5 Takeaways from a Week in Mexico City

As the owner of the travel company Little Stints, I led a group of 17 people (9 adults and 8 kids, ranging from 18mo to 8 years) to Mexico City for 9 days. The goal was a kid-paced trip that both parents and kids could enjoy (itinerary here for the curious).

Here are 5 of my take-aways 🙂

1. Parents should make sure they bring traveler’s diarrhea medications. 

It was pretty amazing that all the kids stayed very healthy, but surprisingly many of the parents were down and out for (at least) one of the days (and no, it wasn’t the mezcal or tequila :)). It may have been just too too much amazing food 🙂 . Or, maybe the ant larvae? And I did lose track of the number of crickets that were eaten… by both kids AND adults! I was definitely impressed at the kids’ willingness to try!

2. Have LOTS of change for the bathrooms, always recommend that the kids use the bathroom when you see one, and carry extra toilet paper. 

Many of the public areas (like markets, or along Xochimilco) charged 5 pesos to use the restroom. So if you’re a parent with GI issues (see Lesson #1) or have a kid who pees every 10 minutes, carry lots of jingling pesos in your pocket.  Also, not all places (like museums…or more specifically Frida’s House) will let you back in two seconds after you leave and your child looks at the awaiting bus and shrieks “I have to pee!” . So seek out the bathrooms and have your kids use them … before you leave wherever you are. Also: carry extra toilet paper. Just because there’s a restroom, doesn’t mean there will be toilet paper. You may end up doing more “shake it off baby” (as my kids say when they are TP-less) than you expect if you don’t bring some of your own.

3. Hailing from Seattle, land of many-people-still-wearing-masks, I was very surprised at how common mask-wearing was in Mexico City.

Most (all?!) of the tour guides we had wore a mask, as did many of the workers we saw at museums and at kid-activity-centers –both indoors AND outdoors. The masking definitely made it tougher for us (and especially the kids) to understand Spanish or accented English, but I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising 3 years into the pandemic.

4. Spending time learning (about history, culture, famous people, language, etc) before traveling was 150% worth it. 

The kids got so much more out of the things they had studied prior to the trip.  And perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, but regardless, it was really awesome validation to see it in action. In the months leading up to the trip, the kids had spent a lot of time learning about Frida, Diego Rivera, the Aztecs, Teotihuacan, Xochimilco, Olmecs, and more ( via books, movies, activity packets, etc)– and it really showed.

• They were proud to share with the guides what they knew– and when they saw, in person, what they’d previously learned about, you could see it click in their head and their faces lit up.
• They were SO EXCITED to see the bed Frida painted in.
• They were chomping at the bit to see the enormous headdress (albeit a replica of the original which is in a museum in Europe!!) at the Anthropology Museum.
• They were bouncing in the Xochimilco boat when they got to see a replica of Doll Island as they floated through the canals– and they retold the version of the tale they had learned about it.

Learning prior to a trip takes a lot of time and energy, but for everyone to get the most out of your travel experiences, ya gotta do it. TOTALLY worth it.

5. It was a fun surprise to see adults making strong connections with each other and learning from each other– about non-Mexico-related stuff. 

When’s the last time you got to spend a solid chunk of time around adults, knowledgeable in different fields, and actually take away things you can apply to your own life? It was pretty cool. We had people become converts to Chat-GPT…going from skepticism to being near-addicts! It became a running joke on the trip that we’d see what GPT had to say! SO MANY different topics were discussed during the course of the week, over bus rides, breakfasts, dinners, and activities. These connections and growth were a really wonderful side bonus!

Bonus #6: Pairing kid-focused days with parents-go-out-nights worked REALLY well.

Some of the days were very specifically targeted at kids – like going to Kidzania, an indoor children’s museum on steroids where kids get to actually DO specific professions (kids painted nails at the nail salon, made sushi at the sushi restaurant, solved crimes in the police center, etc). So parents were all-in on the kid stuff during the day, but then those evenings, the parents had an activity with just grown-ups to look forward to (taco tasting, salsa-making, etc). The kids felt like they got time with the parents, parents didn’t feel like it was just a day of “kid stuff”, there was excitement about the evening, and then a nice break away from the kid chaos for parents to learn, taste, talk, and enjoy. It definitely worked better than I’d even thought it would – for everyone! It’s definitely an approach I’ll use when building out future trips!