Adiós, Coyoacán

Our last night in Coyoacán was a bit of a blur. I remember a wonderful dinner, Michael Jackson, bright colors, and of course lots of ice cream.

Thankfully, the kids slept off their over-sugared, over-stimulated hangover the next morning, and gave us a bit of time to pack up our bags.

We had arranged for a taxi to come pick us up a the apartment around 10:00, which gave us plenty of time for one last trip to our favorite café. Quinn continued his international charm offensive, and said goodbye to all of his new friends.

The stroller ride back to our apartment gave one last opportunity for a "Mimi down." 

She had taken to sitting in front of Quinn as we meandered along the sidewalks of Mexico city. The adorableness to safety ratio was just favorable enough for us to allow it.

But at least daily, the inevitable sidewalk crack would send her flying three or four feet when the stroller got stuck. Brief moment of terror. Look up. Smile. Phew. "Mimi down!" She'd declare, giggle, and get back in the saddle. That kid is something else.

The only hiccup in our plan that morning was a no-show taxi. It was booked at the same time as our arrival taxi, and when we didn't connect with that driver, the entire reservation was apparently cancelled. But thankfully we live in the era of cell-phone ride share apps. So I marveled at the state of technology where I could pull out my phone, click a few buttons, and Oscar in a gray Nissan Sentra would arrive four minutes later.

Back on track, we headed to the airport, and our kids soaked up the novelty of a big city taxi ride one last time.

Check in and security were a breeze, which gave us one more chance to live the Admirals Club life.

For Mimi, that meant snacking on a bag of oyster crackers while watching the airplanes taxi. For Aimee and I, it meant ingesting as much free coffee as we could in thirty minutes. The timing of our flights was misaligned with the kids' nap times, so we knew we were in for a bit of turbulence.

For Quinn, it meant laughing uncontrollably at absolutely nothing.

"Ten hours of travel with two kids and no naps? That's a good one!"

Quinn's overtired-hysteria quickly evolved into toddler-breakdown, as it tends to do. So Mimi comfort-smothered him into submission.

Neither kid napped on the flight. The in-seat entertainment kept it bearable, but Aimee and I were both pretty frazzled getting off the flight in Dallas. Then my usual passport-line stress kicked in, and I had no tolerance for a three year old bladder. Aimee kindly talked me down, and escorted Mimi off to the bathroom while I waited for our bags at the customs checkpoint. And waited. And waited. After all of the bags had been picked up and the carousel stopped, we were still short one of our checked bags.

I talked to the baggage agent, who looked up our bag in his system, and pointed out the obvious. "Still in Mexico City."

You don't say.

I wondered how customs would work, since we were supposed to hand carry all of our luggage through the checkpoint. But I didn't have much time to wonder, since our next flight would be boarding in 15 minutes. We hustled through customs with most of our bags, rechecked our luggage, and then passed back through security to enter the domestic terminal. This prevented us from getting the dinner that we were banking on during the layover. Never a good idea in our family.

After rushing on to our flight, Aimee and I were barely hanging on to the last bits of our sanity. So Mimi played the role of parent. As I settled in to my middle seat, she looked over and said, "Are you ok right there?" Granted, she was just parroting what we often ask her. But still. She's three. Amazing.

Predictably, both kids had a rough flight. Over-exhaustion and hunger took a toll on all of us, but Mimi did eventually manage to fall asleep.

After we landed in Tucson.

I tried to carry Mimi out in her car seat, but that lasted all of about three minutes. She woke up in a hungry stupor, but thankfully both kids had their absolute favorite activity on the planet to keep them busy: cart pushing.

Normally, I try to corral them a bit, but I was currently in no shape for that. So there were a lot of sore shins and ankles in the Tucson airport that evening. My apologies.

After gathering the bags that survived our journey, we loaded up the car and made a beeline for my parents' house. We said, "Hello! Here are your grandbabies!" And disappeared into their pantry for a solid fifteen minutes. Calorically and emotionally replenished, we had just enough energy to get the kids ready for bed. I'm pretty sure I slept in my shoes that night. 

Like every trip, it was an absolute joy to experience another part of the world. Mexico City, and particularly Coyoacán, was beyond charming.

And like every trip with kids, it was an absolute joy to know that grandma and grandpa would be making their breakfast the next morning. Mom and dad need a vacation.

Viva Frida!

Friday was our last full day in Mexico City, and we had big plans.

We started that day like we had started every day that week: a quick workout on the way to breakfast.

But Quinn got a little too aggressive with the lunges, and we quickly found ourselves in a blowout situation. Complicating the matter further, we had exhausted our mobile diaper supply. We were a bit too far to make it back to the apartment, and I didn't want to buy a whole new case of diapers for our last day in the city.

Enter the corner tienda. These little mom and pop shops are on nearly every street corner in Latin America. In fact, Aimee's host family in Nicaragua ran one. It's amazing what can fit in a 10' x 10' room off the side of someone's house. All kinds of foods, a bit of liquor, engine oil, T-shirts, toaster ovens, and of course, single diapers. "I'll take a size five, please!" I was half thrilled and half mortified that I was half thrilled. This is my new reality. Spending the last morning of an international vacation tracking down a single diaper and loving every minute of it.

Newly contented, Quinn prepared for the next blowout at our neighborhood cafe.

Nona, Grael, and Conrad met us at the café, and after breakfast we wandered past Frida's house like we did most mornings. As always, there were literally hundreds of art students from all over the world waiting in line to pay homage. We would finally get our chance to visit the museum later that day, but since we could think of no worse horror than waiting in line for two hours with three small kids, we bought our tickets online several weeks prior.

Mimi was thrilled, since Frida plays a big role in several books that she loves. Quinn could have cared less, but he saw that the museum was in a house, and houses have kitchens. His curiosity was piqued.

But our tickets weren't valid until later that day, so we divided and conquered. Aimee and Nona went to the town market to get a few souveniers, and Grael and I took the kids to Parque Frida.

Exhausted from the gastrointestinal excitement of the morning, he barely made it ten minutes into our walk.

With Quinn sleeping, and Mimi playing with Conrad, I was just starting to get excited about the possibility of sitting on a park bench and chatting with another adult human. Then right on cue, my awake child abruptly announced her emergent need of a potty. So I left sleeping Quinn in Grael's capable hands and set out to find un baño.

Unfortunately, the restaurant that had saved us a few days prior wasn't open yet, so we continued walking to the next open business. It happened to be a nail salon staffed by a couple of twenty-somethings on their phones. I meekly pointed to Mimi and asked if we could use their restroom. They graciously ushered us in and fawned over Mimi.

In an effort to both thank the staff and rack up some major dad points, I asked if they had time for a new client. The staff of course loved the idea, and Mimi ate up every minute of it.

She'll be turning 14 next week.

And then it was back to the park, where Mimi didn't let some nail polish get in the way of a good leg day.

By that point Quinn was awake, and Conrad had made friends with a German kid a couple years older. It was heartbreakingly adorable to watch the three of them talk to each other with no idea why the other one couldn't understand.

But we had to head out before any of our toddlers could have a linguistic breakthrough. Frida's house is one of the most popular destinations in Mexico City, so the ticket times are relatively rigid. This was the focal destination of our trip, and we didn't want to miss our appointment.

Easily finding Nona and Aimee, we joined the line just before it was our turn to enter. This was particularly key with the shortening fuses of our children. The only slot available for our tour was right during their nap time, so we were playing with fire.

This became immediately apparent as soon as we entered the house, when Mimi tried to to crawl into Diego Rivera's bed.

Our three year old had a very hard time understanding why she couldn't take a nap in the historic bedroom of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

But all things considered, the kids did great. A Dia de Muertos ofrenda straight out of Coco went a long way towards winning them over.

But the real highlight was a Frida and Diego cut out that we remembered from our last visit.

Feb 10, 2016

Jan 3, 2020

Four years and two kids later, we haven't aged a day.

Your driver, sir.

By Thursday, we were starting to get our travel legs underneath us. It was time to branch out a bit further into Mexico City. With three kids squarely in the car seat ages, taxis are far more trouble than they're worth. The metro would be more adventure than we had in us this trip, and trying to figure out the bus system with one kid on my shoulders and the other one darting after every shiny object sounded terrible. So we had one reasonable option left: van hire. Ever since the Vietnam trip, I have been a convert to the just-make-it-easy school of transportation choices. Hiring a van and driver doesn't cost much more than a taxi (especially when we'd need at least two of them), and it has the added benefit of near-certainty that you'll get to your intended destination.

With New Years shutting down most offices, and us not having a Sue or any meaningful local connections, finding a van was a little trickier than usual. So I semi-accidentally hired an oversized SUV from a black-tie rental agency. The SUV part wasn't the accident, but I had absolutely no idea how fancy the rental company was.

We got back from breakfast to see a jet black SUV parked in front of our apartment with windows so deeply tinted that none of us thought there was a driver in it. I had to literally cup my hands over the windshield to see if there was a human being in there. Ah! There was!

If the driver was even remotely surprised to see me staring him in the face from two feet away, it was only because his passenger wasn't wearing a three piece suit. Judging by the pristine Suburban he was driving and the silken sport coat he took off when he got out of the car, we were not his usual clientele. But to his credit, our Bondesque driver didn't miss a beat when I asked him where we should put the car seats. And I can promise you that this was the first time he'd ever been asked that. A half-blink, a barely perceptible head tilt, and then the opened the back door and folded up the leather arm rest that has never touched a bottle of wine that cost less than a hundred dollars.

As we got to know him and talk through our plans, it was clear that our driver, Alejandro, was delightful. He was nothing but professional when we spent twenty minutes trying to figure out if we could even fit all the car seats in. He acted as if our diaper bag wasn't the first that he ever loaded into his trunk. And he didn't even look up when Mimi kicked his seat with her dirty shoes while playing around in the back seat. I, however, was mortified. If you ever want to pay way more than market rate to conspicuously drive around downtown Mexico City, Alejandro is your guy.

Our first stop was Zocalo, the cultural and governmental center of modern Mexico.

In addition to the congressional halls and government offices, the president's own residence used to be in one of the centuries-old palaces flanking the central courtyard. But in 2018, the newly-elected president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, rededicated the presidential palace as a public monument open to all. He remained in his far more humble family home in the Roma district (of recent movie fame) not too far from our apartment.

I have two too many kids to have done any type of meaningful political research for the trip (I'm just happy that we made it here), but AMLO, as he is more commonly referred to here, defies typical left-right politics and seems to be ushering in some meaningful and widely popular reforms.

The most visible reform is his apparent ability to reverse climate change.

I'm just as confused as you are as to why there is an ice rink in the center of the Zocalo, let alone one that is flanked by stars of David. But one thing is painfully clear, the residents of Mexico City are not natural born ice skaters.

Despite the visual homage to my people above the ice rink, Mexico is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. In the first photo above, we're standing in front of the national cathedral. It's open to the public, and we briefly popped in.

I was able to sneak into the cathedral without any apparent divine objections. However, the first thing out of Mimi's mouth when she saw the chandeliers was, "Look at the menorahs!" But we made it out unscathed. At least in this life.

Alejandro picked us back up after about an hour walking around the Zocalo. A black SUV picking up passengers in front of government buildings was hardly out of place. But we stood out quite a bit more at our next stop.

First, a twenty minute car ride in which Mimi and Quinn lobbied hard for the cutest siblings award.

We arrived at the Papalote Children's Museum, and scurried out of our over-tinted black SUV as quickly as possible. We were more than a bit conspicuous.

Like everything else in Mexico City, the children's museum was gigantic, charming, and extraordinarily crowded.

But it was absolutely worth the stop. Our kids are still talking about it, and could have stayed there for days. Quinn almost did, but we found him pretty quickly.

And then almost as quickly as we arrived, it was back to the SUV.

Nona is far more comfortable getting into a deeply tinted black SUV in front of a children's museum than I am.

Our evening as delightful as they all had been that week. Dinner was at a nice little mom and pop restaurant. The food was great, but the real highlight was Quinn turning the charm up to 11. He walked over to a group of office mates having some after work beers, and made his was around the table, fist bumping every one of them. They absolutely lost their minds.

As was quickly becoming our tradition, we stoped for some helado after dinner. Then back to our apartment and melted into bed.

Viva Mexico City.

Baked goods and loud explosions

There’s nothing like waking up in a foreign country to a series of extremely loud explosions. Viva la New Year.

But it’s not like Quinn would have let us sleep in, anyway. So it was off to el centro for our morning walk.

Not only was it a holiday, but we woke up particularly early that morning, so it was just us and the birds in the town square. And of course the birdseed vendor.

We saw her out there night and day. The lady is a hustler. Putting in long hours for little pay, on a particularly tough day to be dependent on wild birds for your livelihood. “Birdseed. Five pesos. Feed the birds.” BOOM!!! *Wings flapping* “Sonofabitch.” Long pause. Birds return. “Birdseed. Feed the...” BOOM!!! “Oh, for crying out loud.”

And Quinn wasn't doing her any favors, either,

98% of me knew that the teeth-rattling explosions were just early morning revelers ringing in the New Year. But there was definitely a solid 2% of me subtly looking around after each blast to check for oncoming stampedes or picket signs. Our corner of Mexico City felt remarkably safe, but this wouldn’t have been the first time a protest march snuck up on us.

All of our usual cafés were closed for the holiday, so I was starting to get a bit nervous when our family had been awake for more than 35 minutes without food. But thankfully one of the panaderías that flanked the town square was open for business. And equally (if not more) importantly, a little coffee vendor was set up out front.

Shopping at a panadería is one of the absolute most pleasurable food buying experiences anywhere in the world. They’re all remarkably similar. You enter the store and grab a metal tray and some cafeteria tongs. Then you walk aisle to aisle through some of the most decadent baked goods you’ll ever see. All were baked minutes before you arrived, and it's impossible not to fill up your entire tray.

Between the ice cream last night, and the panadería this morning, Mimi has never been happier.

"How often can we do this New Year thing? I like it."

But this was actually not Mimi’s first trip to a panadería. I remember seeing a similar smile almost exactly four years earlier.

And for that matter, four minutes earlier, as well.

With bellies full of caffeine and sugar, it was back to feeding the birds. Nona and Grael eventually met up with us, and we all went out for breakfast at one of the cafés that was starting to open up. It was as delightful as ever, even if Quinn was the only one would could stomach the thought of eating more food that morning.

The only downside of Coyoacán having such nice parks is that they’re closed up when there isn’t any maintenance staff to keep them that way. So most of the small parks in our neighborhood were locked up for the holiday. But earlier in the week, we had noticed (and walked past) a little park under the freeway by our apartment.  We think it’s part of a nearby English school for young children. It was both a strikingly efficient use of space, and more than a little terrifying. But we were running out of options.

The kids loved it. I just pretended that it was under a very overbuilt shade structure.

And then, of course, nap time for everyone and back to the town square for dinner. We were wearing down the sidewalk between our apartment, the nearby parks, and the local corner cafés, and loving every minute of it.

Quinn, seemingly having no idea how much food he had eaten that day, absolutely demolished my perfectly seared tuna, and left me with a couple of potatoes and some table bread. How thoughtful.

The evening was rounded out by a roving mariachi playing a song from Coco to our children. He knew his audience.

Our stroll back home that night brought us through el centro, and past Frida’s house. It was a particularly charming moonlit walk.

I love this town.