Mexico City: A Series of Cancellations

Carla Fernandez Purses

Street Vendors (Oh! the smells)

Lobster Taco at Raiz

We went to Mexico City imagining a full table. The plan was to see Cathy’s brother Michael and his wife Tamara, with cousins Steve and Carol joining us. Reservations were made for six at our favorite restaurants—the kind of advance planning that assumes the universe is cooperative.

It is not.

At the last minute, Steve and Carol were stopped cold by Tule fog in California’s Central Valley. The fog won. LAX was unreachable. Mexico City and Puebla were off the table. We missed them, though not as much as they missed the margaritas.

Michael and Tamara were the reason for the trip, and we did get to see them for dinner our first night. Unfortunately, both were under the weather and made the very sensible decision to bow out of the rest of the adventure. Disappointing, yes—but also proof that wisdom sometimes arrives disguised as a canceled plan.

Meanwhile, by sheer coincidence, Shumon and his sister Sayeeda were also in Mexico City. They were eager to join us for dinner, especially because Sayeeda, a college professor of French, was excited to meet Tamara, who is also a college professor of French. This was shaping up to be a linguistic summit.

Then came a political demonstration. Streets closed. Traffic froze. The summit was postponed indefinitely.

And just like that, our party of six became… the two of us.

With no one left to coordinate with or wait for, Cathy and I did what any sensible people would do: we went shopping. We wandered through Juárez, a neighborhood packed with interesting shops, restaurants, and the kind of street life that makes you feel like you’re in the middle of something even when you have no idea what that something is.

On a previous trip we had visited the home and studio of Carla Fernandez, the brilliant Mexican fashion designer, and Juárez delivered again. Cathy found an exceptional purse and a Japanese-inspired coat—both excellent purchases, and both clearly necessary under international shopping law.

We returned to Casa Polanco for massages and drinks, which felt less like indulgence and more like recovery from our ambitious social calendar of exactly zero additional people.

Dinner that night was… fine. After the excellence of Malix the night before, Raíz never really had a chance. Expectations can be cruel. Still, one underwhelming meal does not ruin a trip—it just clarifies where not to go next time.

What truly stayed with me was walking through Juárez itself. Street vendors were everywhere, grilling foods that smelled so good they should be illegal. Smoke drifted through the streets, heavy with spice and promise. I admired them deeply, from a respectful distance, while continuing my lifelong policy of not actually eating street food.

Plans unraveled. People were missed. Reservations were wasted. And yet Mexico City, as always, delivered exactly what it wanted to—a reminder that sometimes the best trips are the ones that ignore your spreadsheet entirely.