Getting There: Mexico City, January 2022 (Premium)

For over a decade and a half, my family spent 3-4 weeks swapping homes with another family each summer, usually in Europe. Since I’ve been at this website, I’ve documented what we did on those trips, and what tech I brought along. There was Lyon, France in 2015 with a side-trip to Venice, Italy. Paris, France in 2016. Barcelona, Spain in 2017. Stockholm, Sweden in 2018, with a side-trip to Berlin, Germany. And then Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 2019, with a side-trip to Luxembourg and Germany.

And then two things happened. The pandemic, obviously, when we, like basically everyone else, didn’t travel almost at all throughout 2020, and certainly not internationally. And my kids started growing up.

If you have younger kids, or no kids at all, you may not appreciate the poignancy that accompanies this process, but with our kids both in their 20s and thus not really kids at all, we’ve had to deal with some changes. In the good news department, they still want to travel with us, which my wife and I both appreciate. In the bad news department, this gets harder over time because they have their own unique schedule demands now, and so they will often come with us for shorter times than in the past, assuming they can come at all.

I mention this because we’ve had to adapt to an ever-evolving new normal with regard to travel. Home swapping is out, for now, because of the uncertainties caused by the ongoing pandemic; it’s just too hard to make plans and rely on both parties being able to travel. Our normal summer schedule is likewise no longer a given because my wife and I are no longer bound to the kids’ schooling needs, and that opens up some new possibilities. And we’re planning to move from Pennsylvania at some point to parts unknown; whatever form that takes will impact how and when we travel.

And so we’re trying to adapt. In 2021, as the world hesitatingly opened up again and then started closing in unpredictable, wheezing gasps, we were lucky enough to travel internationally three times, once again meeting my goal of spending at least one month each year outside of the United States. My wife and I visited Mexico City, Mexico in June. And then a two-week trip to Mexico in August, during which my wife and I visited San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato, Mexico, and then Mexico City again, with the kids. And then my wife and I returned to my favorite city on earth, Paris, in October. I consider 2021 a major win.

Looking to this year, I can’t imagine we’ll be doing a home swap in 2022, given all the uncertainties around the pandemic and our move. But we decided early on that we’d at least return to Mexico, probably two or more times, thanks to its proximity to the United States---with shorter, day-time flights and a single time zone change---and its much lower costs. And we’re there now, in Mexico City, as I write this, on an 18-day trip that, in many ways, is like a home swap, in that we’re combining si...

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