Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Oh, Mexico!

When most people think of a vacation in Mexico, they think beaches. Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Cancún, and Acapulco are beach towns that everybody knows, and where everybody goes. Around 20 years ago, we became intrigued with the high desert mountain town of San Miguel De Allende and we talked about going there several times over the years. Between Kate's job with a tour company that specialized in Europe and South America and offered us an opportunity to travel there frequently, and my work driven career path, things conspired together to keep putting off a visit. Now, as we look toward a possible retirement haven, San Miguel, or SMA as the local expat community calls it, has beckoned once again. We hope you will join us on our adventure as we explore this 500 year old gem!


As we began to prepare for this trip, I started to brush off my rusty junior high school Spanish (when you think rusty, think a 40 year old Chevy that has lived in Chicago its entire life) and Kate began the daunting task of learning a language from scratch. I will give us an "A" for effort as we did a pretty good job of plunging ourselves into the lessons, but I can honestly say that we still suck and that most of my rust has been patched up with large quantities of linguistic Bondo. Luckily SMA is a vibrant multi-cultural city with a large expat community, and English with a little Spanish will apparently get you by in most cases.

We also began walking every day, as we have been told the best way to get around the city is by foot. This is assuming you don't mind walking on cobblestone streets that have been known to swallow up tourists like a 10 cent taco, while trudging up hills and attempting to breath at 6500 ft. Fortunately, we live at the bottom of a steep hill that leads (ironically) to the local cemetery  and this has become our training camp for what lies ahead.

While preparing for our trip, we were fortunate enough to find a place for our stay that met all our requirements. The price was right, the location was within walking distance of "centro" (or the town square), and the property itself appears to be absolutely gorgeous.  Our hosts John & Veronica have been extremely helpful and gracious. We are looking forward to our stay. More on the Villa Alta Dos after we arrive!

Today we leave for Mexico and the adventures that lie ahead.  While the weather is predicted to be in the 90's (unusually high for SMA, just like the rest of the world!), the evenings drop down to the 60's.  With a little siesta in the afternoon, it should be quite nice. We hope you will join us as we stumble our way through the streets of San Miguel!

2 comments:

  1. Have a margarita for me, you two! My favorite drink since the early 70s! Looking forward to your posts and photos.

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  2. Hello,

    Just started a morathon session of your blog. Shelagh and I (Peter) spent the winter of 2016 in SMA and we are contemplating a return to Mexico.

    Cheers!

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