La Trinidad Chilanga
“As a city, it is always compelling. But every day in Mexico City, I give thanks that I am alive.”
After two long years of rescheduling flights to visit friends in Mexico City in order to celebrate a birthday back in early 2020, we finally made it back to the capital this past May. Breathing in, the humid scent of greenery - the beautiful trees that shade the city’s roadways and abundant blossoming flowers hit you like a train, a distinct contrast to the dry heat of the Sonoran Desert during one of the hottest months of the year.
In the New York Times and other publications, recent articles leave little doubt about the burgeoning appeal and popularity of CDMX as a temporary home for remote workers and travel destination. What’s the attraction? Well, you can read the articles for all the theories and data, but to really comprehend this phenomenon, you must visit and there is no better time than now.
Here are your three reasons to go.
First, it has been just over five hundred years (1519-1521) since the first foreigners showed up in this city of Mesoamerica. Just like the remote workers of the twenty-first century, they liked what they saw and decided to stay and that’s a complicated story. It’s a complicated but downright fascinating story that really deserves to be interpreted in the places where some of the most important events in world history took place. With that piece in mind, we developed this itinerary to la Ciudad de México from April 19 - 24, 2023 for the public to cross-culturally bridge the gap between the city’s illustrious past and its thriving present. Being there is just something else!
Second, to understand the borderlands and Mexican culture, there is no way around missing the world-class cultural institutions that Mexico City has to offer. One day, you can contemplate humanity’s deep history at the pyramids of Teotihuacán, find Pre-Hispanic polychrome frescos off the beaten path, and visit one of the first stone churches built in Mexico in the mid-sixteenth century. While on another day, metro like a Mexico City resident to Chapultepec (Grasshopper Hill in Náhuatl) to one of the most important museums in the country where one of the most important battles took place between the U.S. and Mexico and where an Austrian prince was installed as Emperor of Mexico under a French regime.
Third, Mexico has a UNESCO-recognized cuisine as intangible cultural heritage, and that is a designation one must also honor by digging right in to experience tortas, tacos al pastor, pan dulce, pipianes, to enchiladas suizas, moles, escamoles, chile rellenos, chocolate caliente, churros, to chilaquiles and the gastronomy goes on in this mecca. This is the only place where one can step back in time to a candy shop from Mexico’s Porfirato and have lunch in a viceregal palace.
Well, guess what? You’re invited and you’ll be companions with locals, historians, and archaeologists providing you with an unparalleled perspective on life in this very special place in the world.
¡Vámonos!