Oh So Quaint San Miguel de Allende

If you love winding little streets, with random paint colours and shopping galore, San Miguel de Allende just might be the place for you. (Especially if you have a good healthy budget for real estate (rental or otherwise) or are lucky enough to get a home exchange, like us.)

If you like lots of restaurants in a compact area, SMA might just be for you, too. 

If you're entranced by bougainvillea,  love church steeples and a slower place of life, you might have found your Utopia.

 

What's my point? San Miguel de Allende has a little something for everyone. There's no shortage of picturesque alleys, gardens or even dilapidated  facades, mysterious terrazzos in sun soaked court yards. Even the roads speak of history, with rounded river rock, instead of asphalt or even cobble stones.

This doesn't even touch on the artwork, for which San Miguel de Allende is best known for. We've been resisting the lure of so many galleries, trying to be mindful of banal things like budgets and debt. We'll leave that to another blog and we will be strong. (Seriously, we have an art addiction that needs a 12 step program...not like Mr. Slim, from our Mexico City blog, of course, but a love of beautiful things, none the less.)

Sure, there's a lot of white folks. And tons of real estate offices. All that doesn't take away the lure of those little streets with who-knows-what behind the high walls or ornate fences.
Nor can it take away from the friendly locals who are more than wiling to offer up a buen dia or hola, to make your day a little friendlier. 

 

You just have to wander to the slight outskirts of the town to find where the locals live. That's not to say that there aren't some really well heeled Mexicans living in sprawling villas, to be sure, but I like to see where the real people live. You know, the ones that have to work really hard, every day, to put food on the table. The ones who know how to fix their car in their front yard and have chickens and children playing around the herb garden. You might even find a goose or two.

We don't know what it is or why it's there

There's a beautiful botanic garden on the edge of the city, called El Charco del Ingenio. So worth a visit for the amazing cacti, indigenous plants, bugs and birds. We spent a good part of the day there, just wandering the paths and enjoying the tranquility.

We haven't really even touched on the markets yet, only stumbling across one, accidentally, during our wandering. That might have to be a whole other post. 

So, is San Miguel de Allende worth a visit? Absolutely. The streets are buzzing, even on a Sunday and there's a surprise around every corner.