SMA: The Ex-pat's #1 (San Miguel de Allende)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	San Miguel de Allende
Date:	06/02/09 (221 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice atmosphere, lots of English spoken...

Disadvantages: Not full of places to visit, just places to see from the outside

A few years ago in Vienna I lived near a British shop that I may or may not have bought Wotsits from on a regular basis. That, however, is beside the point. In their window, the shop proudly displayed the top 25 requests for British and American ex-pats. Bizarrely, the top choice was SMA powdered baby milk. Who knew? I'm in the wrong category to be talking about that, but I can tell you about another SMA highly rated by ex-pats, and that's San Miguel de Allende, a town near to Queretaro in the Colonial Heartland of Mexico.

San Miguel is quite an unusual place because it's smack, bang in the middle of Mexico but has a large resident ex-pat population, and is particularly popular with retirees from the USA, many of whom do not think learning Spanish is a requirement for life in Mexico. Catering to this, most of the restaurants have bilingual menus, and if shop staff don't speak English, they work around this, by showing you the price on a calculator, for example. About 15% of San Miguel's residents are foreigners, which seems like a small number but is enough to have an impact on the place. It is also a popular destination with tourists from within Mexico and overseas - note how, for once, this is not the first review in a Mexican category.

I arrived in San Miguel from Queretaro, having caught a 2nd class bus from there. This was unintentional - maybe I looked a bit scruffy when I approached the desk, or maybe that was just the next departure they had, but either way I ended up on a 45 peso / 1 hour 15 mins trip on a delightfully un-airconditioned bus with limited leg room. Luckily it was quite empty, so I could stretch out sideways if not forwards. In San Miguel there was a line of taxis waiting at the bus station but everyone from my bus walked straight past this so I followed. The bus stop is just up a few steps and you do not need to cross the road. All the buses that stop there go to the centre, and the ride is 5 pesos (25p). It's only a mile or so away, but the bumpy cobbled streets mean it can take maybe 15 minutes. If you know where you're going, you can walk it in that time, as indeed I did when I was leaving. Before you leave the bus station, look for the tourist info desk, because you can get a massive, free map from here that's super useful, and they're open longer hours than the actual office in town is.

The local bus drops off on Insurgentes, and from here the actual centre is just 4 blocks away, up any of the streets - turn right as you get off the bus, and keep walking. The first thing you'll notice as you approach is the massive parish church, La Parroquia, which reminded me of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia. I thought this without prompting, honest, but was subsequently told by a student that it was indeed modelled on a photo of the latter. The church sits on the main square, a pretty place with fountains and benches and trees perfectly manicured into a bizarre but attractive round shape. Arriving on a Sunday afternoon, I found the place buzzing with musicians and street vendors and families. Everything worth seeing in San Miguel is within walking distance of here. I saw the Casa Allende, birthplace of one of Mexico's heroes, Ignacio Allende. I pottered past the Casa del Inquisidor where the Spanish Inquisition types stayed, and the Casa de la Inquisicion, across the street, where said Inquisition types imprisoned those they were not fond of. I didn't go in these places, as the latter two are not open to the public, and the former had already shut, but they were worth seeing for the exteriors alone.

One thing San Miguel does very well is churches. This part of Mexico is much more devoutly religious than the cosmopolitan capital where I live, and you can tell. I visited the Templo de la Concepcion whose worn exterior hides a beautiful, 30 feet tall alter inside. The church was built in the 17th century and is one of the oldest in the town. I also popped into the Templo de San Francisco , on the other side of the main square, which has a fabulously decorated ceiling. I wanted to go to the Oratorio de San Felipe Neri to see the famous oil paintings, but unfortunately I had forgotten what day it was. Depending on your religious inclination, February 2nd is either Tamales day, or Take Your Fake Baby Jesus Doll To Church day and of course in San Miguel, the locals favoured the latter. So, the courtyard was swarming with people and their dolls, and there were services every hour, making a visit impossible. (For more on this tradition, see www.sanmiguelguide.com/candelaria.htm - the official name is La Candelaria but I think my "Take Your Fake Baby Jesus Doll To Church day" is catchier and, crucially, true.)

Instead, I carried on around the corner to visit the Artisan Market, which is tagged on to the regular city market. This is theoretically the place to come for all your take home gifts, since the stalls sell jewellery, ceramics, linens and other hand-made goodies. However, I didn't find exactly what I was looking for, and ended up buying my silver necklace from a proper shop a block away. The prices at both are cheap - earrings in the market were starting at 25 pesos (a little over £1) but I was wary about how long they'd last. The shops to the south and east of the parish church seemed to be the priciest, but really it was just a case of shopping around to find a bargain.

I ate in several places during my visit to the town. My first stop was La Finestra, in a little arcade located on Canal. This was a small cafe that served pastas, salads and crepes mainly. The food was good and the servings surprisingly small given the large number of Americans who looked like regulars there. The menu was in English, but clearly that was the only concession they were making. That night I ate at Mama Mia on Umaran, which is a lovely Italian place with pretty coloured lanterns though hardly the spot for a quiet or romantic dinner - as a lone diner I was given a small table right next to the stage where a band was playing loudly. The food was amazing though, and they had free magazines and newspapers which I love when I'm eating alone. For breakfast the following morning I ate at El Correo (on Correo) which I picked as it was the first place I came across that was open at 9am on a public holiday. Again, the food was good, reasonably cheap, and the place was nice, with colourful tablecloths and attentive service.

My final meal was at the Cultural Centre, next door to the Temple de la Concepcion on Hernandez Macias, which I came across by chance when the tourist office sent me there to find English reading material. In the end, it turned out they didn't stock any, but I spotted the sign for the small cafe, and stayed. This was such a sweet place, in an open courtyard with lots of trees and fountains, and clearly a popular choice with the locals who were having Spanish lessons over coffee (I take back what I said earlier) or discussing the economy in loud voices (maybe not). I had planned to have pasta until I saw the menu and spotted something incredible - a Nutella pizza, formerly confined to the likes of Est Est Est in Didsbury. Deciding that this was the healthier option (one pizza vs. pasta and dessert) I ordered it and it was literally heaven on a wooden chopping board.

I found most of these places just by wandering and reading menus, but the free tourist office map also lists dozens of restaurants (including these) if you're looking for inspiration and don't have time just to wander.

San Miguel is a very sweet town but with not much to do. You go to soak up the atmosphere, admire the architecture and trip up and down the cobbled, hilly streets. I spent an hour in the Parque Benito Juarez which is a lovely spacious place a few blocks south of the centre. When I arrived I found a temporary garden centre set up at the entrance, which was lovely to walk through on the way to finding a bench among the permanent plants and trees. I found San Miguel centre didn't have much for me in the evening - after an early tea (caused by that small lunch) I decided to go to the cinema, so caught a 30 pesos / £1.50 cab to a complex just out of town. This is the place to come for clothes shopping (they have Liverpool, a big department store, and various boutiques), grocery shopping (they have a massive Soriana, which is like Tesco), eating (they have a number of outlets) and of course the place for cheap movies - even on a Sunday night, which is their peak time, tickets are 45 pesos / under £2.50 per person. I didn't know the name of the complex but just asked the taxi driver to take me to a cinema, and this is the one I ended up at. It was slightly harder to get back from at 10pm, since I wasn't sure if I could get a bus, and the place had no taxi rank, but I flagged one down off the street (safe to do in this part of Mexico) and got home easily for 40 pesos / £2 - not because it was late, but because I was going back to my hostel which was slightly our of the centre in the other direction.

You can do San Miguel on a budget. Most of the attractions are free, and you can find cheap places to eat, or hit the local Oxxo convenience store in the centre for snacks. However, as soon as you start dining out prices jump - I paid double the Queretaro price for pretty much the same thing in a San Miguel restaurant. It's still not horrendous - I paid £6 for pasta, bread and coke, in a nice place - but with the peso at 20-to-1 with the pound at the moment, that isn't all that cheap for Mexico. The priciest thing by far is not the restaurants, though, it's the accommodation. In Queretaro I paid the same for an ensuite hotel room in an adorable hacienda as I did for a hostel room with shared bath in San Miguel. I would have paid a little more but that wasn't an option - the choices are hostels or break-the-bank hotels in SMA, with nothing in between. There are a surprisingly large number of places to stay though, considering its small size, and even though it's "just" another town in Mexico, it is listed on Expedia, Hotels.com and all the main online booking websites.

I enjoyed by stay in San Miguel, though most of my time was spent either sitting in the park or visiting churches. The religious side of things meant nothing to me, but I appreciated the fine art work (and the cool shade). However, I think they key thing people go to San Miguel for is the aforementioned atmosphere, which it is certainly brimming with. It doesn't warrant more than a day, but I think you should give it a few hours if you're in the area, because it's a special little place, if a little hard to define. I think if I lived nearer I might go back, but at the same time I feel I saw everything I wanted to and had some spare time just to be in the city. At 3.5 hours from Mexico City it's a little far to pop for a day out, so I probably won't return, but it was a pleasure to visit once.


Useful links:

www.internetsanmiguel.com/
www.sanmiguelguide.com
http://portalsanmiguel.com/

Summary: A place you visit mainly for the atmosphere and architecture