It was an early start today. My roommate and I were both heading back to America this morning so we headed to the airport around 4am. Her flight was leaving right away but I had some work to do before mine so I posted up at the lounge to get some work done. During a lull I tried to go to my gate which was one of the more frustrating experiences of my life. Every time I passed a gate board by gate seemed to change! I walked up and down the whole terminal probably four times before finally seeing Denver on a gate sign just by luck and stopping there. On the upside the experience in Denver was excellent. I downloaded the new mobile passport app and submitted all my documents right as the plane landed. When I arrived in the line at the express lane a girl even sought me out and brought me to the front of the line in front of everyone. I think I waited a cumulative 30 seconds at customs and that was the time it took for them to scan me in.

Naturally I had some political/work meetings scheduled for as soon as I landed so I headed over to my favorite Elway’s for that. Then afterwards I had dinner at Fruition and finally made it home to see the family around 9p.

Preparing for a hectic day tomorrow. I went over to Panaderia Rosetta to work for most of the late morning and afternoon. After that I had some errands to run and then I stopped by The Beer Box to finish up the last of my work. I went to pick up my clothes from the cleaners and sadly learned that they only take cash so I had to go wander and find an ATM before I could gather those up. There was a killer sunset happening at the time, wish I’d have had a better angle for a picture. Then went home and packed and went to sleep early for a 3am start to the day tomorrow.

Back on the up and up after being food poised I had some work to catch up on but thankfully not a great deal. I headed over to Valentina in the morning for breakfast and worked there for several hours. It’s a really nice little cafe that wasn’t crowded and featured reliable wifi. After a while I started to make my way back to my place but I was listening to The Economist on my headphones and got engrossed in an article so I ended up just sitting at the Monumento a la Independencia and listening to that for a while. As I was about home I got distracted by this place right across the street from my apartment called The Beer Box. It’s a little tiny place that sells craft beers, plays classic rock and has what looks to be (I haven’t tried them yet) really good wings. I stopped in there for a bit and wrapped up work before heading home.

In the evening my roommate and I had a little roommates dinner at The Capital Grille which is right near our place. That’s the interesting thing about this experience. I came into it thinking that 75 people (and now less) was a pretty manageable size for a group but here we are in our seventh month and there are still people that I really don’t know at all. The fact that this is actually one of the neat things about our arrangement first occurred to me in the Sahara Desert. I ended up out there with three people who I hadn’t really spent much time with and who I probably wouldn’t have ever made an effort to spend much time with. It was a total blast, we ended up having a ton of fun and it will probably be one of the more memorable experience of this whole year.

There have certainly been times when I have wavered about sticking things out until the end. As amazing as all this traveling is it’s also exhausting. But really it’s those experiences that keep me sticking around. You never know when something as simple and as random as a roommate assignment can lead to great evenings and friendships. Already I can say that had a quit at any point there would be people that I would have really missed out on getting to know. And I’m sure that will be the case right up until our last day.

Successfully defeated yesterday’s bout of food poisoning but also didn’t sleep at all last night so I literally did nothing today. Oh, except for sloppily back fill two weeks of daily blog updates. I really fell off the wagon here in Mexico City. There’s just too much going on in this town!

An almost perfectly awesome day today. Early start to drive out to Zona Arqueológica de Teotihuacán where we went hot air ballooning over the Aztec (technically the pre-date the Aztecs so they’re Teotihuacán) pyramids. This included breakfast and a champagne toast afterwards and was a great time. Then we went over to the ruins and hooked up with this tour guide who took us around to some other temples, to a co-op to see how crafts were made (and buy them obviously) and then to lunch. This guy was super fun and so dedicated to making sure everyone had fun that he bought us a whole bottle of tequila at lunch. Then we went over and walked around the ruins. Right at the tail end of this I got hit really hard by food poisoning. Literally just out of the blue, was walking and next thing I knew I was throwing up on some ancient ruins. I managed to rally but had to abandon plans to go see animals with some of the others in favor of going home and being miserable all night.

Today was another interesting day with some trips to some different markets around Mexico including a famous flower market and one dedicated to… I guess “witchcraft” and other alternative religions. Which was extremely interesting. We had some excitement on the Metro which was just crazily packed and included a pickpocketting attempt before ending up at this crazy bar La Faena. I went home and rested for a bit in the afternoon and then had dinner at The St. Regis.

Started the day out at Publico doing some work and then had fish tacos for lunch at El Pescadito de Sonora and worked for the afternoon at a coffee shop called Enhorabuena where a lot of people have been hanging out during our time here. In the evening I had dinner at La Única and then went over to another networking event which was also extremely well done.

Today I went over to Panadería Rosetta to digital nomad it up after concluding that I must be allergic to our work space. I ran into some other remotes and hung out there all day. In the evening we had a great networking dinner at Conde with some local businesses. Under the category of “it’s a small world” two of the girls had a cosmetics company that had just started selling in the U.S. and their first retailer was a place in Boulder. Afterwards, we all went for drinks at this cool rooftop place called Balmori.

A slow day after all the Lucha excitement last night. Went to Publico and worked all day and then had dinner at Pixza, a cool pizza place with Mexican inspired pizzas like chicken mole etc. Pretty quiet.

Started the day with breakfast at Maison Kayser which is a French bakery with Mexican influences and really good. Went over and worked for the rest of the day at Publico. In the evening a huge pack of us went to see a Luche Libre match. We had dinner at Lucas Local again before we headed over. The whole thing was hilarious and fun and basically exactly what you’d expect. Afterwards we did the usual pub tour and hit La Cervecería de Barrio for drinks. On top of which there was some other excitement.