Welcome to travels with Todd

How and why I chose this trip

Unlike most trips I take, my decision to spend a week in Mexico City (hereafter CDMX) was, in some ways, a product more of serendipity than planning. I regularly receive promotional emails from Earthbound Expeditions, the tour operator that organized the 2018 Performance Today trip to France and the spring 2022 trip to Vienna, Salzburg, and Prague. Normally, I’d unsubscribe from these promotions but Earthbound’s trips are often quite interesting so I’m willing to at least glance at them before moving them to the trash.

This particular promotion arrived while I was planning my trip to Lake Placid so I could visit the Olympics host city geographically closest to my residence. When I received this email for a trip to CDMX – host of the 1968 Summer Games – and, after Lake Placid, one of the two remaining locations in the Americas I hadn’t been to, it seemed the universe was, at the very least, urging me to join this tour. Thus it was that I chose to shorten my stay in Lisbon by a week and head off to CDMX.

Curiously different

In the post titled Reflections of the way life used to be – travel days, I noted that the question, “Why Albania?” was one people frequently asked both before and after that journey. People reacted quite differently to my plans to visit CDMX. Enthusiasm replaced perplexity. Among all the people I knew or had met, only L, whom I’d met in Hobart

offered any suggestions about places I might want to see in Albania. Conversely, several people proffered recommendations for places to see and eat in CDMX with D, N (my friend Marcos’ sister) and J and G two new Lisbon acquaintances among them. However, as you’ll see, this trip was so tightly curated by Earthbound that I could put almost none of them to use. On the other hand, I have lots of information should I ever return.

Let’s talk about travel and aging

Regular readers certainly know that I’m not reluctant to complain about the vicissitudes of air travel in the 21st century. Less than 50 years ago (24 October 1978 to be precise), President Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act phasing out the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), removing federal control over routes and fares, allowing for increased market competition, lower fares, and for more passenger traffic. Despite this democratization of the industry, a 2017 report by the Government Accounting Office cites 160 airline bankruptcy filings since deregulation. Airports have gotten bigger, busier and more crowded. Flight delays seem to have become the norm. Add to this the added security since 2001 and one needs to be prepared for anything. Surprisingly, although it seemed interminably long, the day I flew from Lisbon to CDMX with a stop at JFK in New York couldn’t have proceeded any more smoothly.

The screenshot below from Bing Maps shows the route of my flights:.

The flight from Lisbon to JFK had a scheduled departure of 10:00 Sunday and, while I rarely adhere to the recommended airport arrival of three hours before an international flight, I generally try to be at the airport a bit more than two hours prior so I planned to reach Aeroporto Humberto Delgado between 07:45 and 08:00. The airport is the final stop of Lisbon’s Linha Vermelha (Red Line). But, while the Linha Verde is less than a five minute walk from my flat, it’s about a 40 minute ride as this Google maps screenshot shows.

In addition to the five minute walk and 40 minute Metro ride, I had to budget time to brush my teeth, finish packing, and make a final flat connoiter to be certain I was leaving everything as it was when I arrived and leaving nothing necessary behind. Thus, if my goal was reaching the airport no later than 08:00, it meant getting up at 06:30.

Now, keep in mind that CDMX is in Central Standard Time or GMT -6. This means that when I was trundling out of bed at 06:30 Sunday morning in Lisbon, it was 12:30 Sunday morning in Mexico City. I passed through security easily and made my way to the lounge that Delta shares with several other airlines and while there was a brief delay of a little more than 10 minutes getting through immigration I reached the gate in time to board with Group 1.

Flight one arrived at JFK on schedule and I had another stress free passage through immigration and security – reversing the sequence I’d had in Lisbon. From there it was off to another Delta Lounge because I had more than a four hour layover before my second flight to CDMX. That flight, operated by Aeromexico, had a scheduled departure at about 17:00 and a local arrival time of 21:50 or about six hours from gate to gate.

In a post elsewhere on this site, I’ve described my power through approach to combatting jet lag and, since I’d have to pass through a third immigration checkpoint and would need a half an hour, more or less, to reach the hotel, I anticipated I’d arrive there close to 23:00 or a perfect time to sink into bed. This meant I’d be fighting the urge to sleep on the flight. It also meant I’d be approaching 23 sleepless hours by the time my travel was complete and, since I’ve past 70, I’ve found this to be a bit more of a struggle.

The flight path I traced above shows the plane traveling in a southwesterly direction but our initial path was more south than west so I think we were probably still in the eastern time zone when I started hearing music through the cabin and initially thought someone needed to link their headphones to their tablet. Then I realized the music had more than one source. I looked up and saw people huddled around several screens. This is what they were watching.:

Yes, it was Super Bowl Sunday and, understandably, the Spanish speakers on the flight had an elevated interest in Bad Bunny’s halftime performance. The plane returned to its normal jet engine drone at the end of his 13 minute show.

The flight arrived on time and, for the third time this day, I passed though immigration quickly and efficiently. Since it was late night when I arrived, I took only this photo

of my room for the coming week. The view out the window

had to wait until Monday morning and this is when the real fun begins.