Sunday on Reforma with a Four-Year-Old Tyrant

The avenue closes to cars. My daughter treats this as a personal favour.

On Sunday mornings Mexico City shuts Paseo de la Reforma to cars and hands it to bicycles, skaters, rollerbladers and a surprising number of people walking iguanas. My daughter, four, believes this is done for her. I have not corrected her.

We started at the Ángel de la Independencia with a borrowed scooter and a bag of mandarins, and rolled west under the jacarandas until the Bosque de Chapultepec swallowed us up. The park is enormous, shady and full of families doing exactly what we were doing, which is losing a shoe.

The Museo Nacional de Antropología on a Sunday is a gamble, but the courtyard umbrella, a single column pouring water like a fountain, bought me twenty minutes of awed silence. Then she found the Sun Stone, decided it was a giant cookie, and asked to eat it.

Lunch was blue-corn quesadillas at Comal de la Güera on the edge of the park, squash blossom and cheese stretching to her elbow. Then the Lago de Chapultepec, where we rented a pedal boat and went in circles with total commitment. She fell asleep on my shoulder on the walk back. I carried her two kilometres down Reforma and counted it as a workout.

Lived March 22, 2026.