Tag Archives: tourism

San Miguel de Allende, Writings

For 2023, I wish you a thousand little milagros

This cross sits to the right of my desk, on an empty chair. It is one of many crosses that we have inherited. Our home in San Miguel de Allende comes with crosses, cow skulls, pottery and milagros pegged to doors here and there.

Milagros are those little tin objects you see on the cross that look as though they might be Monopoly board pieces.

While I have always been aware of the cross — lord knows I’ve moved it around often enough — I never really paid close attention to it.

Until this morning.

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

It’s Tuesday: To market, to market to buy a blue suit; home again, home again, jiggety-scoot

I do not shop. I do not wander into stores and glide up and down aisles looking for just the right … thing. I don’t compare prices. I don’t compare similar products. I don’t read labels. I don’t calculate the savings between the Jumbo and Family sizes. I don’t clip coupons.

I buy local because I’m too lazy to walk to a cheaper store. I shop to survive, not to find pleasure.

But you don’t have to twist my arm to get me up the hill to the Tuesday Market.

I love the hustle and bustle. I love the jockeying for position at a tabletop clothing dump. I love to hear the shouts of “Barata! Barata! Barato!” and “Venta! Venta! Venta!” I love the smell of the food, the fish on ice, the produce, the fresh piles of strawberries. The piles of hardware and kitchenware and racks of hats, and row upon row of shoes, and … well, just name it, there’s a pile of it somewhere.

And such a deal I have for you.

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San Miguel de Allende

Dusk settles on Parque Juarez, as dulcet strains of ‘Ave Maria’ float through the trees

As I was saying the other day, you walk out the door in San Miguel de Allende and open your heart to the infinite possibilities, and something magical will happen.

Tonight, it was opera in the park. I ask you, where you live, how often do you take an evening stroll through a beautiful park and encounter a quartet of opera singers?

I did. In Parque Juarez. Right next to the basketball courts, just down from the gazebo so brightly lit up with twinkling fairy lights.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende

At San Miguel de Allende’s alpha creche, all is calm and bright, all is ready for Christmas Eve

At this time of year, you can’t pass a window or a storefront without stopping to admire the Nativity scenes. One of the charms (this time of year, at least) of houses that are right up against the sidewalk, is that you are practically walking in your neighbor’s living room. You learn not to casually glance to the right for fear of invading someone’s privacy.

Except for now.

Residents and businesses put their Nativities in the front windows for all to admire, reflect upon, and appreciate the aesthetic spectrum. The Nativity is an expression of art as much as an expression of devotion or mythos appreciation.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende

¡Que tengas una feliz navidad!

The Christmas tree went up yesterday in the public square. Right beside the pink gothic Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel here in San Miguel de Allende.

Bit by bit, the city begins to embrace the holiday.

All of the streets leading into the Jardin Principal are strung with tin stars and twinkling lights. The gazebo and trees in the little park are a Christmas wonderland.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Once upon a time …

In the land of Mexico, princesses abound.

Here are some to see. Two from San Miguel de Allende. Two from Mexico City.

So much casual beauty, posing before the photographer’s lens.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Hail to the (little) chief

So many many people pose on the steps of the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel, for so many reasons.

Social media queens and generational portraits, tourists and families, engaged couples and newlyweds, tarts and saints, models and misfits, quinceañeras and brides.

The backdrop is so iconic that it lends gravitas to any poser. The pink spires seal a special moment in the lives of so many, day after day after day. People clearly travel a long way just to pose in front of this church.

This youngster was working the steps this morning, for Dad and his iPhone and clearly enjoying the process. This felt like a coming-of-age moment for an indigenous tribe’s future leader.

I love seeing people having fun with photos in the public square.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Dia de Muertos parade No. 2: Dead can dance

I should know better, but I showed up at 5 p.m. today anyway for the start of San Miguel de Allende’s second Day of the Dead parade in as many days.

(Here are photos from Tuesday night’s Rosewood Hotel Dia de Muertos parade.)

And there were very very few people on Calle El Cardo, the supposed staging area. And very few of those people looked like they would be marching in a parade. Although, some of those people were horses, meant to pull carriages so that was a good sign. And several bands were sitting in the shade where ever they could find it up and down the street.

There were a lot of people on cell phones typing in things like “Where does the parade start?”

It dawned on me soon enough.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Night of the living-it-up dead

Parading around as elegantly dressed skeletons is so much fun in San Miguel de Allende that apparently, it takes two parades over two days to fit it all in this year.

In the past, it was sufficient to stage one parade of promenading Calaveras, Catrinas, and Catrins — and a variety of other-worldly subsets in various manifestations of theatricality.

Last year, after the wastelands of Covid had subsided and a rebirth of traditions signaled a new dawn, the annual Dia de Muertos parade was a joyous traffic jam of humanity. Skeletons paraded en mass down the Ancha. Preciously costumed Catrinas and their cohorts, led by a masterful and exuberant Mariachi band, exited the sanctuary of the Rosewood and paraded toward the Ancha.

The two masses converged and ground to a halt as paraders funneled up the narrower Zacateras, made narrower by the density of the watchers on both sides of the road. It was a slow slog up to the Jardin where seeing and being seen is the endgame of the evening.

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