Tag Archives: travel

Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized, Writings

The perfume of sweaty youth and stale beer that was Hussong’s Cantina

Hussong’s Cantina on Ruiz Street in Ensenada, Baja, is one of those checklist places that anyone from San Diego had to visit at least once.

An original Caesar salad in Tijuana (or one of the more unsavory attractions), a margarita at the Rosarito Beach Hotel, a stop for lobster and a pitcher of margaritas in Puerto Nuevo, and a night at Hussong’s, ebbing and flowing with the tide of drunken masses.

Now that was a pretty good weekend.

Hussong’s was unique among cantinas. It wasn’t artificially constructed as some faux Mexican fantasy to pull in the tourists with campy decor and T-shirts. Hussong’s holds liquor license No. 2 in Ensenada and is in the same building John Hussong bought and gussied up in 1892.

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Blows my mind, every year.

I tried my idea for global peace on a few people in the crowd today as we waited for the Exploding Judases to commence.

“What if all across the United States people had a day like this where you could hang effigies of your enemies and other bad people — and watch as they were blown to bits?”

“Just think of the catharsis!”

How to begin to describe the strange looks that I got. …

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San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA

Events for March 31 – April 6: Last hurrah for Easter and High Season and then …

If you haven’t been, you owe it to yourself to go see the Exploding Judases, today, Sunday, at noon. Go sooner and get a close-up look at the lifesize papier mache figures that will be blown to smithereens. You may even recognize one or two! You may even want to project a name or two of your own onto the more anonymous ones.

Frankly, the pyrotechnics signal the end of High Season, that semi-sad time of year when the season begins to change, to heat up and get really really dry, and all that money changes course and begins to flow back north to the United States and Canada.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

If a tree falls in the Chorro … the sound of one hand clapping?

“Tree down’s just another word for nothing left to lose …” — singer unknown.

Well, not much of a tree. More like a very dense collection of termite tunnels encased in a very mulchy tree-like substance.

The tree had been topped long ago. Which is good, because the abbreviated trunk barely grazed the exterior wall of Casa Liza hotel on Bjd. de Chorro # 7 in ZonaCentro. Imagine one of those towering trees in the park doing the same.

There is just enough room by the Casa Liza wall to squeeze by. The very agile can scoot beneath the trunk, as did Moppit the Philosopher dog on this otherwise serene Sunday morning.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Lord, what a conquest

All day today, since sunrise roughly, colorfully costumed dancers, drummers, and musicians have been filing into the central jardin of San Miguel de Allende. They fill the four corners of the park in front of the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel with trancelike dances to the steady beat dozens of drums.

For visitors and expats, the pageantry has been extraordinarily colorful and thrilling but there is a deeply religious foundation to it all that goes back 450 years. Centuries ago the statue called the Lord of the Conquest arrived in the region. Señor de la Conquista is a life-sized Christ and one of the most revered images in this World Heritage City, and not only because of its antiquity.

Many of these dancers began their journey on Thursday evening with an all-night vigil of music, ceremony, chanting in preparation for the grueling performances today. I will leave you with these images but if you want to know more, please visit the Facebook page of my good friend Efrain Gonzalez.

He has written extensively on this and the many other cultural events with which San Miguel is blessed.

Be sure to click on any image to expand it.

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San Miguel de Allende, The Week in SMA

Just some of the stuff going on this week in San Miguel

What the heck is going on?

We hear that a lot now that there is no longer a weekly newspaper in San Miguel de Allende. (Not that the newspaper was all that informative. But it was better than nothing.)

The other thing we hear is “I didn’t know that was happening? How did I miss it?”

Easy. Stuff to do is all over the place. Sometimes in your Facebook feed. Sometimes in your e-mail. Sometimes on websites dedicated to local stuff. Sometimes by word of mouth. Sometimes by a poster pegged to a local bulletin board.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

About a dozen reasons why I like Tuesdays in San Miguel de Allende

Of all the days of the week, I find Tuesdays to be the best. For many reasons.

Number one, of course, they are not Mondays. This isn’t nearly as important as it was when I actually worked for a living. Just the same, Tuesdays give you a chance to accomplish all the things that never got done on Mondays.

Even in so-called retirement, a lot doesn’t get done on Mondays. Some sort of psychological hangover from the days of full and meaningful employment, I imagine.

Tuesdays also seem to be the day on which the most stuff happens to you when you are least expecting it.

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Christmas Market (updated): Like sifting through holiday boxes in Grandma’s attic

Strolling through the Christmas Market at Mercado de San Juan de Dios in San Miguel de Allende is a lot like rooting through the boxes of holiday decorations in your grandmother’s attic.

Amid all the tinsel and strings of lights and shiny garlands and Manger figurines there is a lot of cool stuff that would look great on your tree or mantle or coffee table. Some of the designs look unchanged over the decades.

I’ll bet you could process the whole history of Christmas ornamentation in a walk around the Mercado.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

It’s official: With lights, fireworks, and song, the holiday season begins in San Miguel de Allende

With the lighting of the Christmas tree and street decorations in Centro, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the holiday season is officially in full swing.

Hundreds of residents and families watched as the Christmas tree was lit at exactly 8 p.m. on Friday. Cheers erupted but they were quickly drowned out by the traditional fireworks display. The city had setup long lines on the opposite end of the park to distribute tamales and beverages to the people.

Along with the tree, hundreds of thousands of fairy lights in the Plaza Principal’s jardin lit up, as did the strings of bejeweled tin stars that hang overhead on all the streets feeding into the plaza.

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