It was bittersweet, as always, to leave Ocho Cascadas and it’s sublime views, but we opted to extend the journey with a trip to Mexico City. We had been to the Mexican capital twice before, but not since 2012, so it felt new again. We also stayed in a different section of the city, the Polanco neighborhood. It’s near the business district and there are a lot of nice restaurants, bars and shops nearby. It’s always been one of the more upscale sections of the city and a lot of the high-end shops aren’t far away. (Think Gucci and Tesla dealerships, and pricey jewelry stores.) The title above refers to how the city has been branding itself, which is new since our last visit. It’s shorthand for the city’s name in Spanish, Ciudad de Mexico.

We opted for a side trip because a World Golf Championship is being held this week in Mexico City. Most of the top players are here. Tiger played last year but skipped it in 2020 (given he wasn’t very good in his last event the week before not a huge surprise). But Rory McIlroy was leading after round one and there are a bunch of other big names for those of us that follow the game, so it should be fun. There are only 70 or so players in the field instead of the usual 150 that start a regular PGA tour event, which means we should get some good views of the action.

We briefly toured around Polanco yesterday, basically getting adjusted to the altitude. At 8000 feet, you do feel spacey and tired when you first arrive, but after a good night’s sleep, and plenty of water, you get acclimated. The pet-grooming place above was one of the shops we walked by, and the following picture of Pat is outside of a building in the area. Plus another street-scene.

We went to dinner at a restaurant called Carmela y Sal. Pat had read about it in a travel magazine we got ahead of the trip and booked it. She’s seated in the restaurant in the opening photo. We had one of the best meals we’ve had at any restaurant anywhere for a long time. Just very inventive dishes that evoke the flavors of Mexico but are in no way similar to the crap served up by Tex-Mex chains in the U.S. And not that expensive relative to prices we see in the Philadelphia and New York regions, with excellent service.