My friend Darren and I have never seen eye to eye on travel. His philosophy has been to visit the most difficult countries while he is in his physical prime and save the easier ones until he’s less ambulatory. My philosophy has been to visit the best countries in the world because you can never know when you might not be able to travel anymore. I figured, after working through our lists, we’d eventually make our way towards a country we could visit together. That happened last week in Mexico!

Darren and his wife, Jenny, came to Mexico city last week with an itinerary we’d gone back and forth on for a couple weeks. A couple days before their arrival, I asked him to prioritize his list because I was concerned we wouldn’t be able to do it all. He responded by saying, “In addition to seeing you and Joan and enjoying the weather, we’re interested in: relaxation and taking it easy, seeing interesting things, including cultural, walking, and good food”. That’s something I love about being with a seasoned traveler. They know that travel is more about the experience than the list. While we did manage to check some things off the list, very little of what we did followed our itinerary.

First impressions in Mexico

I start all of my tours of Mexico with a rooftop dining experience. The year round perfect weather in the central part of the country lends itself to outdoor dining, and almost every city has at least one rooftop restaurant. The main square in Mexico, called the Zocalo, has at least five restaurants overlooking it. As you walk along the streets of the Zocalo, restaurant employees stand on balconies waving menus to try to get you to come to their restaurant.

Entering most of them is confusing because you have to walk through the commercial storefront on the first level first. Sometimes there’s an elevator; sometimes there’s not, and you must walk several flights of stairs to get to the top. A couple of the buildings have restaurants on lower floors, but the view is not as good so it behooves you to ask the caller waving you in whether the building has a working elevator. That “working” part is an important thing to ask whenever inquiring about a machine in Mexico.

My two favorite restaurants are: Balcón del Zócalo and La Terazza. They are the only two where you’re not just paying for the view. It’s nice to give first time visitors a good overview of the city and pairing it with a 5 star meal, at half the cost of the same meal in the US, is usually enough to give people a great first impression of Mexico. Darren and Jenny were impressed.

Day two: neighborhood walks

By day two, we had scrapped the itinerary. On Sundays in Mexico City, they close the downtown core to bikes and pedestrians only. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to lazily explore the city on foot. We walked through the tree filled Chapultapec park and had a lovely breakfast at Básico in the Polanco neighborhood. Polanco is the Beverly Hills of Mexico City, and you are as likely to see a Mexican movie star or actor walking their pure bred show dog down Masaryk Avenue as you would be to see the same on Rodeo drive.

We walked through the elegant Palacio del Hierro mall before heading over to the free Soumaya art museum. My friends said they needed groceries so I introduced them to City Market, the finest of supermarkets in Mexico. Stocked with groceries for our week in Mexico city, we took an Uber home. We all enjoyed a Mexican siesta until we re-grouped at dinner.

A couple months ago, on our way to the Condesa neighborhood, we passed a packed restaurant called Pizza del Perro Negro (Pizza of the Black Dog) in Roma Norte. Looking at the pizza perched on wire racks in the center of the table, we could understand why. With a rare declaration of certainty, Joan declared that she would like to go there for dinner.

The wait was about 20 minutes so we walked across the street to one of my favorite dog parks in Mexico City, Parque Espana. Though there are enclosures for both small and large dogs, all of the dogs were running throughout the park. I am often surprised at how many dogs are off leash in Mexico City, but they seem to be well behaved and accustomed to it, like a European kid who has had sips of alcohol his whole life and doesn’t lose control the minute he’s given his freedom.

On our way back to the restaurant, we stopped in at Pasteleria Suiza, which has an astonishing variety of pastries. Around Christmas time, there are lines down the block for the Rosca de Reyes cake, famous for having a little plastic baby Jesus baked into it. Finding the baby inside the cake makes you king for a day, but it also comes with responsibilities. If you are the one to find the baby in your cake, you are responsible for hosting the next celebration and providing the next king cake. It was agreed we would stop by here after dinner for some dessert.

Casually enjoying Mexico City

Day two set the routine for the rest of our time in Mexico. Darren and Jenny had arrived stressed and exhausted. They enjoyed our leisurely morning start time of 10am. To be fair, that’s about the earliest you’ll find anything open in Mexico anyway.

We managed to split days so that we hit at least one tourist destination and spent the other half of the day just walking around the city and sampling a variety of eateries. It was a great relief to me that they just wanted to enjoy their experience and were not worried about sightseeing. We did take a bus tour of the city, which gave us an overall perspective on the city, but it also gave us perspective on the traffic. For that reason, we limited our activities to those things we could walk to. That’s why I had chosen centrally located accommodations.

Heading for the hills

After five days in Mexico City, we headed north to Mineral del Chico. I had explained to Darren and Jenny the beauty of Mexico’s central highlands, and they allowed me to suggest a route that would show them the variety of Mexico’s landscape. I joined them for the first town, about a 3 hour bus ride from Mexico city. We shortened it a bit by taking an Uber to Terminal del Norte (one of Mexico’s four geographically labeled bus terminals.

When we arrived in Pachuca, the gateway to the mountains, I suggested we negotiate a taxi to Mineral del Chico. There is a shared “collectivo” from Pachuca to Mineral del Chico, which is a minibus that waits until every seat is full and takes you on a winding one hour trip through the mountains to its destination. They really pack you in, and if you’ve got anything more than a backpack, this is a challenging option. The collectivos leave from the center of town, which is about 15 minutes from the bus station.

With a plan in mind, I asked the taxi driver we encountered outside the bus station how much it would be to take the three of us to the collectivo station. He gave me a price, but quickly added that for just a little bit more he could take us all the way there in his taxi. I knew I had more leveraging power if he proposed the trip all the way to our destination. We agreed on a reasonable price for both parties, and in 40 minutes we arrived at the quaint little Mexican hilltown I’d been wanting to share since I encountered it.

Mineral del Chico is a town deserving of the Mexican tourist board’s designation Pueblo Magico. It is a colorful European looking village with just a handful of stores and restaurants. It only has two hotels so you’d best book early, especially if you come during the holiday season. While it’s quiet during the week, it fills with tourists from Mexico city on the weekends because it’s so close.

We’d chosen this town because Darren and Jenny said they wanted to do some hiking, and I knew of at least two challenging hiking trails that led through pine forests and past tall rock outcroppings with views for miles. There are also a couple of lakes at the top of the ridge where you can swim or enjoy a meal. We saved our appetites for one of my favorite restaurants in Mexico.

I discovered La Trucha on my first visit to Mineral del Chico. When the tortillas came out with flowers embedded in them, I knew something was different. After an inquiry, I learned that the chef had trained in France and worked in New York city. He came back to this small town to care for his parents who’d raised him here. What a treat for this little town to have a world class chef at its disposal.

Darren and Jenny were equally impressed. A little perplexed after the server asked us to write our names on a piece of paper, we were blown away when tortillas arrived with pressed flowers and our names burned into them. The presentation and outstanding flavors continued throughout the meal, and we found ourselves talking about the food in a way you would at a fine dining establishment in the city. As is the case when I’ve visited this town in the past, we made La Trucha a recurring visit.

After a couple days, I could see all the stress had dissolved from the faces of my traveling companions. I was also happy that we were breathing in the fresh mountain air after the pollution of Mexico City. In the past, I’ve had occasional respiratory issues in the city, but it’s nice to know that respite is only a few hours away in the hills.

We parted ways after our trip to Mineral del Chico. Darren and Jenny had planned to visit more of Mexico’s central highlands cities: San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato, and I had a two week house sit in Seattle to get to. Joan had already flown to Seattle the day Darren, Jenny, and I left for Mineral del Chico because the couple we were house sitting for wanted to leave a couple days earlier than originally stated.

In an unusual bit of luck, the weather in Seattle was about the same as it was in Mexico. Darren and Jenny kept me posted on their trip and appeared to being enjoying Mexico more with each discovery. It was odd to be in the US, hearing about their trip in Mexico when they’d spent the winter in the US enviously eyeing our time in Mexico.

I was glad they decided to give Mexico a chance. Like Joan, they found that there is a lot more to Mexico than beach resorts crowded with foreign tourists. I’m pleased to report that no one was kidnapped or shot during this tour, and we all agreed that Mexico has a relaxed pace that suggests a high quality of life.