It is cold today in Mexico City and every time I am here I wish I had a sweater or coat and not just a light jacket or two. Yesterday, the morning was normal but then I met an American colleague for lunch. He wanted to go to Sanborn’s so we did, and now I have eaten there. I ate a chile relleno and drank a cactus juice, and at the equivalent of $11USD this was by very far the most expensive meal I have had in Mexico — except for a fish I ate one day in the market at Coyoacán, which is a traditional market but with interesting fish restaurants inside, and the fish, although this was just a market stall, cost the equivalent of $10USD.
My colleague said Sanborn’s is a place PANistas go and that it is his guilty pleasure. One interesting thing about the original Sanborn’s is that soldiers in the Mexican Revolution also ate there. Here is some additional information about Sanborn’s, whose current owner is Carlos Slim.
Then I wanted to buy socks and since I was right next to it, and had already been to one Mexican version of an American thing, I walked into Sears. Interestingly, it is not at all like Sears in the US or even Saga in Peru which is Sears and resembles it more closely. This Sears had fewer American products than the very traditional department store the Palacio de Hierro does now.
Next, I realized I did not have change for the bus and was too lazy to arrange to get it. I walked home by the way of the very traditional, unretouched barrios of Santa María La Ribera and San Rafael. To get there from the Alameda/Juárez zone, you walk straight toward the monument to the Revolution rather than veer down Reforma as you would to go to my house on the straight and narrow.
I really like these barrios because they remind me of the Bywater in New Orleans before it gentrified. You can get blue tortillas. I bought ash-rolled goat cheese from Hidalgo at a streetside stand.
At home the rain and construction had knocked out the Internet so we had a convention with four or five computers. We set up a new network, and then it was late. I live in a building of studio apartments but it seems more like a collective or a republic.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
How I love reading about this. You are so lucky to be in the midst of these things.
Mexico City absolutely rules, it is true. But also, I have a lot of experience living in Latin America and this is why such good adventures happen to me.