I managed to marry someone who likes to vacation like I like to vacation: at a breakneck pace. Growing up, we took a big trip every summer with my dad’s parents and three of my cousins. We almost always drove, typically in a 15-passenger van, and we seldom had firm plans for the day (or even hotel reservations). We’d start each day at the crack of dawn, going nonstop until dinnertime, then retreating to our adjoining hotel rooms to play cards until the wee hours.
Tanner feels similarly. Our best vacations together have been trips to big cities where we walk 20,000+ steps and eat ice cream at least once a day. We aren’t opposed to more laidback travel, but we haven’t done much of it yet.
So: That’s how we did Mexico City to celebrate our five-year anniversary. We spent two and a half days there at the end of March, extensively walking three neighborhoods and one park, touring one museum and one historical site, and visiting one outdoor artisan market.
And we ate ice cream four times. And pastries once. And we also had churros.
What we did
We’ve determined that our favorite way to do international travel is to not plan anything for the first day and instead just walk the neighborhood where we’re staying. This turned out to be an especially good decision in Mexico City: We stayed in the Polanco neighborhood, which is colloquially known as the Beverly Hills of CDMX. A mix of gorgeous old architecture and modern apartment buildings, gobs of white tablecloth restaurants, beautiful green parks on every street. We stopped in anywhere that looked interesting, from an ice cream parlor to a bookstore to a grocery store (don’t sleep on a grocery store in a foreign country — FULL of fascinating things).
Our three big touristy “outings” were to the National Museum of Anthropology, Chapultepec Castle, and the Ciudadela Market.
A note about me in a museum: I will read every sign, plaque, card, placard, note, citation, and direction the curators put in front of me. A chance to LEARN NEW INFORMATION? Your girl is here for it. This was great at Chapultepec Castle, which had tons of interesting details about the former residents and Mexican history — all in English! This was less great at the National Museum of Anthropology, where maybe a quarter of the signs were mediocrely translated into English. Still a worthy visit, since tickets were a whopping $6 and we saw some cool Aztec-era architecture and pottery, but not as thrilling since I couldn’t read about every minuscule fact to my heart’s content.
(An aside to tell you that, as we were walking into the National Museum of Anthropology, I suddenly remembered that I’d taken an entire class on Mexican history in college. I was a history minor and must’ve taken it to fulfill some credit requirement. I discovered, as we walked through the museum, that precisely none of what I’d learned had stuck with me. And people say a college education is overrated these days!)
A note about me in a market: I am annoyingly picky and either want to take hours to comb through every item (if it seems like a “good” market) or move as fast as humanly possible (if it seems like a “bad” one). I was leaning toward the first version when we got to the Ciudadela Market, because it’s GOOD. But then we turned down another hallway full of vendors. And another. And another. And thank goodness Tanner is a good navigator because otherwise I’d still be curled up somewhere among those stalls, clutching otomi embroidery in one hand and Mexican silver in the other. That’s a long way of saying that, while I got overwhelmed, we found this to be worth the Uber ride for distinctly cool souvenirs. (I bought a small otomi wall hanging, a hammered silver ring, a Christmas ornament, and two hand-painted bowls for less than $50 total.)
What we ate
Our most notable meal was at Rosetta, perhaps the most beautiful restaurant I’ve ever been in. It’s in an old mansion (!!), and the dining room ceiling is dripping with vines. Even the bathrooms are beautiful!
This was our lunch spot on Saturday, our actual anniversary. We had the corn tamale appetizer and split the tagliatelle and short rib entrees. The short ribs were maybe the best restaurant dish I’ve ever eaten, with a plantain-ish cream sauce on the side. Rosetta felt special but not fussy, my favorite kind of vibe.
If you go, make a reservation in advance: We got there a few minutes early for our 1 p.m. lunch reservation, and the bar was already full of people waiting to get in (the restaurant doesn’t open for the day until 1 p.m.). We also stumbled upon Rosetta’s sister bakery, Panaderia Rosetta, the day before, and it was packed — at least a 45-minute wait for a table and probably a 15-minute wait for a long but quick-moving line for takeaway pastries.
For lunch on Friday, we ate at Buvette, a French spot in the Roma Norte neighborhood. This was not our first trip to Buvette: In fact, there are five Buvette locations worldwide, and we have now eaten at three of them. (Just Tokyo and Seoul to go.) They were still serving breakfast when we went for lunch a little after noon, so the menu was somewhat limited. (As an aside, breakfast seems to be served late into the day around those parts — we saw people eating breakfast food as late as 3 p.m. every day we were there.)
Our food was delicious (a waffle sandwich for Tanner and a croque monsieur for me), and the atmosphere was charmingly French, but I’d probably skip this spot if we didn’t have a personal goal to eat at all five Buvettes. (We happened upon the first one during our honeymoon in Paris, decided to go to the second during a pre-pandemic weekend in New York, and are now planning all big vacations around their locations. Mostly kidding.) That’s not to say it’s not a great restaurant — just that there are tons of other more local places that would also be worth your time.
Our single best dessert was the consuelo, or churro ice cream sandwich, we had at Churreria El Moro. (Please click that link to see that impeccably cute branding.) A little story about this sandwich that sums up my marriage: We were walking back to our hotel after eating the consuelo, exclaiming over the crispy cinnamon sugar churros and how they complemented the vanilla ice cream. Satisfied with our dessert choice, we lapsed into a comfortable silence before one of us brought up Tanner’s Ice Cream Map. Yes, my husband has mapped out the location of every place we’ve eaten ice cream in our nine years together. But this particular confection had us stumped. It was an ice cream sandwich, no doubt about that. But this was not an ice cream shop. Did it belong on the map? It was worth immortalizing in Google Map form. But was this the Google Map?
We debated one side and then the other. It was easy to see both perspectives: It’s an ice cream sandwich, but it’s not an ice cream shop; we leave it off. The map includes other ice cream desserts from non-ice cream places (Rose’s, IYKYK); we add it in.
Reader, he put it on the map. And that’s why I married him.
I, too, would have put it on the map! And so fun about Buvette - I've been to the NY one, but didn't know about their other far-flung locales. Rosetta also looks amazing!