Flight to Mexico City

Suckling Pig Tacos

Asparagus Risotto

We were picked up by Timmy’s favorite driver Avi for our ride to the LAX. He is quite a character but surprised me by the route he took. He drove downtown avoiding all freeways and then took Flower. He calls it the “Flower Highway”. The street is one way 6 lanes wide with the lights synchronized. It was a fast way to travel south! Learn something new every day.

 

LAX is a mess with the ridiculous people mover they are installing. Even when it is installed I think it will be a disaster. We are flying Areomex to Mexico City. Crazily, we had to check in at Aeromex which is NOT in the International Terminal and then take all our luggage over to the International Terminal. It’s ridiculous that Aeromex is not in the International Terminal. All it’s flights arrive and depart from there. This was mitigated by the fact that we are part of TSA Pre-Check which I think is part of our Global Entry Status with Homeland Security. At any rate they directed to an entry line with no people in it, we didn’t have to take out our computer, iphone, etc, take off our shoes or anything, after scanning our faces and passports we just walked through the metal detector. It was a breeze.

 

Upon arriving at the Mexico City airport, we walked and walked till we got to an enormous Emigration Hall with lines snaking back and forth like the longest queue at Disneyland. It was going to take forever to reach the agent. We were practically the last in line when an official walked up to us and asked are you American? He directed us to some machines that scanned our passports, and we were done. For some reason Cathy’s didn’t scan correctly but they immediately let her through. Note to Shumon, they stamped Cathy’s passport but since no human ever interacted with me my passport wasn’t stamped. The machine that scanned me printed out a receipt that I need to show when I leave Mexico. Hope I don’t loose it!

 

There is one final check point to leave the airport, you have to pass your luggage through a scanner. They asked us where we were from, I said US and they just waved us through. I think they are looking for drugs from Central America. Not drugs flowing from the US to Mexico.

 

Our Hotel, La Valise is in Roma area of Mexico, we have a whole floor to ourselves, that is the good news, Bad news it is up 4 flights of stairs! Good exercise however! We took a walk to Blanco Colima a very good restaurant near our hotel. Margarita was excellent. The wine was ordered from an iPad app: it showed a picture of a the bottle. If you touched the picture it brought up all of the details and descriptions of the the wine. One more touch and you have ordered the wine, no waiting for the waiter. We had Suckling Pig Tacos, Cauliflower Tacos, Sea Bass and Asparagus Risotto for dinner. The Risotto is worth mentioning. It was gratinéed at the end with Parmesan Cheese Breadcrumbs and Slivered Almonds. It was an interesting execution of the dish. Excessive dinner but we are on a vacation.

 

We walked back to our hotel and up the 4 flights of stairs to our room. By the way the altitude of Mexico City is almost 7500 feet and we feel it.