Okay, Mexico City is definitely on my travel to-do list after seeing this post from Austin Graff. Check out the detailed itinerary: art, food, libraries, strolling. Yes! 🤩
Mexico City looks beautiful and fun. It’s hard to image it was once the scene of so much tragedy. 👉 When sh*t got real in Tenochtitlan, aka Mexico City
Nobody tells a great story like Throughline. This podcast gives new twists on old stories, from ancient collapses of civilization to modern controversies. Every story is a slice of history told with a tight narrative and professional production, including deft use of sound effects. This is not some dude blabbing about history.
In their episode about Tenochtitlan, they dive deep into the brutal Spanish conquest of Mexico. They start out describing ancient Aztect capital of Tenochtitlan (aka Mexico City) as an immense ancient metropolis, one of the largest cities in the world at the time (and now). It is full of towering temples, canals, schools, and a Venice-like network of waterways for transport and irrigation and composting. This is a city that smells sweet.
The Aztecs are advanced and powerful, but they can be pretty brutal conquerers themselves and have made plenty of their own local enemies.
Then the Spanish show up. ⚔️ It’s a fascinating and pretty terrifying story.
👉 Tenochtitlan: A Retelling of The Conquest
If you had told me a few years ago that homes would be “printed” at all, much less a full village of them down in Mexico, I would have laughed. But here it is, the strange and sometimes beautiful world of tomorrow.
Sure, these “printed” homes are IKEA-showroom-small at 500 square feet. But they are real homes – and real stylish, with interestingly rounded corners and a traditional terracotta look. These homes are not chintzy at all. They have already survived a magnitude 7.4 earthquake.
The houses are made with a a Vulcan II printer, developed by an Austin-based construction technology company. The building material is called “lavacrete”. The process is controlled by a smartphone. Three people can build a house in less than a day.
When it’s time for me to really downsize and move to Mexico, I want one of these.
For a while, I thought Veracruz All Natural was basically just the taco truck at Radio. But they’re all over town. 🤷🏻♂️
Here’s the story behind the immigrant sisters who founded Veracruz All Natural.
Key facts: they’re actually from Veracruz, Mexico and came to the US illegally 22 years ago. They contributed a lot to the Austin taco scene by not changing what they knew growing up in Mexico. They started in 2006 with $6,000. A 2009 mention in the Austin Chronicle gave them a good early the boost.
👉 I’m more of a Pueblo Viejo guy because there’s one that is walking distance from my house. But Veracruz is great too, and I love the story.
I went to Playa Del Carmen 🇲🇽 as a kid and need to return just to swim in this pool.
This post is the official start of a Mexico section of this blog and a fresh contribution to my swimming pool collection. 🤩
patmcg.com 