San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

 Parroquia and El Jardin

For the past few years we have chosen to spend a few months in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  Some have asked why?

More than anything, the city fits who we are and how we enjoy living.


Situated in the high desert about three hours northwest of Mexico City, SMA is a medium sized city that we can enjoy as a small town with lots of big city amenities, like cultural events, entertainment, and a wide range of good restaurants.

Parroquia at night

During our second visit and first long term stay in 2014, we found a little apartment on AIRBNB in Centro, the historic heart of the city, just a block and a half from the main plaza, El Jardin.  It is called El Jardin, or The Garden, because of its French design.  It is a tree shaded oasis in the middle of the cobble streeted downtown.

Often thronged by locals and visitors, alike, it can also be a quiet place for reading and contemplation.

Dinner at our apartment

  Maria Luisa, our landlady, is a wonderful host and  makes sure to invite us to her country home for gatherings that always end with several of her friends bringing out their guitars and singing  traditional Mexican songs and ballads.

Our Mexican friends seem to know all of the words to all of the songs, and we are learning some of them as well.  This year we invited Maria Luisa and some of her friends to our apartment.  After dinner the guitars came out and we were treated to beautiful music once again—so much fun !

Night view from our rooftop patio

Our street, Mesones, and really our  block, have just about everything you need for a comfortable existence.

Next door there is a green grocer; and since he seems to supply restaurants and other stores throughout the town, his produce is always fresh, inexpensive and abundant.

Sue, Maria Luisa and Chelo on our patio

Sue, Larry and Bob on our patio

Two doors up from the green grocer is a dry goods store, Bonanza, that in many ways caters to the expat and tourist community by carrying things like Thai, Chinese, and Indian spices as well as good cheeses and olive oil. Next door to that is our favorite carnitas or roast pork store.

Mesones, our block, at dusk

At the end of the block is a great butcher and just around the corner is a little liquor store run by one of favorite local merchants, Senor Mario.

Hardly a day goes by that we don’t visit one or all of these stores to stock our home larder.

We love being in the middle of the city where we can walk or taxi to almost anything we want to do—concerts and other musical events, favorite eateries, or visits with friends, both old and new.

Media Luna, our favorite band 

You cannot call SMA a typical Mexican town; it is far richer than the norm and full of expats and visitors, both Mexican and foreign. Except for holidays and fiestas, though, it is usually fairly quiet during the workweek.

The streets and sidewalks are full of car and pedestrian traffic throughout the day, but  by early evening the streets are often quiet and at times seemingly deserted.

An Outdoor Concert

Centro, where we live, is full of restaurants, hotels, and shops, many of them high-end.

All are dependent on tourists, both foreign and Mexican.

Walking on the streets, you pass many non-Mexicans and many of them look a lot like us—white, older, and seemingly in retirement.

Some wag once said that San Miguel is Disney World for seniors, and that is as apt a description as you might want.

Even in the short time we have been regular visitors, the number of expats, primarily US and Canadian, but seemingly from all over the word, have increased sharply.  High end real estate development is visible everywhere.

Seems a lot of us want to get in on the Mexican Dream. Renting works for us, but  even if we wanted to buy, the market is now priced way beyond our means.

One of many lovely plazas in town 

That doesn’t stop us from enjoying our time here.

Each Friday, we buy the weekly bi-lingual newspaper, La Atencion, that lists all of what’s going on in town: films, lectures, music, live performance, lessons, and get-togethers.

Often there is far more to do than we can actually manage.

Carole and Sue at the hot springs, La Gruta 

This week we went to:

—an HD  broadcast of the NY Mettropolitan Opera,

— a concert by a young local musician,

— ate out at several restaurants, including breakfast, lunch and dinner,

— visited a hot springs just outside of town,


—dined al fresco along with a good friend of ours and her family  at a lovely "campestre,” or restaurant/park

Mary with Grandkids, Wyatt & Maeve, teasing Sue 

— and capped the week off with  walking tour of  El Charco, a beautiful botanic garden and nature reserve.

Cactus in the Botanic Garden 

Flowering Cactus

Lake at Botanic Garden

One more cactus 

Then there are Spanish classes for both of us, duplicate Bridge for Larry, sketching for Sue, and just strolling thru San Miguel’s charming and eclectic streets.

We hope that this will encourage some of you to visit this wonderful city along with us in the future.

Sorrento & Positano

After our time in the Naples area, we were all excited to visit the Amalfi Coast, which proved as beautiful as we had imagined.


Our apartment, in a secluded little neighborhood, looked out to Li Gilli, small islands that were once the secluded hideaway home of Rudolf Nureyev.

Our neighborhood was quiet and serene, but once you left our little enclave, you soon encountered what for us makes the area less appealing—far too many tourists and cars.

Driving is a nightmare, given the number of cars and the paucity of roads.

We made the wise decision to hire a car and driver, making it possible for all of us to enjoy the scenery and interesting Amalfi Coast towns of Positano, Amalfi and Ravello.

Our driver, Antonio, picked us up at our doorstep and chauffeured us to our destinations with skill and a caring demeanor.

He made the trip that could have been exhausting and nerve racking, worthwhile and enjoyable.

His knowledge of the area and advice enabled us to see and do things which would have been impossible on our own.

Our first stop was Positano.

On Bonnie's bucket list, she and John thoroughly enjoyed the town and the shopping and people watching it provides.

We, on the other hand, like the town's  beauty and charm, but found the crowds quite challenging and off putting.

We all had thought that October would be less busy and crowded, and it was, but there were still an incredible number of people thronging the streets and choking the shops and restuarants.

Antonio suggested that we next visit Ravello, once the home of the American writer and bon vivant,  Gore Vidal.

We were not disappointed.

Sitting high above the sea, it offers magnificent views, fewer tourists, and the opportunity to walk about its lovely main piazza with fewer distractions.

Our lunch was delicious and the views from the restaurant were spectacular.

We finished our day in Amalfi. Once a Mediterranean Sea power to rival Venice and Genoa, ...

... it is now a sleepy little tourist town with a beautiful renaissance church dedicated to St. Andrew, the local patron, and a quaint harbor and central plaza.

We all agreed that our Amalfi Coast adventure was was fun and enjoyable.  As the day ended and we made our way slowly back to our apartment, it was nice to be a passenger and to enjoy a beautiful sunset over the Mediterranean.

Napoli and Ercolano

Our time in Tuscany over, we traveled almost four hours south to the Naples area.

What a world of difference!

In Siena, both in the city and in the countryside, we felt surrounded by beauty—natural and manmade.

Naples, on the other hand, feels squalid and ugly, and finding beauty often proves a difficult task.

The city possesses some handsome buildings and interesting architecture, but there seems to be little civic pride and anarchy too often triumphs over order and well-being. Many buildings and statues are covered with graffiti and garbage seems to go uncollected for days on end.

In our time in Tuscany, we almost invariably happened upon people who were open and helpful and who projected a sense of well-being and friendliness.

It was often the reverse in Naples. Few passers by meet your eye and not infrequently your Buon Giorno or Buona Sera is is greeted by stony silence and a hard stare.

Food and wine, which continuously offer a treat for the eye and palate in Tuscany, time and again failed to deliver in Naples. The wine at times proved almost undrinkable and the cuisine uninspiring. Even the pizza was pretty non-descript and ordinary.

True, we did have pleasant interactions with some Neapolitanos; our AirBnb hosts were kind and helpful and the folks in the bakery downstairs wanted to practice their English or help us with our Italian. In addition, they also served tasty croissants or "cornetas” as they are called in Italy.

The bar or coffee shop next door made great capuchino and served delicious gelato as well. So it was not all bad.

We did enjoy our visit to the archeological museum that is full of incredible treasures from antiquity, including a lot of art rescued from Pompeii an Herculaneum.

The Capella Sansevero is chock a block full of baroque sculpture, but photos are not allowed so you will need to go to the link to see what it looks like.

But a one day visit to the City of  Naples was all that we cared to make, leaving much left unexplored, perhaps. But we didn't have the appetite for more.

On our final day in the area, we opted to visit Herculaneum or Ercolano instead of the larger and more visited Pompeii.

For us it was a wise decision. It was a fifteen minute drive from our apartment, if you don't count the 30 minutes lost in Rosina, the modern town which surrounds the site.

Rosina is just as ugly and blighted as the rest of Naples, and we were happy to finally find the archeological site and parking area.

We opted to hire a local guide, who approached us in the ticket line, offering to give us a tour for 12 euros each, if he could form a group of 10 or more, which happened within five minutes or so.

He introduced himself as Paulo, and he proved a good guide, full of information about the history and art in the town that was buried by super-heated mud by the same eruption of Vesuvius  that destroyed Pompeii in 79 BC.




With Paulo's expert guidance we saw enough of Ercolano in  two hours to get a good idea of the life and times of the period and place.

Ercolano was a much more wealthy and exclusive town than Pompeii, so the houses there tended to be larger and nicer than their counterparts in Pompeii.

Pompeii covers a much wider area and would have involved much more walking, something we wanted to avoid. Ercolano can be absorbed in a shorter, more leisurely visit.

Many of the houses still have intact murals and mosaics whose colors and designs are nearly as vibrant beautiful as the day they were engulfed by Vesuvius’ power and fury.

We learned a lot, were not too tired, and were  intrigued enough by Paulo's excellent tour to want to learn more about Ancient Rome and the daily life of the Romans.


And it was a beautiful day, the crowds were much more manageable than we would have encountered in Pompeii, so we counted it as a perfect day sightseeing.

Herculaneum

Traveling Companions & Great Friends 

This past month traveling with six friends, some of whom we have known for many years and others whom we have just begun to get to know, was a delight and an education.  

Thanks to all of you—Mart & Bob, Carole, Jennifer & Steve and Blythe—for making it a memorable and fun-filled adventure! Let's do it all again—real soon.

Starting with Paris, where longtime friends and oft traveling buddies, Mart & Bob, let us join them in a delightful apartment, near the Metro and in a neighborhood full of shops and restaurants. We shared four fun days highlighted by a full day at Giverny and another at Chartres—where we also got to meet their childhood friend, Barb.

Then it was onto Tuscany, where we all gathered at Casabella and Casabellina and met our wonderful hosts Marzia and Renzo.

Anna, everyone's favorit guide,  gave us an introduction to the city of Siena, its history and especially the Palio and the Contrade, especially her contrada, Lupa. 

Some of us even took the challenge to climb to the top of what was to be the largest church in Christendom, only to be thwarted by the Black Death and hubris. 

Others of us were just contented  with shopping or drinking our new favorite an Aperol Spritz.

 Oh the meals we enjoyed together, some days it seemed like the pasta or wine couldn't get any better, 

only to discover another great dish or wine at the next hill town...

or the next... 

and then we learned to cook some great Tuscan food ourselves...

Did you ever think we would visit Elba? 

We weren't quite able to find the real  Naplolean, but it was a great island visit, neverthe less.

The walk from Casabella thru the Tuscan hills  that Steve discovered for us was great fun, just glad that Carole didn't take one or all of the kittens home with her.  Will  we see crazy mop headed chickens again? Could they be Polish chickens?

The birthday party for Sue was perfect...and the napkins, the most thoughtful of gifts, and your  driving all over Tuscany to find the napkins was above and beyond. 

The Birthday Party dinner for 14, including our hosts, Marzia & Renzo, and four new friends they introduced us to, was a stellar and memorable night and one we will long remember and cherish. 

The food and shopping were so good at Monteriggioni that we had to return twice. 

Bob certainly wins the prize as the most dedicated sketcher, as well as the most appropriately dressed ; it was always fun to see how his artist's eye interpreted what we were seeing and experiencing. 

Larry enjoyed having his skills and leadership being recognized and rewarded—but is still wondering why you didn't always follow his directions?
 

But all good things do come to an end, so we spent the last week saying goodbye. 

First to Jen & Steve at the Orvieto Travis station. Then we were six...

and five, 

and finally you all left us, but our journey continues but with  new traveling partners, John & Bonnie (Sue's brother and sister in law.)

In the next couple of weeks we will be exploring a little further afield in southern Italy and Sicily...so stayed tuned.