I found an alternative to New York in Mexico City | Canada Voices

In full disclosure, I have to say I love New York City. I love its size, endless beauty in architecture and parks, and its history. I try to travel twice yearly to sit in a pub that poet Dylan Thomas drank in or sit on a bar stool where novelist Ernest Hemingway lingered or to just meander through Harlem and Central Park. I find the people interesting, engaging, friendly and inquisitive. I have travelled there from Toronto by bicycle, plane and train and I will return.

But not for now, not for another four years, at least. U.S. President Donald Trump has seen to that.

Alternatives outside the United States abound. Some may even surpass New York for joie de vivre, for vitality and even for drama. Mexico City is such a place. And having just returned from a too-short stay there, I can say I am hooked.

I started my visit to Mexico as I do in every new city I enter on holiday; with a haircut at a local barber. In many countries, barbershops are filled with gossipy barbers and/or clients. You will hear local politics, debates over the best restaurants or cantinas, TV shows, sports teams, weather and everything else.

A haircut for men is an escape from daily life and from the rigours of maleness. It is a chance to be pampered and allow for a simple pleasure. In my experience, the more macho a culture, the more pampering is the haircut experience. The haircut I had there, with hot towels and facial oils and facial massage and meticulous care over every stray follicle of hair, was transcendent. The barbershop I was led to in the neighbourhood of Roma Norte is called Peluquería Excelsior, and for about $25, a guy can sit back, be treated and come out, after about 90 minutes, feeling renewed and energized.

Leaving the barbershop, after vigorous handshakes with my barber and even some of the other patrons, with well wishes and recommendations for sightseeing and food, I ventured forth into Mexico City. It is a bustling, vibrant, beautiful place, with streets lined with soaring palm trees and bright murals over cracked, ancient walls that burst with colour and stories. Stories of survival through earthquakes, which as recently as 2017 blistered much of boroughs Condesa and Roma, or through the life of Frida Kahlo and her journey from despairing injury, pain, heartbreak and revival as the great artist that she became. A visit to her home in Coyoacán is essential, if for nothing else but a rest in her lovely garden amidst water and light and the deep aqua blue walls of the interior courtyard.

A park nestled between the limits of Condesa and Roma, called Parque México, was a daily stop. The park abounds with life from salsa dance lessons, which you are welcome to join, soccer games, rollerblades, music and the smells! Frying tacos on every corner around and in the park, their enticing scents carried on cooling breezes under the palms. It’s great for jogging, which I did each and every early morning before the heat came on. Within the park itself is an area of respite, gated and isolated. It is a place of soft music playing and swing chairs and warnings to not eat, speak or do anything to disturb the calm.

Mexico City is a place you can eat your way through. Fresh fruit. Fresh fish. Spices and salsa on fried tacos and ceviche of every sort. Fresh coconuts. And the best coffee I have had … everywhere in the city. Bike lanes lace the city and on Sundays, 50 to 90 kilometres of roads are closed for biking and rollerblades and anything but cars.

But of all this, the impression I retain most from a brief week in the city was of the generous nature and kind spirit of the Mexican people. If truth be told, it was an unexpected feature of our stay. I am an immigration lawyer based in Toronto and have represented clients fleeing the Mexican cartels. This had left a sourness in my expectations. But that sourness was quickly washed away by the simple and pervasive acts of kindness my partner and I encountered during our stay.

It began with a Metro ride. Channelling my travel hero Anthony Bourdain, we avoided organized escorts and rode the public transit system north to reach the mysterious great pyramids of Teotihuacan. We took the Metro and the local bus, just like Mexicans do. Except, unlike the locals, we spoke no Spanish and within a few stops, with the Googled-mapped expected station closed, we were suddenly, hopelessly lost. Bourdain’s love for all things Mexican came to mind. He once said: “In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what.”

And so it came to pass. A Mexican guy, a stranger to us, saw our helplessness and stepped forward. He spoke no English but through hand gestures we formed a pyramid with fingers crested. He nodded and patted his chest. Come with me, he seemed to be saying, so we followed. He took us out of the subway, down a road to another bus, which he paid for, to another subway and another bus, all of which he undertook on his dime and finally to the bus station north, where the bus ride to Teotihuacan waited.

At each turn, and each fare he discharged, I felt a growing unease. A trap lay somewhere in this kindness, surely. He would turn and ask for money or be leading us to his cartel. The journey was hours long. No one does this for nothing. Except this Mexican guy. At the final stop he turned and pointed at the bus schedule and then said goodbye.

And that was it. No hand out for money. No extortion. No sicario in waiting. Only generosity. Time and time again we were aided like this. Without the right coinage bus fare on another trip through the city, someone stepped forward and paid for us. And so on.

So, with the U.S. closed to me for four more years and my beloved New York City unattainable, I believe I have found a refuge. Mexico City; the people, the food, the parks, the bikes, the dogs and the wonder of a place so magical, I must return. Give it a try. Get lost in it. And be found, and then aided by kindness. You won’t be disappointed.