After five full days in CDMX, a low-key Saturday was in order. We didn’t do a whole lot of sightseeing, but we did finally make it to two taprooms we’ve had our eyes on over the week in Roma Norte: Falling Piano Brewing Co. and the aptly-named La Roma Brewing.
Falling Piano seems like the place to be on a Saturday night in Roma Norte. It wasn’t even 7pm and the place was packed. It’s definitely on the pricier side of what we’ve been paying, but the food offerings are really unique, and the beer was pretty darn good.
Just up the street, La Roma Brewing was on the other end of the spectrum—it seemed that people were just starting to slowly trickle in for the night. The boys were initially unsure of the place, but the TV sold them.
Another tasty local CDMX beer flight in some pretty cool little glasses.
On Sunday, the Mexico City Marathon happened to overlap with our visit. It’s one of the biggest in the world, with 30,000 participants (about the same as the Boston Marathon). Weather-wise, the runners couldn’t have asked for a better day.
Before visiting Mexico City, I never imagined so many of its streets and avenues would look like this.
While much of the industrial sprawl might be what you’d expect to see in a mega city of 20 million, so much of the central neighborhoods are characterized by leafy, treelined thoroughfares.
The Diego Rivera Museum is one of the top attractions in central CDMX.
Paseo de la Reforma is arguably one of the most beautiful thoroughfares in all of Mexico, lined with inspiring monuments and many futuristic high-rises.
Just a few blocks off of the Paseo, it’s not uncommon to see many historic buildings in need of major repairs, either due to Mexico City’s notorious earthquakes or simply neglect.
Some of the greenest urban medians I’ve seen anywhere. This is in the heart of the Plumbing District. It seems that dozens of blocks in central CDMX are divided up by industry or even specific sub-categories of building supplies and farm equipment, not unlike a Home Depot.
We were in the neighborhood, so we thought we’d return to Chinatown (which is really just one little pedestrian alleyway spanning no more than a couple of blocks). We’ve come for the dumplings and potstickers.
We’ve been looking forward to having Dim Sum in Chinatown since we happened upon it place a few weeks ago and today we finally got to tick that one off the list.
Not the best Dim Sum we’ve ever had, and certainly not the cheapest. But it was something we don’t get to have much these days and the boys loved it.
But the real excitement this afternoon came when we revisited the Postal Palace. The boys were very excited to send *real* mail to family and friends, which they’ve never gotten to do before.
The Postal Palace is Mexico City’s historic 100+ year old post office designed by an Italian architect. We figured if they were going to send some letters, this would be the place to do it.
Note from the future: In case you’re wondering how long it takes for a letter to get from the central post office in Mexico City to the U.S., the first one arrived in L.A. after four weeks. The rest arrived about 5-7 weeks after these pictures were taken.
On this beautiful, sunny day, we thought we’d head back to the Zocalo, one of the largest public squares in the world (though half of it is off limits since the president decided to move back into the Presidential Palace a few years back, which hasn’t been the case in decades). We’ll see if the new president continues this trend when she takes office later in the year.
CDMX’s famous (and historic) Madrid Bakery was near the top of Lori’s list of things to see, so we needed to make sure that happened.
The place is huge and very old school, offering just about every sort of bread and pastry you could imagine that can be baked.
We may have gone a little overboard ordering and sampling a little bit of everything. No regrets on that.
