Mexico was one of my favorite trips ever. Our friends and us decided that we wanted to take a trip in during the winter, and we each had to make a presentation to convince the others of our destination. Sara picked Hawaii, Joe and I merged and chose Peru, and Phil chose Mexico. After Phil's presentation literally left me in tears of excitement (true story), we all chose Mexico.
Luckily Phil and I each could speak a little Spanish because we actually needed it. We stay in an adorable Airbnb in Mexico City in the neighborhood Roma Norte (go). Every morning we were awoken by a man walking by and shouting a crescendoing cry (which we still call out to each other here at home). We had some amazing flautas and tacos from just across the street and learned out to order coffees with whole milk to go in Spanish. Un café moca con leche entero para llevar por favor (hopefully this is actually correct).
We took an uber 30 minutes south of the city to ride in those boats you saw in the first photos. Our uber driver started following a dude on a moped, and we got kinda scared. Turns out the guy was just leading the driver to his boat crew so he could get a cut of the money. We had to haggle the guy for a good price, and then we had to convince our boat gondolier that he was taking us back a half an hour early - all in Spanish. It was an adventure.
We then took a plane down to Mérida and then drove to the ocean. We saw ruins and old Spanish settlements. There were many adventures along the way, but I'm sick of typing now :)