My Nomad Diary, Week 5: I am half man, half taco

Moments from the week:

Touching back down in LATAM, my favourite part of the world
Treating myself to probably Europe’s best business class offering

What I’m reading this week:

Haven’t had much downtime this week, so I’m still making my way through: The Vagabond’s Way: 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel

It’s my final week in Valencia and I’m going to miss it! I still have mixed opinions on Valencia, I think it’s a great city for nomads and for those of you that find Barcelona a bit much, Valencia is the perfect solution. But it’s still a bit too touristy for me and I found that a large proportion of the city is quite rundown. I do feel bad making that statement given what is going on in right now, but, as always, this is always my honest account of my experiences.

My first day of the week, I’ve started practicing time-blocking my calendar to keep me to a routine and I’m finding it’s working really well. I started my morning at the café near my apartment, prepared some content for LinkedIn, did some research and wrote a blog. A pretty good start to the week, by all accounts.
Later on, I caught up with a professional contact back home and then had a call with a potential client for a new website build, fingers crossed!
I finished up the day with a couple of Spanish lessons and a bit of packing… roll on Wednesday.

It’s Tuesday and my final day in my apartment, I start the day with a focused hour of work at the local café and work on my website proposal, I’m pretty chuffed with the branding and direction this is taking, even if I don’t win the pitch, I’m really happy with the brand I’m creating.
A cool thing happened today, I noticed one of my posts went viral on LinkedIn and had garnered a whopping 125,000 impressions (at time of writing and still climbing) and in turn my followership has increased a fair bit to almost 1,400 in the process. Whilst it’s all just numbers at the moment, growing my LinkedIn is one of my professional aims for the next few months and will play a crucial part in me growing my self-employed income, so it’s really encouraging to see that starting to pay off.
Fast-forwarding through the rest of the day, I checked out of my apartment and headed to Valencia airport, checked in to the Travelodge and hit the hay before my 6am (yuk) flight tomorrow morning.

It’s basically still Tuesday, but here we are, Wednesday and man I’m dead today. Couldn’t sleep a wink in my €40 a night airport hotel (you get what you pay for), I checked out and walked to Valencia Airport, destined for Charles de Gaulle with a 3h layover, which later became 5h, before heading onwards to Mexico.
I decided to treat myself (because I have the financial restraint of a degenerate shitcoin trader) to first row business class with AirFrance, basically the closest you’ll get to First when there isn’t their La Premiere offering on that model of plane and… wow. I’ve done business class a few times but on cheaper airlines, and this is in a league of its own.
I arrived to CDG airport, which absolutely lived up to the reputation of one of the world’s most complicated airports, and headed to Air France’s Lounge, which is strictly for business class customers, no AMEX or Lounge Pass is getting you in this bad boy. I have DragonPass so I always use lounges in airports but this was something else, exclusive to Business and First Class travellers; there was a massage parlour, sauna, showers, a nap room and a beauty salon. Anyway, not interested in that, I’m here for the food, scoffed a few croissants, downloaded some films and carried on with my website proposal and then headed to board my 12-hour long flight.
Honestly the experience itself warrants its own blog post, but I’ll keep it relatively brief;
As I was on the first row, which I think is referred to as the bulk head seat, I had a double width leg-room area which was big enough for two people to sit side-by-side and was I in for a treat.
I was flying on the newly configured A350-900 which Air France have been rolling out this year, so this plane was brand-spanking new, and as my friend called it, the Tesla of the skies. I had electronically-dimmable windows (two of them!), a widescreen TV that I could connect my own Bluetooth headphones to, cameras to watch the plane flying, wireless charging for my phone along with two USB charging ports AND a fully-functioning mains plug socket to charge my laptop. Flying is never going to be the same for me ever again 😂
For my meals; I had a French-style 5-course gourmet meal: aperitif and amuse-bouche, starter, main course, cheese, and dessert. Everything, even down to the branded cutlery designed by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud or the comfort kit from Clarins, was like something from a different reality, and unapologetically French, mes amis.
Oh and as much Champagne as I could get my mitts on, and trust me, I got my money’s worth. Unfortunately no Aperol available, which I think is tantamount to crimes against humanity, but we can’t have it all darlings.

The cost? £2,700 one way. Which, considering the airline, is damn cheap. If I’d gone a week earlier it was £4,500, but as this was the week after Día Los Muertos, flights to MEX were really cheap for this week, by comparison.

I landed in Mexico City at about 5pm, whizzed through the airport, granted a 6-month visa-free stay on arrival and hopped in my £6 Uber to my hotel. I’m staying at Casa Decu for one night before a week in a really nice new hostel with a great co-working area.
I know exactly what you’re thinking, this guy just spunked close to three grand on a flight to a country only to take a £6 Uber to a £15 a night hostel.
Hell yeah I did.
Boy math.

It’s Thursday and day one in México, and I am bouncing off the walls. I can’t put into words how much I love Latin America, the language, the culture, the people, the music, the food. It’s the greatest part of the world. Honestly my eyes are welling up as I type this, for me it’s happiness beyond words.
The hotel I’m staying at is so nice, I don’t sleep well on planes so I decided to do a one-nighter in a little hotel before the relative chaos of a hostel. Casa Decu is a charming 3-star hotel in the boujee Condesa neighbourhood. I headed up to the roof and had breakfast as the sun came up over the city, it’s going to be a good day.
I put the finishing touches on a website proposal and then headed to my new hostel, sat on the rooftop for a couple of hours taking some Spanish lessons and then headed out to have my first real Mexican tacos!
Shortly after I decided to do my first Mexican side quest and go and sort myself a local phone number… man I was not prepared 😂 these kind of interactions are always good though because once you step out of the typical tourist routine, nobody speaks English and this is where it will really put your language skills to the test.
Wrapping up the night at a bar I met a guy from Saudi Arabia and two Kiwis, we drank lots of beer and ate more tacos, result.

Friday beckons and I’m a bit hungover, I was not expecting that today! I dragged myself out of bed and went exploring around the historic centre of the city, I visited Palacio de Bellas Artes and a couple of coffee shops and then finished my day with my first date in about a year, very wholesome.

Saturday came around and I still haven’t had more than 4h sleep in one night since my flight, so I decided to just completely take the day off, cancelled my lessons, stopped doing work and just stayed in my room napping and reading books aaaaaaall day. Perfection. Besides, I’ve got nothing but time, I don’t need to be busy every single day.
I finally peeled myself away from my room later in the evening and headed out to find somewhere to eat.
I’m on the autism spectrum and solo travel is really difficult sometimes, the noise, chaos and abundance of choice in a major city is almost paralysing and I often have to resort to Uber Eats and stay indoors, but I was determined to find a nice little spot to eat.
I’m in a very touristy area and most of the food options in my immediate vicinity are high volume and low quality, but I found a nice little restaurant and tried my first tostada and my millionth taco.
I’m finally getting confident talking in Spanish now and I managed the whole experience of ordering, asking about food and paying in Spanish, which felt really good 🙏

Getting to my final day of the week, Sunday, I went to visit La Lagunilla Market, a mix of an antique bazaar and fresh food market and in the process, and I racked up a decent 20K steps in the process. I’m pretty sure that’s the most I’ve done post-operation but damn is my heel picking after that. I finished up the evening with drinks with friends, visited a nightclub, left after thirty minutes because I’m an old man and that marked the end of my first week in Mexico!