So Kate decides we’re going to walk home from Casa Barragán. More properly, that the bus is never going to come and that the 1hr 1min route suggested by google maps includes sufficiently interesting scenery. 

Our first stop is a market hall that is half closed and half full of fruit stands. At the back of the hall, steps descend into another market hall. We do a loop and buy a cubist apple. Nhi says that it is actually custard apple but cubist is apt, cute, and lays bare the nature of language, so cubist stays. We learn that it is not yet ripe, and we buy two plums which are ripe. We leave and head again in the direction of our hostel. 

On Avenida Chapultetec, the sun is setting, and the Chapultetec forest to our left is dark. Workers waters the trees and the grass with green garden hoses. Fallen trees are on the ground. There are patches of grass, playgrounds for children and paths for joggers, but it couldn’t be more different from the English Gardens that dominate American city parks. The trees are young, but tightly spaced, making for a dense canopy in the middle of this desert metropolis. We can’t go in because it is getting dark, so we turn our eyes to the buildings to the right. 

We cross a six lane road via pedestrian footbridge and the neighborhood gets more and more leafy green.  We love the medians, with which—Kate speaking here—Summit Avenue could never compete. Nhi thinks we should resist absolutes and the urge to compare but yes, fully.

Following these verdant medians brings us to an intersection cornered by four restaurants. Needless to say, we find ourselves sitting at the first one we see. The tuna tartare and piglet tacos taste even better accompanied by a recap of everything we’ve seen and read, and thus ends our first day in CDMX.