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Looking at seat spy there is good business class availability to Mexico and it’s a place I have never been to. Looking end of March / April 2023 and would appreciate any suggestions for a 9-10 day trip. Wife does like to lay on a lounger by a pool / beach.
Mexico City and Mexico are wonderful places to visit. I am loathe to make recommendations per se, but we have been going there for over 20 years, so have done the research on the ground. For us Cancun, Cabo/Baja and Puerto Vallarta have now all become very overdeveloped and touristy/Americanised and restaurants etc cater for tourists at high prices, so there is no longer anything very Mexican about it and it’s mainly high rise big resort style. For the last five years (and booked again in Nov) we have been to Zihuatanejo on the Pacific coast which is low key, low rise and tourists are mainly Mexican, so you eat real food (notably incredible seafood), drink £3 margaritas and a good massage costs £12+ tip. It’s an hour’s flight from MEX. From the airport you either go left where there is a 9 mile fairly deserted beach (Playa Blanca) where there are waves and some undertow but we swim there with care and there are good accommodation options. Expect to see whales, dolphins, turtles etc.
Alternatively, you go into town where there is a calm bay (mainly Playa Ropa) with a nice organised beach, warm water and lots of water sports, massages, restaurants etc. If you are into surfing, Troncones just up the coast is something of a mecca. Avoid Ixtapa.
There are great wildlife tours, golf, archaeological sites etc. as well.
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I assume you mean the J seats are to MEX as none showing to CUN (though there are some fabulous archaeological sites around the Yucatan peninsula if that’s your bag, and Merida is a very interesting city). As JDB says, from MEX you’d need to get a connecting flight to anywhere with a beach so it depends if that would fit with your plans. If you’re planning to visit Mexico City, then obviously worth it, but a lot of hassle simply for a beach break.
It’s a very long time since I have been, but Oaxaca was the stand-out city on my visit. Unfortunately it’s not a day trip from the coast, if your wife is looking for beaches.
Apologies to bring up an old thread but seemed a good starting point when searching through Mexico posts.
@JDB we have recently booked to spend a week in Zihuatanejo this coming February at LCQC and it seems as if you have been visited the area a few times. Do you have any recommendations with regards to suggested restaurants for good Mexican food and also any activities/day trips in the local area?@tblank – I don’t do recommendations as one never knows what other people like but places we like are:
Short walk from LCQC is Bistro del Mar on Playa la Madera – more formal Mexican with good food and wine. There’s now a walkway along the sea front from there into town which is quite lively in the evenings and easy to get a taxi back to the hotel.
In town there’s a famous place that is popular with Mexican tourists and locals – Tamales y Atoles (ask the hotel as I think it may have changed name) very lively atmosphere, music and cheap.
On Eijido street – Los Braseros, basic but good.
Mito on Av Cuauhtémoc looks quite basic but has good, more sophisticated Mexican food and good wine from their shop.
For lunch on Playa La Ropa we like La Perla roughly in the middle of the beach. You can rent seats on the beach and umbrellas and they will serve you there or at tables; we like the prized bar seats that look out to sea. Good service, huge menu. They have massages there that my wife says are very good (in an air conditioned room) or there’s a place on the beach that she says is also very good – about 400 pesos so probably a fraction of LCQC.
If you don’t have breakfast included – it’s a short walk to Espuma which has an even better view than your hotel.
For a blow out dinner – Tentaciones (same people as Espuma). It’s a set menu, quite expensive but all very good. It’s set quite a bit higher than LCQC or Espuma so has an amazing view of the bay. You want to be there for sunset so it’s an early table. The table in the far right corner as you are looking out to sea is perfect!
On the hotel road, heading back into town, on the right just before the bridge, there’s a laundry that charges by weight, cheap, same day but doesn’t iron.
Hopefully you will have a car so you can go to Playa Blanca – we like Chula Vida – the owner Jorge is a character and fishes a lot of what they serve. It’s very laid back.
The best food on Playa Blanca is at the Hotel Portofino which has two palapas overlooking the beach and a huge pool you can use. Very friendly staff but almost no English.
At the end of Playa Blanca is the small village of Barra de Potosí which has lots of ‘enramada’ restaurants which are very rough and ready but have fantastic fresh fish and seafood. It’s the most authentic Mexican experience! They generally close at around 6pm when everyone will be on the beach to watch sunset. The beach there is quite calm.
Not Mexican but Escondite on Playa Blanca lets you use their beach and pool for no charge if you eat/drink. All civilised, clean loos etc. but it’s key market is Canadians/Americans.
We like Troncones which is about 45 minutes away. There’s a beautiful small bay there with gentle water for swimming. We set up at the Inn at Manzanillo Bay – a bit Americanised but great cocktails for the non drivers, good food in a pretty garden overlooking the bay and teeming with wildlife, especially iguanas.
If you are interested in birds, a boat trip on the lagoon at Barra de Potisí is a must but you need a very early start, probably around 7am as it gets light. We have always used Abraham who will also take you snorkelling or whale watching. He’s on WhatsApp country code/area code 136 5246
Petatlán and the nearby museum and pyramid at Xihuacan are good if you are interested in archaeological sites.
Ixtapa is quite grim – we only go there to play golf, but Isla de Ixtapa is quite nice and a fun short boat trip but was spoilt for us by a plague of flies…
Thank you very much JDB, that is a an incredibly helpful response and good to see you reference a few of the places which have also been suggested by the hotel. We will definitely check out a number of those restaurants and appreciate the information on Playa Blanca and other surrounding areas. Is it common to eat around 6/6:30pm in the evening to take in the sunset or is 8pm+ more typical?
Unfortunately we do not have a car booked so may need to rely on taxis and tours to get around to a few places in the day.
Morning all. I’m resurrecting this thread as I’m re-considering accommodation options in CDMX now we’ve planned our activities; we have 5 nights there at the start of our trip and 2 at the end.
The 3 main districts I’m looking at are Polanco, Reforma and Bellavista. Our activities are quite scattered, and include:
Anthropology Museum
Historic Centre/Cathedral
2 tours starting at the Palacio de Bellas Artes (one is an early start but we can get an Uber)
Basilica Guadalupe (probably do this at the end of the trip on our last full day)We’re happy walking, apart from the early start day! Restaurant recommendations also welcome – we love Mexican food and have eaten in Mexico previously, (not just Chiquito’s, lol!)
@NorthernLass – I would stay either in Polanco which is a smart residential area so lots of nice restaurants/shops and a nice area to walk around – the hotels are mainly smaller boutique type. Reforma is just too busy/trafficky (except on Sundays when it’s closed to traffic) and is a bit of a no man’s land. My first choice however, would be to stay in the Centro Histórico. We like the Círculo Mexicano, great location, superb staff, very comfortable (although super modern/minimalist) and has a lovely roof terrace for tip top breakfast/snacks/drinks looking over the back of the cathedral. The whole area has been massively improved by the now President and is great to walk around.
In terms of visits, I take it you have deliberately omitted the Museo Soumaya, Frida Kahlo House/Museo Anahuacalli (and in fact the Coyoacán district where the house is has interesting churches, Cortes’s house, great restaurants etc) and also there are the pyramids (which are an hour away). I assume you are including the Templo Mayor in the Historic Centre.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the Anthropological Museum is vast – quite difficult to ‘do’ in one visit so possibly worth planning what you want to see. The nearby Chapultepec Castle is interesting in its own right and the best viewpoint in the city. The other thing to bear in mind is that as you will have spotted, the city is vast, the traffic can be pretty bad so it often takes a long time to get from A to B.
In terms of restaurants, I’m not sure that we necessarily like the same food! Good Mexican food bears little relation to what one gets in England. There has been a big return in Latin countries, and especially Mexico to ‘cocina de los raíces’. We really like Raíz (in Polanco and more for dinner, small and have never seen another foreigner there!) and Arango at lunch time is on about the 7th floor, very light and airy with great views over the Republic monument, fabulous modern Mexican food, beautifully presented. In the San Antonio area (and next to the Kahlo/Rivera studio, not near the house) the San Antonio Inn has a series of beautiful courtyards and gardens, supposedly where the margarita was invented. Food isn’t the best, but all the rest makes up for it. The nearby weekend market is fantastic whereas most markets in the city are just full of Chinese imports of Mexican ‘handicrafts’. In the historic centre, the Café de Tacuba is a real institution – they can be quite grumpy but it is real traditional Mexico and the food is good. Also the El Cardenal restaurants (I think they have about five) are really good, again very much on the traditional side. I wouldn’t eat at the Casa de los Azulejos, but it’s worth a visit, maybe for a cup of coffee – the outside and inside decor is spectacular. Casa Azul is a restaurant to avoid!
If you like really comfortable shoes – Flexi shoes (branches everywhere) may not be ‘designer’ but they’re great!
@JDB, thanks, I knew you’d along with an entertaining read for me while I’m getting my highlights done 😂
The site list isn’t exhaustive, though we did visit a Frida Kahlo gallery (in Merida?) on another trip and her art isn’t really my cup of tea. One of our excursions is to Teotihuacán, which is near the top of my bucket list of archeological sites to see.
We have certainly eaten “real” Mexican food before and I will make a note of your restaurant recommendations!
I’ll have another look at Centro Histórico, I was just concerned it might be a bit noisy as we’re light sleepers!
Happy to stay in different hotels at the start and end as well.
@NorthernLass – the Centro Histórico is probably the quietest area as it’s largely pedestrianised or access only. The Reforma hotels are quiet by virtue of being mostly modern double glazed buildings but you step out into noise and traffic. Polanco generally quite also, but slightly location dependent. The bit we like about staying in the CH, apart from characterful hotels is that it is wonderful to wander around before all the groups arrive and after they have gone. One can also walk to so many places from there.
Frida Kahlo is a bit marmite, but it’s as much a human interest story as well – she led an extraordinary and tragic life in addition to her tempestuous relationship with Rivera, himself such a talent – you might like his murals more than her pictures but his house/museum is a bit rubbish so you need to see them around town.
@JDB, One of our excursions is to Teotihuacán, which is near the top of my bucket list of archeological sites to see.
If it is your thing then a Balloon ride over Toetihuacan is absolutely awesome.
Up to 100 ballons fill the sky and float quietly to the site circle around it for a while and then land. You get “fizzy” for a celebration, breakfast and then can spend time at the site (1hr IIRC) which is not crowded as it is early.
Our tour had a “guide ” who explained a lot.Load of operators, cost £150 for transport, breakfast and site tour.
Totally awesome.
The Teotihuacan trip is already booked, but I think in any case we might be a bit risk-averse for a hot-air balloon 😂 We should be arriving quite early though, so I will definitely look out for them!
CH it is then, that is very good to know about the (lack of) noise. I am quite partial to wandering as well.
I am so excited about this trip. I really have to thank you, @JDB because without your endorsement of CDMX as a destination, I wouldn’t have been brave enough to book it and present it to my OH as a fait accompli (or indeed, dicho y hecho) 😂
@NorthernLass – Claudia Sheinbaum is the one to thank! She has done an extraordinary job cleaning up and improving the city. She was originally elected much to the horror of the central residents who shuddered at her socialists credentials, but they will now grudgingly admit that she was a great mayor. Mexico is still a pretty macho and catholic society, so to elect a Jewish woman as President with a landslide majority is a testament to her and her achievements as mayor of CDMX.
I looked her up after you mentioned her previously; it’s an amazing achievement for a woman, as you say, and I will follow her career with interest!
Having recently returned from Mexico, which included a week in CDMX, we really liked the leafy Polanco neighbourhood which has numerous cafes, taquerias, and restaurants spilling out onto the pavements. It even has its own security patrols which makes it a great place to explore. It felt very different to everywhere else we visited in CDMX.
Private security always makes me think that there must be a high risk of crime, but maybe here it just means that the locals have plenty of money to fund it and it’s more reliable than the real police 🤦🏻♀️😂
I did look at the IC and Kimpton in Polanco but there’s not a lot within walking distance other than the Anthropology Museum as far as I can tell.
@JDB, One of our excursions is to Teotihuacán, which is near the top of my bucket list of archeological sites to see.
If it is your thing then a Balloon ride over Toetihuacan is absolutely awesome.
Up to 100 ballons fill the sky and float quietly to the site circle around it for a while and then land. You get “fizzy” for a celebration, breakfast and then can spend time at the site (1hr IIRC) which is not crowded as it is early.
Our tour had a “guide ” who explained a lot.Load of operators, cost £150 for transport, breakfast and site tour.
Totally awesome.
We did this baloon ride last year, and the wind took us over the highway and a landfill site. Not so great for the insta photos 🙂
The localised security is there more as an added deterrent albeit we felt perfectly safe everywhere we visited in CDMX. We stayed at the JW which we thought was well located and is just around the corner from the IC. The Kimpton is very close to Presidente Masaryk Avenue…CDMX’s equivalent to Rodeo Drive. Most of the main cultural sites are based around the Centro Historico, which is a fair bit away (30mins by taxi). If you want to walk from your hotel to the main sites, then staying in Centro Historico might make more sense.
I wonder if they really were all private security or whether some of them were just one of the many types of official law enforcement, many of which don’t carry any police type word on their uniforms :- Protección Civil, Seguridad Ciudadana, Tránsito etc. There are private security people and rather ill disguised plain clothes officers outside embassies and what we guessed were politicians’ properties. Like in many cities there are private security staff outside banks and high end jewellery shops.
Loving these Mexico City recommendations as my fiancée and I are looking at Mexico for a honeymoon destination.
Thinking a few days in Mexico City via Madrid, a week on the coast (Zihuatanejo is looking like a winner) and then home.
I’m thinking possibly 4 days in CDMX, will that be a decent amount as far as sightseeing and food goes?
I’ve got two Avios J tickets to MEX next Feb using a 241, and we are thinking of spending the majority of our time on the coast near Zihuatenejo. We’ve narrowed down the hotels which are most likely to suit us to either La Casa Que Canta, Thompson or Marea Beachfront Villas, yet the prices are coming up much higher than I thought they might (Marea is the cheapest, but reports of the sea being rough there are off-putting). I think that JDB has previously said in another thread that contacting the hotel(s) directly is likely to result in a significant discount from their published prices (up to 50% IIRC?) – have I recalled that correctly, and is that really likely to be correct in mid Feb when these hotels already appear to have limited availability?
Separately, we’d really like to spend some time in Oaxaca inbetween our arrival in MEX and our beach-time. It seems that to travel onwards to Zihuatenejo we’d need to reverse our steps and go back via MEX which we’d rather not do (need to allow additional time / possibly another night in MEX to account for potential delays). You can fly directly from Oaxaca to Puerto Vallarta, but I’ve seen JDB’s comments that it is quite high-rise now, and that doesn’t appeal at all. Does anyone know of an alternative, or are we just best to suck up the indirect flights to Zihuatenejo?
Lots of questions. Marea is indeed on a bay where the sea is tough and there’s a strong undertow. We swim there several times a day, but you need to be careful. There are no organised facilities/watersports on the Playa Blanca beach there save the odd restaurant. We love it as it’s nine miles of beach and quite unspoilt. Although it’s a very nice 30 min drive to the other two hotels, it’s all so different that it makes it feel like to a two centre holiday.
The Thompson has a big frontage right on the Ropa beach and LCQC is in the cliff above – that bay is quite enclosed and very calm. Marea always does 40-50% deals (it’s actually owner apartments they are letting) often even advertised on their site. The Thompson will discount but not quite as much. Both will deal in Feb unless there is any US holiday. Negotiate free corkage at the Thompson – their wine is extortionate! LCQC not so sure. LCQC is a beautiful hotel, lots of great Mexican art/craft and fabulous views day or night. Bit of a climb from the beach! It’s quite serious and quiet. The Thompson is a beach hotel so very different style.
The situation re flights between resorts does unfortunately usually mean going via MEX and the distances are too far to drive. Re Puerto Vallarta – the newer Riviera Nayarit coast north of PV is still nice.
Take two (I wrote my response, then lost it through incompetence…!).
Thank you so much for the detailed response as always @JDB. We’re really interested in your suggestion of splitting the stay across two hotels as both Playas Ropa and Blanca seem so different. I’ll contact both Marea and LCQC for quotes as quieter and more peaceful hotels definitely suit us better.
Would you recommend a hire car if staying at those hotels, or are there sufficient restaurants etc within walking distance to make that an unnecessary encumbrance?
Presidents Day (17 Feb) seems to fall in the middle of our dates, but I don’t know enough about US holidays to understand how that might be driving demand / pricing.
@Chas – you don’t need a car at Playa Ropa as you can walk into town, it’s a nice walk along the sea, starting not too far from LCQC and there are restaurants en route as well as plenty in town. A taxi back was around 50 pesos last year. If you like quiet, Espuma is an option. It’s located between LCQC and town, but it’s a restaurant with rooms rather than a hotel. Great views and a shared public area with a biggish outdoor kitchen (bizarrely including a pizza oven) seating area and large plunge pool. It’s owned by the same person as Tentaciones, a bit higher up the hill.
Whether you need a car at Playa Blanca depends what you want to do. It’s very quiet at night – all the restaurants in Barra de Potosí will close around eight, as does the restaurant at the Hotel Portofino, the best on the Playa Blanca. Marea stays open later as does one other, Lagartos which is super basic, but fine. That means a taxi ride into town of you want to go out somewhere lively and it’s maybe 20-25 minutes and 500 pesos each way. In the day there are constantly colectivos going up and down the beach road and into town if you can cope with that. February is mango season!
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