San Miguel de Allende, 11/10/2007

I decided to visit the colonial town of San Miguel de Allende on Saturday. The town is about an hour away from Guanajuato by bus. Many people told me that the town is beautiful and that I really should go.

I got up way too early and was at the bus station about an hour early. When I got there, I ran into 3 of the young Asian girls going to school with me. They were headed to the town of Morelia, which is about 4 1/2 hours away. (I later found out that they got stuck overnight with no hotel and ended up buying toothbrushes and taking the morning bus back to Guanajuato.)


A little later, the two women from Oregon that were in my classes showed up at the bus station. They were headed to San Miguel on my bus as well. We were all chatting until our buses left. We were joined by a pair of Alaskan women who were taking Spanish classes at another school and were also on my bus to San Miguel.

On the bus, I sat next to a 24-year-old German woman named Sybilla. We chatted most of the way to San Miguel.

Once I got to San Miguel around 11:00am, I decided to go by foot from the bus station to the central plaza. It was an easy walk that took 15-20 minutes. The central plaza is quite nice but the church there is amazing. I only walked around for a few minutes before I realized that I was starving and getting weak.

Looking around for a restaurant, it was clear that the nicer establishments were geared toward the gringo population. San Miguel has been transformed by it´s large number of retired expats. The population of the town is clearly stratified into two groups--old gringos and Mexicans. The Mexicans in San Miguel seem more rustic than in Guanajuato or Guadalajara, making the contrast even sharper.


Even after eating, I never really regained my enthusiasm. San Miguel is nice, but not all that it was hyped to be. The redeaming thing about the town are the churches. There are several very nice churches. It also has a nice park by the river (or creek, or whatever it is.) There is supposedly a path from the park to a lookout point high on the nearby hill, but I couldn´t find it. I walked around town quite a bit, but after being there for about 2 or 3 hours, I was ready to go.

I think the reason many people like San Miguel is because it has lots of places to shop for artsy stuff and many nice restaurants. Shopping for precious little things is the last thing I want to do when I travel.


Eventually, I headed back to the bus station. I thought that I would not see any of my companions from the ride there and that I would have to explain to them on Monday why I didn´t stay in San Miguel longer than I did. Much to my surprise, they were all on the same bus back, except for the Oregonians who had reserved a hotel for the night before arriving. Sybilla and the Alaskans all had the same impression of the town that I did--nice, but after a couple of hours there, there was not much more to see.


I ended up seated next to one of the Alaskans and we chatted all the way back to Guanajuato. When I arrived at the bus station in Guanajuato and hopped on the local bus to get back downtown, Sybilla was on the same bus. We sat next to each other and talked on the way back to town and she invited me to hang out with her and her friends that night, which I accepted.