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 sightseeing with normal, day-to-day living for the first time since 2019. That is, we’re staying in an Airbnb, shopping for food locally, and maintaining what is, for me, a normal, home swap-style schedule in which we’re both working each day.

But there are some key differences between this trip and a home swap, and they speak to the advantages of the latter. On a home swap, our most expensive cost, by far, is the flights. But with a trip like this, we had to factor in the cost of the Airbnb and parking, too. Those were things we never had to worry about when home swapping because whatever family was coming to the U.S. would pick up our car at the airport, use it while there, and then bring it back to the airport when the trip was over. And we were of course staying for free in each other’s homes.

Traveling to Mexico instead of Europe means that the flights are relatively cheaper, as are the Airbnb costs. But they can still get expensive, as can parking. Fortunately, our flights were free because we used credit card points to pay for them (and even got Business Class upgrades, which was nice). The Airbnb is expensive, for Mexico, at about $1200 for the 18 days, but we wanted to stay in a nice part of town and ensure we had fast Internet, which we do. And then there was parking.

Which, frankly, I hadn’t considered at all.

A few days before our trip, my wife poked her head inside my office and told me that she had been researching the parking problem I’d never considered and had an idea. We were flying out of Newark, New Jersey, which is about 90 minutes from our house, and the normal short-term (P4) parking garage we always use was prohibitively expensive at $650 for the duration. The much less convenient long-term parking (P6) there, which I hate, was likewise still a bit expensive, at $343. But we could stay at a hotel next to the airport the night before our trip, pay $200 for that and a week of parking, and then pay an additional $200 to leave the car there for the duration.

(She investigated Uber, too. Assuming anyone would even take us up on a 90-minute trip, that would cost $320 overall for the back-and-forth drives, including a 20 percent tip. Which may be low for this kind of thing. Plus, the uncertainty of no one agreeing to do it, so it just didn’t make sense.)

This was huge, and not just for the savings and convenience of using our own car: by driving to the airport the night before our trip, we’d have a much more relaxed trip. And because our flight was at 8:50 am, we’d otherwise need to leave our home for the airport at some ungodly hour—4:30 am-ish—when you factor in the logistics of parking, shuttling to the terminal, going through security, and so on. Now, we could simply take a 10- to 15-minute shuttle from the hotel next to the airport and lose less sleep. Done.

(Why I hadn’t thought of this is unclear, as I’d done this kind of thing at least twice in the past. I don’t know.)

And it all went well. I finished up Windows Weekly last Wednesday, went upstairs and packed, and then we headed out, gassing up the car and eating a quick fast-food meal before heading to Newark. The hotel we stayed at won’t win any awards, but it was decent enough, and quiet, and you can’t beat the location. We took the 6:30 am shuttle to Terminal C the next morning and ended up having an hour to kill between our fast trip through security and boarding time. So we ate breakfast before wandering over to the gate.

And because we were in Business Class, a rarity for us, our boarding passes were festooned with a “Premier Access” tag, meaning we could board first, which we did. (We were also listed as “travel ready” and “TSA Pre,” both of which served to slipstream our way through the airport, with no need to check-in in person—we don’t ever check bags—and speed through security with a minimum of hassle.)

To be clear, air travel is frustrating, uncomfortable, and stress-inducing, and the pandemic-era masking requirements, the threat of unruly idiots, and COVID-stricken flight crews ramps all that up a notch. But for commoners like my wife and I, this is about as good as it will ever get. And having a 4.5-hour daytime flight, vs. an 8-hour overnight flight (as per our typical European trips), is almost a gift. We arrived in Mexico City ready to go, not ready to collapse. It’s a huge difference.

Our path through the Mexico City airport was likewise painless, assuming you forget out the impact of the altitude and having to wear a mask: it was a long walk from the plane to customs, but as with our two previous trips, the lines were short, and we had filled out our immigration form (known as an FMM) in advance. We sailed through customs, grabbed some cash at an ATM, and jumped in a taxi. We arrived at the Airbnb in 30 minutes with no issues.

I’ll write more about this trip, including the Airbnb we’re staying at, the gear I brought, and more, after we’ve been here longer. Hopefully, the podcasts will go well, especially Windows Weekly, but so far the 200/60 Mbps Internet connection here has been great. I’ll also address the issues of safety, both in general and here in Mexico, since it’s clear so many don’t understand what’s really happening there. Maybe in the Premium newsletter on Monday.

More soon.