saw the reason: a street market had popped there, closing the street to traffic. We perused as vendors, mostly with fresh produce, moved in and set up. We heard a van with a loudspeaker on the top hawking its wares in Spanish: "Microondas! Neveras! Lavadoras! ..." (microwaves! refrigerators! washers!). Their odd method of transacting was to pull over and make the exchange; it kinda made me wonder how these goods were sourced.

For food today it was simple: bread, Electrolit, and local ramen. For ramen, there were several little restaurants in Roma Norte and I'm pleased to report that their food was good (and helped my queasy stomach settle). We were surprised that there were electronic kiosks for ordering, even for dining in. But I guess this is also how you order at most McDonald's now as well.

Our hotel was next to Pushkin Park, so many of our walks passed through. There is always something going on there. There is an off-leash dog area; hence all the cool dog street art on the walls. The park has a lot of pavement so on multiple days there were skating lessons with cones set up and people learning to do stunts on their inline skates. The street market was also set up on the street between the hotel and the park.

Wife here again:

I used our quiet day to try out the Stanza's gym, which was built out of two combined guest rooms that looked out on the an interior patio. There was decent cardio and weight equipment, in good condition. I recall that the remote to the TV was missing. But outside the open window, some people were working (laundry, maybe?) and they were playing a radio so I listened to that while I exercised.

On my own at dinnertime, I decided to visit the restaurant at the Stanza, Maíz & Olivo. I had a fish filet with some vegetables. It was surprisingly good. It's not fine dining but it's good enough for the restaurant to stand on its own apart from the hotel.

Roma Norte

I'm still on the mend today and my wife was getting antsy so she went on a long walk exploring CDMX. I'll leave it to her to describe her adventures. Meanwhile, I was still on a simple food diet and a steady stream of Electrolit... and was staying near the hotel.

Some things I managed to see on my morning walk:

Wife's Walkabout

I set out on a walk without any clear plan, which maybe isn't the wisest idea. But it was daylight, I had my phone for navigation, and if I found somewhere sketchy I would turn around. I started out by revisiting the Plaza Luis Cabrera that I had only seen in the dark a few days before. It was nice, but not nearly as enticingly mysterious as it had been by night. Next I decided to head to another park I saw on the map, the Plaza Rio de Janeiro.

From there I headed to Insurgentes, another big point on the map. This circle defines a transit hub and shopping area. The center is a plaza below street level, and a Halloween / Día de los Muertos festival was in the process of being taken down. Leaving, I followed one of the major avenues along an old wall. In Europe I might have guessed it was a Roman relic, but here it was the Chapultepec aquaduct from the 1400s.

Not really knowing where I was, I turned up at the corner of the Chapultepec castle and forest, but I did not enter. Next I turned up at the Plaza de Madrid and the Cibeles Fountain. I took one of the larger streets away from the circle. I was getting a bit tired from all the walking, so I expected to cross Avenida Álcaro Obregón and head back to the hotel. I missed the sharp angle of the turn and found myself in the Parque de España. It had some cool paths and fountains, but by the time I got to the far side I knew I had gone too far and made a U-turn to get back. If I had planned more walking, I might have gone to the Parque México just a couple blocks away.

Once I got sorted, it soon started to look familiar. It was just a straight shot back to the Stanza and a rest for my weary feet.

Roma Norte

Finally, I'm beginning to feel better. Good enough, at least, to walk around and explore (allowing myself to get far away from the hotel and the bathroom there).

On one of my long walks, I met a guy from Cuba with a pile of beer cans around him sitting next to the fountain in a park. When I sat down nearby, he struck up a conversation in Spanish. I'm decent at Spanish and I like to practice so I did my best to chat with him (though with my ~B1 skill level and his slightly slurred words it was tricky). But people can be friendly even across a bit of a language barrier. He told me about his home and family and about coming to CDMX to find work. I told him about my family and my home too. He had more unopened beers and offered me one which I accepted. He refused to let me buy it so we "salud'ed" and sat on the bench doing our best to chit chat and enjoy the day together.

After my walk, I found I was feeling almost 100%. My wife and I love wine and I had heard a lot about Mexican producers; we wanted to taste some "local" wine (i.e. wine from Mexico, not necessarily from around Mexico City) while we were in the country so we googled "wine bars" within walking distance and set out on our way.

Wine Bar CMB

The first one we found was The Wine Bar CMB. I am not sure I totally understand their business; they seem to be affiliated with Audi (cars), though, and the place was very fancy. But they had a great wine selection including choices from all around Mexico. They ran some kind of a contest for local producers to enter their wines for judging, I think. Our waiter was friendly and knowledgeable about wine and was happy to show us their wine cellar which was well-stocked, climate-controlled and, honestly, pretty amazing.

My wife and I each ordered a flight of wines from Mexico. I recall really enjoying some reds from the northern Baja California and Sonora regions where the Mediterranean climate, morning fog from the ocean, and mountain valley topography make for good grape cultivation. The terroir there is granite-rich alluvial soils reminiscent of the Rhône valley in France and the wines are lovely.

Tannin Art Bar

When we left, we both still wanted to drink wine (what a surprise, I know!) so I googled again and found the Tannin Art Bar within easy walking distance. This is a cool place that combines wine with art; you can sit in the patio and sip your wine or wander through the exhibit space and admire the artwork. I recommend both.

We ordered by the glass here and, as we sat into the evening enjoying our choices, there was some kind of event beginning to take shape. People wandered in and the owner was working the tables visiting with people. When it was our turn we complimented his art and his wine which led to him bringing around a couple of other bottles to share tastes from. All in all it was a very enjoyable evening.

Feeling Better, go, go, go!

I woke up this morning feeling nearly 100% despite consuming more than my share of wine the previous night (and a beer in the park con mi amigo). Well aware that our time in CDMX was limited and that I had already wasted a lot of it recovering, I wanted to make the most of this last full day of the trip.

My wife's long solo walk had taken her near the grounds of the Chapultepec Castle and we decided that was a good location to explore today. We set off on foot.

Chapultepec Castle

The castle sits atop Chapultepec Hill ("grasshopper hill" in Náhuatl) in the Bosque de Chapultepec, one of the largest and oldest urban parks in the Western Hemisphere. It's bigger than New York's Central Park and, as the name implies, is forested. We saw cute little brown squirrel critters and grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) -- birds that remind me of crows though they aren't corvids. Some of the ahuehuete (Montezuma cypress) trees in the park are over 500 years old.

There are many paths through the trees but if you want to visit the castle you have to pay a small fee and make your way up a curving path that climbs the hill.

Even before the castle was constructed in 1785 by the Viceroy Bernardo de Gálvez, as a summer house for the Spanish viceroys, the hill it sits upon was sacred to Aztec because its springs fed an aqueduct and supported lush gardens and baths carved into the rock.

During the Mexican-American War, the castle was used as a military academy and was the site of the Battle of Chapultepec in September of 1847. During that battle, legend holds that six young cadets — the Niños Héroes ("Boy Heroes") — refused to retreat, and the last survivor, Juan Escutia, wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and leapt from the ramparts rather than be captured. The six-column monument at the base of the hill memorializes these heroes; it's a central patriotic shrine in Mexico.

The castle's most transformative chapter came under Emperor Maximilian I (the Habsburg archduke installed by the French during the Second Mexican Empire) and Empress Carlota. The couple made it their official residence and remodeled it in European style including building formal gardens on the grounds. They also built the grand tree-lined boulevard connecting the castle to the city center, today's Paseo de la Reforma. The neoclassical furnishings and decorations inside the castle date largely to this imperial period.

From reading the descriptions in the castle-museum, it really seemed to me like Maximilian was trying to do the right thing for Mexico but also like he was a bit naïve. Things didn't work out and he was executed in 1867.

After Maximilian's fall, the castle became the official residence of Mexican presidents, notably under Porfirio Díaz (late 19th–early 20th c.), who added much of its opulent decoration and the beautiful rooftop garden.

President Lázaro Cárdenas was the last to reside in the castle; he ended the practice in 1939, decreeing that the castle become the Museo Nacional de Historia (National Museum of History), which it remains to this day.

The castle-museum's collection covers Mexico from the Conquest through the Revolution, and it's famous for its murals by Juan O'Gorman, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others. They are patriotic and breathtaking.

The view from the roof looks out across the bosque at the modern skyline of Mexico city. This is a place worth visiting while you're in town.

Even though we had walked here from the hotel, by the afternoon my stomach was making weird noises again and so we decided to play it safe and uber back to the hotel to find some dinner and to begin packing; tomorrow we leave.

Another travel day but, luckily, a direct flight from MEX to our home near SEA. I'm happy to report no stomach issues on the flight or the following days. Writing about this trip has helped me to remember it better and, while it was a bit of a bust with me being sick half the time, I am still really glad we went. CDMX is a great city with beautiful places, friendly people, and world class food. Being laid up for a few days leaves me with a lingering feeling that I have unfinished business here and need to return again someday to explore more.

I hope you're still reading because you're planning your own trip to enjoy and, if so, that you have a great time.