Mexico City has a lot going on visually, but not necessarily in the same way as Oaxaca. Oaxaca’s culture fells like it’s happening on the street and you just get to walk through it. CDMX, on the other hand, feels more intentional, more curated and presented for your pleasure.

Oaxaca, for example, is a city of street art and murals. CDMX is a city of graffiti. Old school, NYC style tagging. So when you do see murals, they tend to really stand out and command your attention. Especially because they seem to be more epic in scale than Oaxaca’s guerrilla street art.

Epic in scale covers a lot of what else CDMX has to offer. The Zocalo, close by our apartment in Historic Centro, is basically an empty concrete square block. Which means it supports whatever monumental thing you care to install there. Right before we left, gigantic nylon structures were set up to shade grass that had been brought in as sod, turning the Zocalo into a pop-up park. Grateful residents were happy to take advantage of the park that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, like a desert oasis.

Monumental also covers the Biblioteca Vasconcelos, one of the largest libraries in Mexico. It’s intense to be inside, and it’s very hard to do justice to the scale of the building with pictures. These will have to do.

Also massive beyond words is the Central de Abasto, the main market for the region. Clocking in at 810 acres with over 2,000 vendors (an official number that seems impossibly low after having been there), the Abasto provides 80% of all the food consumed in the CDMX metro region. That’s over 30,000 tons of product per day. The Abasto in Oaxaca was confusing and warren-like, whereas the CDMX Abasto is organized and efficient. And you could lose Oaxaca’s Abasto in a corner and never notice it.

Another epic thing was CDMX’s response to International Women’s Day. There were riot police everywhere. I have never seen so many riot police before. Of course, I can’t share any pictures, because, I don’t know, taking pictures seemed kind of suicidal.

I passed one phalanx of riot police that was especially notable. They were 6-8 cops wide and maybe 20-25 cops deep. They were in tight formation. They were 100% women (less threatening to be beat up by a female cop on International Women’s Day?). And they were all eating snacks.

They also all seemed to be sporting cat’s-eye eyeliner. A look that says, “Yeah, I can multitask. I can protect you and melt your heart at the same time.”

And then there’s just the random shit you see on the street that’s worth memorializing, even though it may not be deep or meaningful. Sometimes, fun is good enough.