The final night in Mexico City

I always enjoy to my fullest the final night in a city (speaking as though I’ve been doing this travelling for a while now, right). In any case it’s like having that last chocolate or even that last succulent and delicious bite of a hamburger, the last night is all about saying goodbye and thank you to a city. So goodbye and thank you it was to Mexico City D.F. with all its hidden beauty, mysterious and thought provoking art, unusual and surprising traffic, its flavour, its history and current story and the exotic food.

Wait, before I go on about the final scrumptious night let me just talk about the food. Why is it that Mexican food in other countries is very different to the Mexican food in Mexico? (I wonder if it’s like that for Thai, Indian or Turkish food.) As an example, the taco and burritos appear more natural here.
Oh and they are quite adventurous with their sweets. I’m a chewy sweets kinda gal, and love the juicy surprise in those that have that sweet and wonderfully soft center. I discovered this ‘’adventurous side” after one of my many visits to the seven eleven, which was conveniently around the corner and open 24 hours. I decided to try the selection of my favourites. Arrived ‘home’ and excitedly opened a pack that had a naughty looking tiger on the front, wine gum looking treats inside and my limited Spanish telling me that I was about to enjoy a juicy surprise. Surprise it was, juicy it was not. Who would have thought, you can put paprika, cinnamon and barbeque spices in the balls of sweet preservative packed goodies, instead of fruity juice. Adventurous!

Back to my last night. Our flight to Brazil was on Tuesday sometime, therefore the day preceding that, so the calendar claims, would be a Monday. Monday would be the last opportunity for me to come out and play with fellow night crawlers. No matter, it was a Friday night to me.

That afternoon I met a very handsome young doctor who gave me the fabulous tip to visit Condesa - a little trendy and club ridden area in D.F. Seemingly the suggested bar had a Half Price Monday Student night and fantastic music. Who’s going to say no to half price everything?
Dolled up and ready to go the team missioned off to their last night, with only the name of area and the bar, in famous Condesa which has bars, clubs and restaurant at almost every street corner, middle street, side street, you name it. We all crossed our fingers hopeful that our wonderful Spanish speaking cab driver would be a positive link to our good night. Luckily within 20 minutes of suspense we found Zydeco, followed by a collective sigh of relief.

Zydeco turned out to be a really cool place, great vibe, smiles all round and calm house music we could all enjoy. Mild mahogany all over the place with high stools and tables in the main area, three raised rooms with intricate floral detailed couches and lower tables where you can enjoy chilled out drinks with buddies. They even have a little stall room where you can purchase really funky merchandise such as leather biker jackets, Zydeco branded, t-shirts, caps and all sorts. We couldn’t get space in the awesome couch areas and even had to wait a few short minutes to get a table, or in our case two. The place was comfortably packed. The food on the menu looked awesome, so much so that we had to get a variety and nibble of everything. I don’t recall all the choices but the two that stuck out the most in my mind were sticky barbeque chicken wings that had been marinated in whisky… yummy! The other was deep fried spicy prawns with this fascinating tangy mayonnaise type sauce. My mouth is watering as I write. We treated ourselves like royalty that night. Later decided it would be economically viable and probably create quite a laugh to put our cocktail training to the test and hopefully show that we are somewhat skilled in this area of mixology. Ordered a bottle of No 21 (you should know what that is), orange juice, cranberry juice, lime and strawberries, tonic water and ginger beer. None of the concoctions were recorded or even given names, delicious as they were. We also followed the rule stating that a drink must have a minimum of three ingredients, excluding the ice to be considered a cocktail. Our creations were wild and whacky sweet, bitter and very sweet, colourful and fruity. Next time we need to write them down and spread the word.

The night didn’t end there though. Ben, John and I visited a club called Neon, which is in the gay district, Zona Rosa, located in a church looking building called Centro de Angel. Walking through the centre we passed very quiet and closed shops selling wares such as incense, antiques, flowers and gifts. Quite benign surroundings really, compared to the party in the club. Went up some stairs and the bright yellow/orange and green lights of the aptly named Neon club invaded my eyes and I knew we’d arrived. Met at the door by a lovely elaborately dressed person with a blonde wig, blue dress and bright green eye shadow, bling-bling earrings and highest heels I’ve seen since the movies of flower power. Neon is a garage/warehouse looking space with nothing much to it; obviously the people do the job of creating a bash. The floors are that raw cement you’d probably find in airplane hangars, in the middle a raised steel platform for use as a dance floor by those that feel like being the centre of attention and ability to dance. Ben chose this opportunity to show us that he could do more than nod his head to the beat, I on the other hand was happy to enjoy he show and take pictures.

I can’t tell you what the genre of the music was, but the closest I can get is to say it was a fast paced ‘doof doof’ with metal hitting steel sort of sounds making their appearance between sharp instrumental shrieks.

After an hour or so more of drinks in plastic cups with cranberry concentrate, people sweating all over the place, cheers from the crowd to the gyrating exhibitionists on the platform, meeting people who just couldn’t pronounce my tri-syllable name and rubbing my shiny head, some more ‘doof doof’ and metals we left the club and followed our stomachs to a 24 hour bistro, went home and said a satisfactory goodbye and thank you to Mexico City D.F.