The Month Of CDMX: February 2026 Recap

I’m writing this while getting some sun on my porch in México City. Writing is always more fun with a nice view 🙂 . Another month has flown by so let’s see what I got up to in February!

I Lived in México City🇲🇽!

I spent about 5 weeks in México City (CDMX) after enjoying Oaxaca and Baja California Sur last month. This was my first time in CDMX and I absolutely loved going outside in a tank top and shorts instead of the 90 layers I wore in Upstate NY so I didn’t freeze my balls off.

To make sure I soaked up the sun, I set a daily alarm that reminded me to sit on my porch for at least an hour a day (when the UV index was low, don’t worry). That paired with walking all over the city and eating delicious food was a lovely way to spend the month 🙂 .

I was also impressed with México City – it has a bigger metro area by population than NYC, but it’s cleaner and way better smelling than NYC (seriously it smells so much better than the trash pile that is Manhattan – I say that semi-lovingly after living there for 4 years 😉 ).

CDMX had amazing food on literally every corner and is also surprisingly green. I think it ties with Buenos Aires as a giant city with giant trees everywhere. In CDMX every street is so lined with trees that at times it looks like a secret garden is growing above some smaller roads.

Slow Travel Review: Buenos Aires, Argentina – The Land Of Nature and Architecture

There is also a fair bit of flowers and an abundance of parks in CDMX. I expected it to be more of a concrete jungle given how big it is, but it didn’t feel like that. In fact, my Partner liked it so much that he suggested we come back every winter 🙂 . We’ll see about that though – there are so many other warm places I want to experience!

I Practiced Spanish

I was a bit worried about my Spanish language skills going into this México trip because I had on my calendar to start hardcore practicing Spanish again a month before our trip started and then I just…didn’t. Oops!

From 0% to Fluent: How I Learned Spanish in 1 Year

However, that lack of practice shockingly didn’t seem to be a hinderance. Once I landed in México, I was able to listen and understand everything people were saying to me, which was surprising and awesome.

I also was able to speak back without issue and a few days into our trip, a waiter unprompted told me I speak Spanish well. I assume he was just being nice, but that was reassuring to hear regardless 🙂 .

It was great to get back into the swing of things and be surrounded by this language once again. Immersion really is the way to go and I’m excited to keep my lifelong study of this language going.

I Knitted

I brought a pair of needles and one extra hank of yarn to México, and I finished the second sleeve on my Saven “Knives Out” Sweater! At first it was slow going because I seemed to get Second Sleeve Syndrome where doing the same exact thing a second time was a bit boring, which was hilarious because the first sleeve was so difficult for me initially that I thought I’d pull my hair out 🙂 .

How times have changed. It seems like I need to continue my previous trend of always having multiple knitting projects going at once – one that I find really challenging and one that is easy and reminds me that I’m not bad at knitting 😉 . That balance seems to work well for me.

Anyway, despite being a bit bored, I ended up finishing that sleeve faster than I planned and went over a week in México without anything to knit. The horror! However, that meant I was excited to head home for another reason: To knit more!

I Hung Out With People

This month involved my usual virtual meetups, such as a weekly call with my Mom and Weekly Movie Nights where we watched some of the films included below (I watched the rest on my own). If you’re curious about my ratings of movies, I have a Letterboxd account here.

Films

TV Shows

I Read 11 Books

Here were my favorite reads this month:

How to Be a Rich Old Lady: Your Guide to Easy Investing, Building Wealth, and Creating the Wild, Beautiful Life You Want By Amanda Holden
Game Changer by Rachel Reid
Role Model by Rachel Reid

To see the other books I read this month and my ratings of them, I have a Goodreads account here. I had another month where I was DNFing like a motherfucker. I unfortunately DNFed 11 books in February, which made me pretty sad.

I’m glad I started allowing myself to DNF books a few years ago, but getting so frustrated with a book that I abandon it after reading most of the book still makes me sad. On a positive note, I’ve been loving listening to Proyecto Hail Mary in Spanish – the narrator is fantastic and it’s very cool to actually hear parts of the book that are music-based instead of just reading music notes on the page like I did during my first read-through.

I Wrote 4 Posts

In case you missed it, this month I published the below posts:

In addition to all that, I had 2 virtual hangouts with readers! One I’ve met up with two times before on 2 different continents, and the other was someone I was planning to meet in CDMX who had to travel elsewhere instead.

And this month in the realm of “weird opportunities I declined/ignored” we have:

A company that wanted to send me a free exercise bike
A money management platform
An AI budget app
A company that sells vegan gummy supplements

Physical

Sleep

My sleep was pretty good this month. The few nights I had issues falling asleep it was because of city noise I wasn’t used to. Unfortunately, it seems that having a homebase in a quiet rural town seems to have caused me to not be used to regular city noises like I was when I lived in NYC and Seattle. Blerg 🙂 .

I Got A Homebase! (But Will Still Travel 1/3 Of The Year)

My free White Noise Lite phone app helped, but I guess not well enough. So I was glad I brought my Slim Fit Ear Plugs just in case, but I prefer to sleep without them. I’m not sure when I’ll be visiting a giant city for a month again, but I should make a game plan in advance next time – maybe I should start falling asleep to city noise recordings for a month in advance to prepare 😉 .

Food

My food this month was fantastic 🙂 . Every time someone asked me what I was up to in México, I said “eating” and that was accurate. All of my explorations of the city revolved around everything I wanted to eat. As a result, I ate keto 68% of the time, took 9 days off keto and I have no regrets 🙂 .

Exercise

This month I focused on staying limber so I did yoga, pilates and body weight squats along with walking all over México City. It was great, but I’m excited to get back to heavy lifting three times a week. I miss making those gainz 😉 .

Mental

Learning

It’s time for my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For! Here’s what I learned and explored this month:

México City

The US is about 5x bigger than México:

There are about 132 million people in México (a little more than 1/2 of the number of people in the US) and 23 million people live in México City

I mentioned last month how México has more earthquakes than any other country in the world. Well this month, we experienced another earthquake – it was a 5.9 magnitude in Oaxaca that reached us in CDMX. I found this website helpful to see earthquake activity in México and also found it really interesting to know what a Mexican earthquake evacuation alarm sounds like (I hadn’t heard anything like it before):

Spanish

I remembered from my previous time learning Spanish in México, that lots of different Spanish speaking countries use different words for “straw” along with the words for “peanut” and hilariously the color “purple”.

However, I did not know that the word provided by Google Translate for straw in Spanish (pajita) actually means to masturbate in México. So unfortunately I wasn’t able to stop my Partner from asking a department store employee where the “metal masturbation” was when he was looking for a metal straw.

In México, a straw is un popote, not una paja/pajilla/pajita as Google Translate claims or other countries say and I guess I’ll never forget that now 🙂 .

On a positive note, my Partner discovered something very cool about the origin of the Spanish days of the week. In general, the Spanish word for week (semana) comes from the Latin “septimana” and the names of almost all the days of the week are based on mythology.

Monday: lunes – named after the moon (la luna)

Tuesday: martes – named after the god of war, Mars (Marte)

Wednesday: miércoles – named after the god Mercury (Mercurio)

Thursday: jueves – named after the god Jupiter (Júpiter)

Friday: viernes – named after the goddess Venus

Saturday: sábado – Named after the Hebrew “Shabbat”

Sunday: domingo – named after the word “Dominicus” in Latin

Birds

Birding this month wasn’t as wild as usual because it was mostly city birds and ones in city parks, but it’s always fun to see my feathered friends, so here is what birds I saw this month:

House Sparrow, Great-Tailed Grackle, Inca Dove, House Finch, Rock Pigeon, Bushtit, Great Egret, Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, Wilson’s Warbler, Song Sparrow, Mexican Duck, Rufous-Backed Robin, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, Canyon Towhee, Nashville Warbler, American Coot, Mallard, Muscovy Duck, Northern Shoveler, Vaux’s Swift, White-Winged Dove

Creativity

I’m finally over my slight burnout from writing posts two times a week for PurpleMas! This month I’ve been cranking out words and loving it. I’m so happy that tiredness has passed and I also assume that chilling in the sun in México for a month also helped 😉 .

But given how long that slight burnout took to shake off, I’m even more strong in my conviction to not do PurpleMas this year. It was too wild 🙂 . Maybe it can be an every other year thing.

Emotional

I’ve once again proved that the sun heals me 🙂 . I just generally feel happier with more sunshine in my life and that was even more evident this month after I was able to bask in the Mexican sun.

So I think that revelation has locked me into being an official Snowbird. I did enjoy fall and some winter in Upstate NY, but I think the 3 months I did in 2025 was about enough 😉 .

Money

I’m once again shocked with how far a dollar goes in México. I’ve been eating out more than ever and it has barely made a dent (as you’ll see when I post my expenses for the month on Insta and write my eventual CDMX Slow Travel Review on this blog). It’s wild. And here’s where my net worth ended the month:

View this post on Instagram

Conclusion

And that’s what I got up to in February! Next I’m heading back to my homebase to relax a bit before getting back on the road to travel across countries and continents. Hilariously I’m excited to go home to see family, my knitting tools and my nail stickers 😉 . Until next time!

If you’re interested in the other weekly and monthly retirement updates I’ve written, they’re all here:

Weekly (2020)

Monthly (2021)

Monthly (2022)

Monthly (2023)

Monthly (2024)

Monthly (2025)

Monthly (2026)

The Month Of México: January 2026 Recap

What’s a fun fact you learned this month?

12 thoughts on “The Month Of CDMX: February 2026 Recap”

Anna Smith says:

March 3, 2026 at 6:49 am

Love this. We head to Mexico this weekend. A necessity in upstate winter! When you are back we should get together again even if it’s a zoom!! Still love following your story

1. A Purple Life says:
  
  March 14, 2026 at 5:17 pm
  
  Enjoy México! I’ll email you about setting up another hangout 🙂 .
  
The Orchard says:

March 3, 2026 at 8:44 am

I was wondering if you were still in Mexico when I heard about the outbreak of violence in Jalisco. I had a friend who was on vacation in Puerto Vallarta when they issued stay-at-home orders. He’s OK, but it was a scary few days.

Did that affect you at all? I assume Mexico City is far enough away that it wouldn’t, but you never know.

1. A Purple Life says:
  
  March 14, 2026 at 5:19 pm
  
  Yeah we were still there, but PVR is like 600 miles from CDMX and we didn’t even know anything was happening until our families started checking on us via text. Everything in CDMX was normal that I saw. I’m glad your friend is ok!
  
bethh says:

March 3, 2026 at 11:35 am

When I was in Mexico, our walking tour guide told us that the Spanish word for jacket is usually chaqueta, but it has a similar connotation as pajita! (apparently a jacket is a chamarra or saco in Mexico)

Next time you’re looking for a place to visit in Mexico, I recommend Guanajuato! You will definitely get a lot of walking & hill-climbing in, as it’s set in a steep-sided valley with very few roads (but lots of walking routes) in the hillsides.

Do you plan to post a summary of your visits to Japan? I see two specific posts here but not a bigger picture one. I’m guessing that’s travel water under the bridge, but I’m going in October and am absorbing as many tips as I can.

1. A Purple Life says:
  
  March 14, 2026 at 5:24 pm
  
  Oh my goodness – what is with everything in México being a secret word for masturbation lol? And thank you for the reco!
  
  I actually am working on a Slow Travel Review of Japan – it’s not travel water under the bridge for me (I’m just slow lol). I’m super behind on those posts in general since they take so long to write and the Japan one is difficult because it’s basically a review of the whole country instead of one city like I usually do, but it is the next slow travel review in my queue!
  
  However, I was recently trying to decide if I should wait to write that slow travel review because I’m going back to Japan next year. Would you like it sooner rather than later or with possibly more info after that next trip 🙂 ? Feel free to let me know. Regardless, I’m trying to write a slow travel review every other month at least and this kind of comment helps me make it a priority so thank you!
  
Julie Greb says:

March 3, 2026 at 12:08 pm

Love Mexico City. What neighborhood did you stay in?

1. A Purple Life says:
  
  March 14, 2026 at 5:24 pm
  
  Nice. I stayed in Roma.
  
Natalie K. says:

March 3, 2026 at 7:57 pm

Sounds fun, like all of your trips! 🙂 Whenever you’re in a Spanish-speaking country, that always makes me want to go back to studying Spanish. (I took it in school, which was a LONG TIME ago, haha.)

I didn’t realize blue-gray gnatcatchers were in Mexico, too! We have them in Florida and I think they’re really cute. They’re so small!

1. A Purple Life says:
  
  March 14, 2026 at 5:27 pm
  
  Thanks so much for telling me that! And yeah learning languages is always a rewarding challenge. Those cute gnatcatchers are in Florida and México year round so it was cool to see them since I wasn’t used to them in the northeast.
  
traveltofire says:

March 11, 2026 at 7:32 pm

Ahhh I gotta make it out to CDMX finally! Glad you enjoyed it, and good for you for deciding not to do PurpleMas this year. My motto in 2026 is to do less to keep things fun 🙂

1. A Purple Life says:
  
  March 14, 2026 at 5:39 pm
  
  I hope you enjoy it 🙂 . And yeah I’ve found my limit since my posts keep getting longer somehow lol. Also I like that motto!