Some of you are enjoying a surprise Nor’easter right now, and I wish you safe passage through the storm with no power interruptions, downed trees, or flooded streets. We had a storm here today, too: It “rained” hard enough that I put on my bucket hat for 30 minutes.
I can’t blame precipitation for my eight days of radio silence–not even a single Bluesky post. Mexico City, the largest city I’ve ever explored, has been a relentless deluge of surprises good and bad. I’ll cover some of that as soon as my short list of long first impressions gets out of editorial quarantine.
I can blame the Nor’easter for my change in plans. Gambling on my return flight on the 28th not being cancelled or diverted to who-knows-where? No thanks. So I’m intentionally diverting course now, heading to Guadalajara on 29 September and returning to Philly 05 October. Tacking on seven more days to my existing nine-day trip is going to challenge my travel skills, but my hard-to-break overpacking habit’s a boon this time!
Visiting Guadalajara didn’t occur to me until after booking this last-minute adventure to CDMX, and that felt like a missed opportunity. I considered taking a few days out of the original plan to correct that oversight, but it would have been an injustice to both cities. Why Guadalajara? It’s about the same size as Philly (city and metro area) with fewer seismic and atmospheric issues. There are strong arts/culture, gay, and tech scenes. A good fit on paper, it could be a fallback plan if a year in Mexico City didn’t work out.
Truth is, it could also be Plan A based on my current “live in Philly, play in NYC” model. A more manageable life in Guadalajara with quarterly play-dates in Mexico City would mitigate some of both cities’ drawbacks. This two-cities model was also a strong point in favor of a “live in Montevideo, play in Buenos Aires” choice. The difference here is that Montevideo is smaller and quieter than Philly and maybe not enough on its own. Maybe Guadalajara is enough on its own. So I’m going there to find out.