805 Italy Side-Trip Towns; Overnight; Enjoying Mexico City

25:07And I, as a young man, would just wander around the city and wait for the first train back in the morning. And, you know, if I was a woman of the same age, I wouldn't be able to do that necessarily. So I think a lot of the night, you know, there is...

25:21Rick Steves:We miss this in our everyday world, so dedicated to having things well lit and sometimes understandably so just from a safety point of view. But I remember being in Costa Rica. A highlight of that trip was taking a nocturnal tour, a nighttime tour of the jungle and the insects and things that glow in the dark. Have you ever taken a nighttime tour in an area with just a wonderland of life? It's like, you know, people think sometimes the desert is dead, but it comes really filled with life if you know where to look. Well, a lot of people think not much is going on after dark, But when you have a guide and you go out in the midst of it, you realize it's thriving and it's iridescent.

26:06Absolutely. I was fortunate enough to go out with a night sky ranger up in Dumfries and Galloway, which is in the southwest of Scotland. And she was pointing out the stars, but we were in this amazing estuary that was full of geese. And the geese would be flying off soon. They'd be going up to Iceland or they'd be going over to Russia. and the night I think sharpens the senses because you're really listening, you're really paying attention and I think also you don't have to be in a wild place to have that I was always profoundly comforted and moved by listening to trains in the night when I was growing up my grandfather used to work on the mail trains that would be taking posts around the country and when I was a child I'd listen to the trains going and think of my grandfather And in the same way, I'd listen to cars going past on the road, and I'd always wonder what those people were up to and where were they going.

26:59I think night could potentially be this kind of arena for empathy, where we think of people out there who are not sleeping, and we think of them, and we, a bit like the shipping forecast, we're thinking of the souls on the sea, and we send our hearts out and we send our minds out to people we don't know out in the night.

27:18Rick Steves:Well, you wrote about that quite vividly with the St. Mungo's workers. I mean, that's the St. Mungo took care of the poor and the homeless, right? And in Scotland, you were out in the wee hours helping people who were homeless, and you gained a better appreciation of their whole experience. Imagine people who have no roof over their head every night. I think that's, I mean, it's a very important chapter for me. It's a chapter I think about a lot, because I think the homeless people who are having tough times, it's so easy to see those people as the problem, to pity their situation rather than actually pitying them.

27:58And darkness allows us to forget. It allows us to not see if we choose to. And to go out with people who are very benevolent, who are helping every night of the year and trying to give people comfort who are in dire straits, whether that's just shaking a hand and having a conversation or getting them a cup of tea or trying to find them a bed for the night. It's hugely humbling. And there were a number of times in the book where I met people and I was really, really moved. another chapter like that would be the search and rescue helicopter team that I was lucky enough to spend 24 hours with. And here are four men and a helicopter who could be phoned at any moment to go rescue those in great danger.

28:40And they were so ready to go. And they spoke about how it's a great privilege to be in that position to help.

28:48Rick Steves:You talked about benighted at the beginning of our conversation here when darkness overtakes everything and you're stuck for the night. it's kind of thought-provoking to me to think that fellow human beings can be benighted by the, not the setting of the sun, but by the setting of their ability to take care of themselves, just by, overwhelmed by homelessness or hunger or poverty, and they're stuck with the night, benighted. And then all of us can choose to see it or choose to sleep through it. And when you can just be awake to what's going on during that dark part of our world, it's quite powerful.

29:26Rick Steves:You wrote in your epilogue about the summer solstice and being at Avebury, the Stone Circle, the Stonehenge-like Stone Circle, standing there on 5 ,000 years of history. Let's wrap up our conversation, Dan. This is such a fascinating discussion. I'm so thankful you wrote your book, Overnight, Journeys, Conversations, and Stories After Dark. Tell us about why you finished the book at Avebury during the summer solstice. well I think it's there's something amazingly compelling about this idea of solstice you know I was there for the shortest night the longest day and then I knew that from that moment on night would begin to come back and by the time we get to December you know the night is deep and the night is truly dark and a lot colder this idea of connection across time across deep time there are moments where it feels very vital and very potent and Avebury that night and the morning that followed really felt like that and I suppose the heart of this book is an idea of benevolent connection what can we do for each other how can we help each other and the night is a time when we could look away but perhaps the night is a time when we could reconnect with ourselves with each other with the world around us and we could have this sense of being thankful for everybody whose labours we perhaps rely upon without really ever considering the fact that it's happening and Avebury was an ancient way of reconnecting with the fact that we're so bound to the light and the stars and that whilst we think of ourselves as very modern people we are beings that are really affected by light and dark, by cold and warmth, you know, just as our ancestors were.

31:11And there at Avebury, I felt a profound sense of connection and also thankfulness for being here and now.

31:18Rick Steves:Dan Richards, you have made Benighting a blessing with your book overnight. Thank you for Benighting all of us and hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you, Rick.

31:34Rick Steves:We can connect you with the articles Dan Richards has written and his earlier books. It's in the notes for today's show at ricksteves.com slash radio. Our next stop is Mexico City. David Lita updates us on the multicultural neighborhoods and cosmopolitan vibe of the Mexican capital. It's the largest metro area in North America and growing, and it's just ahead on Travel with Rick Steves. For more than a decade now, the largest city in the Americas has been getting more and more popular as a tourist destination. Just last year, more than 4 million people from other countries visited Mexico City.

32:14Rick Steves:It's comparatively more affordable than other cities of its stature, and it boasts world-class restaurants, museums, boutique hotels, colonial architecture, and ancient and modern history at every turn. Mexico City has the kind of appeal that keeps you coming back for more. Whether it's your first visit or your fifth, there's always something new to discover in the capital. Guide and author David Leda joins us today to get us up to date on the delights of Mexico City. David, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me again, Rick. It's always a pleasure to talk with you. And you are an inspiration to me because you visited Mexico City and you liked it so much you actually moved there.

32:52Rick Steves:and you've been there for a long time. Tell us your story, yeah. I went there in the late 1980s. I was still in my 20s. I had this fantasy that it would be a good thing to live in another country for a while. And when I got to Mexico City, I just had this gut instinct that there was something for me here. And I thought, I'm going to give it a try and if it doesn't work out, I'll go back in six months. And I'm still here, so something must have worked out. Now, what's interesting to me is, and I'm surrounded by travelers, everybody's talking about Iceland or London or Rome. And, you know, where do you go for some travel thrills?

33:33Rick Steves:Especially if a lot of us fly through Texas as a hub to get somewhere else. Yeah. Well, you fly to Houston, you're just a couple hours from Mexico City. It's no more complicated than connecting to Miami in a lot of ways. You know, what's interesting to me, Rick, is that for most of the 35 years that I've lived here, nobody from the United States wanted to come and visit. It was a city that was identified by its negative aspects. Yeah. Pollution, which used to be a lot worse than it is, overpopulation, crime. And also, parenthetically, you're a lot more likely to be the victim of a crime in many cities in the US than you are here.

34:13But, you know, for some reason it was identified by these negative aspects and nobody wanted to come here. Well, suddenly in the last 10 years or so, it's taken off like a rocket. I cannot handle all the inquiries I get to guide people on tours. So what's going on?

34:31Rick Steves:What's causing that? Are we getting over the myths about crime and safety? Well, I think a lot of people are indeed. But I think what really happened, I mean, it's a little complicated. It happened in stages. But after the 2008 financial crisis, when the economies of the United States and Europe were stagnant, a lot of people started to come here and try their luck. That was one thing that happened. And then 2015, the New York Times travel section put Mexico City as number one on their 52 places to visit that year. And suddenly every media that had a travel section did a story about Mexico City.

35:13And what really solidified things was in that first year of the pandemic, when so many places were locked down, Mexico let anybody in, no questions asked. and it was one of the few countries of the world allowing that. And lots of so-called digital nomads came here and spread the word. And now it's just become hot. A lot of people are coming here, mostly from the United States because it's so close.

35:41Rick Steves:Okay, now when you think about places getting hot and popular and it becomes a storm on social media and so on, you think about Barcelona, you think about Bruges, you think about Venice, you think about, you know, Florence, a lot of times it gets too much and the local people feel like their squares are being taken away from them and they're being invaded. And Airbnb is driving local renters to boring concrete suburbs so the tourists get to stay in short-term rentals in the nice corners. Are there any downsides of the popularity of Mexico City with travelers that you notice as a resident of Mexico City?

36:20Yes. We are definitely not at the level of Europe, but at certain neighborhoods in central Mexico City, principally Colonia Condesa and Colonia Roma, which I consider equivalent to the Greenwich Village in Soho of Mexico City. A lot of the territory has been ceded to Airbnb, which has driven up the rents. And there is a backlash. You know, people who've been living in those neighborhoods, Mexicans, for a long time.

36:51Rick Steves:Because people can live there for all their lives. And then one day they walk down the street and they realize all their shops, all their markets are gone. And they've been refocused on the consuming habits of the tourists that are filling the apartments upstairs. Yeah, typically the shoe repair shop or the locksmith gets turned into a fancy little cafe or something. And that has happened to some extent in those two neighborhoods. I am not exaggerating, Rick, when I tell you in the trendy part of Colonia Roma, which is Roma Norte, you can walk down the street and often hear more English than Spanish.

37:28I don't think they will give you a job on the dining room floor of a high-end restaurant in Colonia Roma if you don't speak at least some English.

37:37Rick Steves:I would imagine that's true. But when I fly into Mexico City, one of the most glorious visual thrills that I can remember is coming in at twilight or after dark and seeing the lights of 20 million people or whatever greater Mexico City is, blanketing the hills. As far as you can look on both sides of the airplane, it's like a twinkling universe below you of the lights of 20 million people. That reminds me there's a lot more to Mexico City than the Zona Rosa or whatever the central tourist area are. Right. Mexico City, urban planners call it a short, fat city because there aren't that many skyscrapers, but it's spread out over something like 800 square miles.

38:24Rick Steves:David Lita provides custom tours and themed neighborhood walks in Mexico City. It's been his home for more than 35 years, ever since he first visited from New York and knew right away that Mexico City is where he wanted to be. David also writes a street-level panorama of contemporary Mexico as a capital of the 21st century in his book First Stop in the New World. He also wrote a novel called One Life based on his work as a legal mitigation specialist working with undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. His website is davidlita.com. That's spelled L-I-D-A. So, David, I want to talk about the back doors and the neighborhoods and so on.

39:08Rick Steves:But first of all, I remember the first time I met you in Mexico City, I had my checklist. You know, I was there for three days, and I did the must-see famous sites. Now I want to go back and do all the other places where you really get intimate with the culture and the back streets and the markets. But just to kick it off, if you had a friend coming down who had four nights and three days, let's say, for a vacation, never been there before, Settle into a hotel centrally located. What would the six or eight experiences and places you'd want to be sure to put into that itinerary? Sure. First of all, I would recommend an entire day in the Centro Historico, the old historic downtown.

39:47Because the whole history, all seven centuries of the history of Mexico City are represented there from the Aztecs to today. Is that mostly walkable? Oh, yes, absolutely. I could take you there for a week and we do something different every day. But so that's the most important. Okay, so a day for the center. Yeah. There are three other experiences that I'm going to talk about, which I believe are really important. And some of them can be combined or some people might want to choose one or the other. So two colonial neighborhoods are Coyoacan and San Angel. Those are in the south of the city. When the Spaniards got here, they utterly destroyed the Aztec city.

40:32They reduced it to rubble. And while they were rebuilding their city, they settled in Coyoacan, which used to be a suburb. It was only incorporated into Mexico City in the 1920s. It's a gorgeous area. There's a lot going on there. That is where the Frida Kahlo House is. That is where several other important museums are. Okay, so that's the colonial neighborhoods.

40:56Rick Steves:There's the historic center and the colonial neighborhoods. Okay, so a day for that. And then your third day? The third day, I would suggest either Roma and Condesa, which are the, like I said, the Greenwich Village and Soho of Mexico City, or Xochimilco in the south of the city where the canals are. There's a network of something like, I believe it's 90 miles of canals. and you can go in a boat and get taken around by a barge man. He's got this long pole because it's a shallow lake, a shallow man-made lake, and he's taking you around this very pastoral setting. And this survives from pre-Columbian times.

41:40Rick Steves:Yes, absolutely. But that's what people don't recognize. When Columbus discovered America, in many ways the most sophisticated and biggest city around was already there, Mexico City. What was it called, the name? Mexico City was called Tenochtitlan when the Spaniards got here. Now, when the Spaniards got here, what they discovered was a city that was larger than any city in Europe at the time. There were a quarter of a million people living here. It was more sophisticated than Europe in terms of plumbing, hydraulic engineering, the distribution of goods and services. People distributed things using those barges in the canals.

42:26Rick Steves:Okay, so this canal system survives. That water infrastructure in that district called Xochimilco, right? Xochimilco, yeah, that's where it survives. The rest of the city is the lake bed was dried up. Tell us about the markets, the classic markets. Where would we have that market kind of thrill? I mean, in every city I can think of a great market. What's the market to go to if you're a tourist wanting to get your fingers dirty in the everyday culture? That depends what neighborhood you're in, Rick. If I'm taking people in the Centro Historico, the old downtown, I take them to the San Juan market, which is a very colorful market.

43:03It used to be noted because this is where the high-end restaurants bought their produce and meat. But now there's more of a farm-to-table system with those restaurants. Still, though, there's a lot going on in that market. One of the biggest immigrant groups in Mexico is Chinese. Mexico used to be a manufacturing economy, but it's now mostly a service economy. And most of the inexpensive goods that you see for sale on the street are from China. As such, there's a lot of Chinese here. The San Juan market is where they do their marketing. You'll see signs in Chinese. you'll see bok choy, those long thin Chinese string beans, those long thin eggplants, sriracha sauce, and lots of hot things that you wouldn't have seen 30 years ago when I got here.

43:53So there's an area of that market where they sell meat from exotic animals, such as buffalo and venison and whatnot.

44:01Rick Steves:This is Travel with Rick Steves. We're talking with David Lida. He's our guide to Mexico City right now. David's a New Yorker who visited 35 years ago and essentially stayed. And if people want to see more of your work, your website is davidlida.com, L-I-D-A. David, you were writing about some new developments, and it's really exciting for me because I'm always updating guidebooks, you know, is trying to keep up to date on things. If you were in Mexico 10 years ago, Mexico City, and you thought you saw it all, what's new now? Well, in the past 15 years or so, it's become a much more international city.

44:39There is more tourism. More people from other countries are coming to live here. Let me put it this way. When I got here 35 years ago, the best food was tacos on the street and other kinds of street food and a few fancier restaurants and one or two foreign restaurants. Now, we've got Asian restaurants, we've got European restaurants, we've got like, so it is becoming a more international city. And you know, as someone who comes from New York, you know, again, I realize if you're coming to visit here for a few days, you want Mexican food. And definitely, I can hook you up with that. But as someone who lives here, I'm delighted that I can get a Korean meal.

45:22I can get pizza cooked by a guy who's actually from Naples. But of course, I understand that visitors want Mexican food. Well, you can still get the$1 taco on the street.

45:32Rick Steves:Oh, you bet you can. So it's good as a traveler to be able to mix that up. Yeah. You wrote that there's a new museum of muralism. And that was one of my takeaways was beautiful murals. Tell us about the art scene for murals. What are they? What's the political connection? And what's with this new museum about muralism? Okay, so the muralist movement began in the early 1920s. The minister of public education was a guy named José Vasconcelos, and he decided that he wanted the best artists in Mexico City to paint the walls of public buildings. And these have a political, sort of a socialism feel to them, don't they?

46:13Well, let me explain. Up until then, most Mexican art was a copy of European art. There were a lot of still lives, landscape painting, religious painting. Vasconcelos' mandate for these great Mexican artists was to paint themes that represented Mexican tradition, Mexican culture, Mexican folklore. Or he wanted Mexico to be represented in these murals. And some of them are very political. Many of the most famous muralists, such as Diego Rivera or David Alfao Siqueiros, were committed communists. And so there was an explicit communist or socialist message in some of their work. But not all of it is that.

47:01Rick Steves:But Rivera's work is so inspirational. Oh, yes. that this will lead us to this new museum, which is not precisely a new museum, Rick. It used to be the building where the Ministry of Public Education was. You'd go there and it was an office building where people were working, bureaucrats were working down the hallways doing their business, but the walls were covered with Diego Rivera's work and in other parts, other muralists. They closed it down a year and a half ago and turned it into a museum. Now it is a museum called El Museo Vivo del Muralismo, the living museum of muralism. Those are my favorite Diego Rivera murals.

47:40Rick Steves:That's great that they're there. Absolutely. So that would be on my list. Oh, no, definitely. You can see how he learned to become the Diego Rivera we recognize and love, because the first murals that he painted are different from what he usually does. and you see his progress as you go through the holes. I break it down for people when I take them there. I love that. In a good museum, it shows you the evolution of an artistic genius's career. All right. Well, hey, David Lita, thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to look you up next time I'm south of the border. Can we get together? It would be great to see you again and thank you for inviting me, Rick.

48:19It's always a pleasure.

48:20Rick Steves:All right. Well, best wishes, David, and I hope to see you soon. Thanks a lot.

48:28que ha logrado ser tesoro nacional. Es el yarro cantor por que decrete nuestro orgullo que nunca morirá.

48:51Rick Steves:Some of our Travel with Rick Steves listeners have told us about tropical island getaways they've enjoyed in the haiku poems they sent us from a link in the radio section of ricksteves.com. Send us one you've written, and if it's really good, we might read it on the air someday. Here's a few island haiku that we thought you'd like. Sue Tomlin of Mount Vernon, Illinois, writes us this travel haiku from a visit to St. Anne's Parish in Jamaica. In small markets, uh, respect, mon, said sincerely, all wrong on T-shirts. Paula Hudnall from Portland, Oregon sends us this portrait of a coral reef she admired in Bora Bora Blue water deep, clear life abundant, thrives below eternity there and Christine Kuenhoven from Baltimore sends us a set of haiku impressions about the birds and fish she saw on her trip to Anguilla in the Lesser Antilles Sugar and water to tempt you, sweet little bird you capture our hearts.

49:56Minnows scatter like confetti as the houndfish glistens on the scene. All strut and bustle, jaunty plumed tail, coxcomb crown, this lot, your kingdom. And she adds this one about observing Orion in the night sky. I always seek you, broad-shouldered, bright-belted knight of the starry sky. Travel with Rick Steves is produced by Tim Tatton with Kazmira Hall and Donna Bardsley at Rick Steves Europe in Edmonds, Washington. Andrew Wakeling and Sherry Court upload the shows to our website. Sheila Gerzoff handles affiliate promotions. Our theme music is by Jerry Frank. Special thanks to the BBC in London for studio help this week.

50:44Gretchen Straub read our listener travel haiku. Take a look at Rick's list for what to pack in your suitcase and share tips with fellow travelers, it's part of our online travel forum. It's at ricksteves.com. We'll see you next week with more Travel with Rick Steves.

51:00Rick Steves:Hey, I'm Rick Steves. Season 13 of my TV series, Rick Steves Europe, is now out. And this and every season of Public Television's most watched and longest-running travel series is available in its entirety, free and ad-free, at ricksteves.com. That's our entire library of episodes, cutting Europe into more than 100 slices, ranging from Iceland to Portugal to Turkey. Let's say you're wondering where to go in Scotland. Well, three episodes answer that question in 90 minutes. You can also read the full script for each show and find links to the places we visit. Sure, our TV shows entertain, but they're also practical guides to the smartest possible itineraries, turning your travel dreams into smooth and affordable reality.

51:48Rick Steves:It's all at ricksteves.com.