Hi there
Today I want to tell you about Condesa and Polanco, the best areas in Mexico City. When I thought of emigrating to Mexico, it was clear to me that I wanted to live in one of those two neighborhoods.
Condesa is a neighborhood that some call “chic” and others “hipster”. It has wide tree-lined avenues, stately modernist mansions and well-preserved art deco apartment buildings that give it a European feel. There are tons of parks and the urbanization in general feels very green. In addition, you are a few minutes’ walk from the Chapultepec Forest, full of museums and frequented by locals. Especially on weekends when it becomes a sea of people and is filled with food stalls: corn, popsicles, tlayudas, cakes, aguas frescas and more.
Condesa has plenty of restaurants and markets. You have expensive options that can be $15-20 per person and the cheapest options are $3-4 per person. Additionally, the area is very well connected to the rest of the city by metro and bus.
Not being the newest neighborhood in the city, it also has its ugly or oldest part. The second time we visited we stayed in an Airbnb that was in Plaza Cibeles, a great location because there is a metro and bus station a 5-minute walk away. The bad thing is that the building was old.
Polanco is the newest urbanization in Mexico City. Here you will find boutiques of famous world firms and international haute cuisine restaurants. There are Spanish neo-colonial style mansions and luxury apartments. In the northern part, Nuevo Polanco, there are buildings of modern architecture, such as the futuristic Soumaya Museum.
In Polanco everything is more expensive than in the rest of Mexico City and in the restaurants, the prices are at European level. Here, forget about eating at a market for $4, because there are no local markets. Also, being a new area, public transport is not so accessible. It depends on the part where you are, but if in Condesa the stop was 5 minutes away, in Polanco you must walk at least 40 minutes.
For the last 10 days in Mexico City, we decided to book a hotel in Polanco. It seemed to be very good value for money. When we arrived at check-in it was a complete fiasco and I even had to call the police to get my reservation money back.
We went to the Bristol Hotel in Condesa which, despite being an older hotel, had an excellent location. Two blocks from Reforma Avenue and two steps from the Cuauhtemoc Market where we had delicious breakfast and lunch for less than $4.
Despite the disappointment with that horrible hotel and the hours we lost fixing the problem with the police, the change to the Bristol Hotel was much better than staying in Polanco.
Polanco’s hotel was right next to the Palacio del Hierro and a block from the Soumaya Museum, but far from the rest of the interesting places. Also, eating there would have been much more expensive than in Condesa.
I think Condesa is a better neighborhood to stay for vacations or to live, although Polanco is the most famous. There you always depend on having a car and Mexico City has a lot of traffic, so quality of life is lost by not having public transport nearby. Polanco is very modern, and everything is new, but Condesa is a more welcoming area.
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