Villa Alta Dos...A Paradise in Paradise!

As we prepared for our trip to San Miguel, one of the most important things for us was finding the right place to stay. As we were hoping to get more of the experience of "living" as opposed to "staying" in the city, we used airbnb to look for a private home to rent. In our search, we were lucky to come across the Villa Alta Dos, a delightful walled compound located near the top of a hill just about a 10-15 minute walk from the Centro. As with many of the homes in San Miguel, behind a somewhat nondescript exterior, lay a beautiful courtyard, lush vegetation, and a perfect casa for our stay.

There is only one residence on the property, along with an artists studio that you can also rent, so we had the entire compound to ourselves. From the moment we arrived, everything was perfect. Our flights had been delayed, so instead of arriving at 8 am, we arrived at 8 pm to find Veronica waiting for us with everything ready to go.

After a quick walk through, she left us alone to get a great night's sleep in the quiet neighborhood and on the good bed. The bedroom is on the upper level with a beautiful boveda brick ceiling, a nice fan to keep you cool, a large bathroom, and a huge closet. There is also a small sitting deck right off the bedroom that is a nice place to enjoy a drink or a cup of coffee.

We went out for breakfast the first morning, but once we had a chance to do some shopping, we cooked all of our breakfasts and many of our other meals in the well equipped and spacious kitchen. We enjoyed eating them at the table on the lower level patio that overlooks the gardens. With San Miguel's mild weather this was the perfect spot to savor the morning or evening sun.

The living area was nicely decorated and well equipped with plenty of seating, wi-fi, and television, although we didn't spend much time there with all there is to do in San Miguel!

Overall, our experience at Villa Alta Dos was nearly perfect. We did not experience any problems with the property whatsoever. It is located in a good neighborhood, and is withing walking distance of many parts of the city. With that said we would offer one caveat concerning walking. As I said earlier, it is located near the top of a fairly steep hill. We are in good shape, so for us the walk was simply brisk and invigorating and we only took a taxi a few times during our entire two week stay. If you are not in good shape (San Miguel is at 6500 ft), or are adverse to walking, you can easily take a taxi instead Taxis are cheap (around $3.00 to go pretty much anywhere) and plentiful, so even if you don't like to walk, the Villa is a delightful and quiet place to stay. Our hosts John and Veronica made the entire process a pleasure, and when we had a small glitch in our reservation, John helped us to resolve it immediately. We enjoyed it so much we were thinking about looking into the laws in Mexico concerning eviction! This is a great property at a great price and we highly recommend it.