Roma Norte & Condesa, CDMX · December 2025
Some cities give you a good time. Mexico City gives you things to keep.
Perry and I arrived in Roma Norte on a December afternoon, checked into Casa Tenue, and immediately understood we were somewhere distinct. The property feels like an expression of the land around it — earthy, considered, architectural in a way that doesn’t announce itself. Smart materials, warm hues, spaces that feel designed not to impress but to settle you. It’s the kind of place that makes you want to move slowly, which is exactly what a city like CDMX requires if you’re going to receive it properly.
The neighborhood rewarded that pace. Mornings began at Café Nin, where the light comes in sideways and the coffee earns its reputation. We wandered into Erre Vintage and galleries like Sin Nombre, where we found a piece for our home — a tapestry from Planta Planta depicting hands and eyes in colorful, curving shapes. It now hangs in our dining room, one of the key moments of color in the whole space. We didn’t plan to buy art. The city just made it inevitable.
We stumbled into the Spotify Bad Bunny pop-up on a Saturday, which felt less like a coincidence and more like the city winking at us — we had tickets to his show that Tuesday, and CDMX was already deep in anticipation. Sushi at Kill Bill that night, back to Felix Pizza more than once, tacos from Carinito that became a ritual. Roma Norte has a way of becoming routine very quickly, which is the highest compliment I know how to give a neighborhood.
Sunday took us outside the city entirely. Teotihuacán in the early morning is one of those experiences that reorders your sense of scale, not just physically, but historically. I love old things, the kind that hold evidence of how people lived. Walking those pyramids felt like stepping into a way of life, not just a site. The light at that hour does something to the stone that photographs can’t fully hold, but I tried.
Monday was for permanence. Perry had an appointment at Nomad Studio with an artist he had long admired, a piece he had been thinking about for some time. What came out of that session was a rendering of his late grandfather’s Kiddush cup, flowers spilling from it, drawn in the cartoonish style of his cousin’s small business. We walked out of that studio carrying something that will outlast both of us.
That afternoon we checked into Ignacia Guest House on Jalapa, in Roma Norte, a historic home turned boutique property with a courtyard that stops you in your tracks. Architectural Digest has written about it, and it earns every word. The room was quaint and warm in the way that only guest houses manage, breakfast included each morning, served in that courtyard like a small daily ceremony. After days of moving through one of the world’s great cities, Ignacia felt like exhaling.
Tuesday night was Bad Bunny. Estadio GNP Seguros, his home crowd, 65,000 people who knew every word. I have seen concerts. I have not seen anything quite like that — the energy, the love in the room, the particular electricity of an artist performing for the people who made him. As a visitor, I felt honored just to be present for it.
We left the next morning with a tapestry, a tattoo, two nights at two very different hotels that each understood what hospitality actually means, and the particular fullness that only certain cities leave behind.
Mexico City gives you things to keep. We kept everything we could carry.
Guest House 
Leave a comment