What I Use: Mexico City (July 2023) (Premium)

The second trip to visit our apartment in Mexico City this year got off to a bad start, with the electric company inexplicably having just previously shut down our power despite our having paid the bill, the shutdown ruining our water heater, repeated issues getting the new water heater working properly, a second family of birds taking up residence in our water heater exhaust vent (with eggs!), a river of water that streamed down the stairwell of our entire building during a massive thunderstorm thanks to a clogged drain on the roof, and then one of big window blinds detaching from the ceiling and crashing down to the floor.

Yeah, it's been that kind of trip.

And when you combine all that with the stress of me finally consummating my break with BWW Media and taking Thurrott.com solo, not to mention the associated work ramping up a reimagined email newsletter with our new partner, the incredibly busy work week during our first full week here (including repeated drama in the Microsoft/Activision Blizzard acquisition), some friends visiting and then staying three days past the time they were supposed to leave because of flight issues, and our daughter's car getting totaled in North Carolina and us having to figure out the logistics of replacing that as soon as we get home, well. It's kind of amazing my wife and I are still sane.

Sometimes life really piles it on, I guess. But you may be surprised to discover, given my general demeanor, that as we commiserated about this crazy string of problems over lunch the other day, my only takeaway was, "Well, it could be worse." And it could be worse. A recent set of health evaluations uncovered nothing scary, for example, and I'm taking steps to address those long-time borderline metrics before they turn into something worse. As for those friends, you wouldn't believe me if I explained how many times their flights were canceled and changed over three days, but I'll just leave it at this: they left here at 5:30 am last Wednesday and didn't get to their home near Boston until 4:30 am the next day. Yikes.

Anyway. You didn't come here to listen to me complain, I know. But these things have helped frame our experience on this trip which, aside from all the problems, has been great. Bah-dum-dum, I'm here all week. Sorry.

As I noted in the article from our last trip here, we've mostly moved into a comfortable schedule in Mexico City. We have numerous wonderful restaurants within a 7-minute walk of the apartment, have gotten to know several people locally over our many trips to the area, and we walk each morning in what is the most beautiful park we've seen in Mexico so far, just one block away. It feels like home, or at least a home, and each time we come here we wish we could just stay.

That said, we’re always adjusting. When we visited in March, my wife and I literally just worked each day and ate out each meal, and so we didn't do any exploring or sightseeing. We did tha...