What I Use: Mexico City, May 2022 (Premium)

I’ve somehow managed to travel to Mexico City three times this year, for a total of five weeks. But this time I left something behind: thanks to us finally closing on that apartment purchase, we now have a base there and I can start thinking about having a More Mobile computing setup in a second location.

It’s been a strange year. We visited Mexico City in January with an eye to the future, with the express goal of scouting neighborhoods to find the places we liked the most. Then, we were going to visit again later in the year, staying in our favorite areas, with the notion that maybe, just maybe, sometime in a more distant future we’d rent for longer periods of time as we honed the list and found just the right place. The idea was that we’d split our time in the future between here and whatever place in Mexico City.

But life smacked us right in the face, and, long story short, we skipped right to the end of that story and ended up purchasing an apartment in Roma Norte, the neighborhood we fell in love with in January. Over a three and a half month period that was excruciating in the living by a brief snap of time once it was over, we paid a down payment, waited for Mexico to cough up the required paperwork, and then closed on the apartment about 12 days ago. We had booked three nights at the Hilton Reforma in Mexico City at the start of the trip, unsure when we’d be able to take possession of the apartment. And then we basically camped out in the new place from then on, staying longer than expected when United Airlines suspiciously canceled our flight home.

We got a lot done in what ended up being a 12-day trip.

We had the electricity, gas, and Internet turned on, all major wins, and all required for us to stay there. (Saving us $150 to $180 a night in hotel fees.) We’re still working through how to pay those bills regularly but it’s getting there. We now have two Mexican phone numbers, one a (pretty much useless) land line via the Internet access and one an eSIM from AT&T Mexico. (I will discuss both below.)

For furnishings, we went cheap. We're not rich and if needed we can upgrade later. We purchased a couch and loveseat for the living room. A kitchen table and four chairs.

A washer for the laundry room.

A refrigerator, two stools, and a Nespresso machine for the kitchen.

A king-sized mattress (but not a bed frame/base, as it was out of stock) for the main bedroom. (We had brought an air mattress, which we used before the mattress arrived.)

A computer desk and chair for the office/extra bedroom.

Three fans. Shower curtains and rods. Various sundry items. And so on.

To find furniture and the other stuff we needed, we visited a distant IKEA, laboriously, three times, Costco, Walmart, Home Depot, Office Max, and local places like Gaia and d’Europe.

Much of this required a lot of building. A lot of building.

We still have much to do. We have blac...