San Miguel de Allende

  We left town early, just before la madrugada. Up and down the deserted streets the soft glow of lamplight turned cobblestones into golden ingots in the dark. This radiance bathed everything in a spectral beauty and I could see ghosts hurrying along in the shadows of the Inquisition: women wrapped in rebozos, priests in […]

PRESENT CONTINUOUS (a Morning Walk through San Miguel de Allende) Two blocks uphill on Calle Jesús and a right turn on Umarán bring me to La Parroquia, the gardeners in the Jardín already at work shaping the trees into perfect rectangles, early risers reading on the benches or drinking coffee under the portales, someone selling […]

Pat Hall A Perfect Day in San Miguel Yesterday was rather hot for San Miguel de Allende — about 29°-30°C, but there was a nice breeze and, of course, no humidity. We have a different restaurant for our main meal each day of the week. On Saturdays we always go to one of our favorites […]

Like a shimmering mirage that lasts only until your next blink, the Tuesday Market, or tianguis, appears once a week at dawn, assembled upon a vast windswept concrete slab near the parking lot of the San Miguel municipal sports complex. Just as quickly, it evaporates after sunset. Each week, from battered pickups and vans, a hoard of […]

Photographs by Bill Begalke Last year, Conde Nast Traveler listed the colonial city of San Miguel de Allende (SMA) as the 7th best travel destination in the entire world! In my book, it’s NUMBER 1. It’s also more than a travel destination. It’s where I live. SMA is a small city of about 90,000, located […]

A young couple who became famous artists pioneered the San Miguel de Allende foreign community. San Miguel de Allende’s vibrant art and music scene is deservedly famous. Among the early pioneers responsible for this are two Canadian artists: Leonard and Reva Brooks. John Virtue’s book about the couple, subtitled Artists in Exile in San Miguel […]

Yesterday. . . Founded in 1542 by Fray Juan de San Miguel, a Franciscan monk, San Miguel de Allende retains a rich colonial charm with its cobblestone streets and beautiful Spanish colonial mansions, many of which have been restored to their former splendor. It’s a protected national monument; all new construction must conform to the […]

I recently returned from a wonderful trip down memory lane. My 40th high school reunion near San Jose, California allowed me to reconnect with friends I hadn’t seen in 40 years. The reunion was held where my new grandson lives, and besides getting reacquainted with Tyler, I spent 3 days with life-long friends tramping through […]

Cogan’s Reviews As novelist and travel writer Tony Cohan says in his narrative about San Miguel de Allende: “My editor wanted me to write about life here in the region where we live. At that time, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Querétero ranked a page or two each in the guide books, day stops […]

Cogan’s Reviews Here’s a guidebook with a very definite difference. It doesn’t just set out in the usual way to give you a rundown on the community and make suggestions on what to do and where to go. Rather, Joseph Harmes, has put together a rather incredible list of ‘bests’ – some 126 pages of […]

Cogan’s Reviews As Ms. Spiegel writes in her introduction: “San Miguel de Allende is infused with history: every cobblestone seems to hide secrets about its past. All the stores and boutiques housed in former colonial mansions; all the restaurants that occupy the courtyards of elegant villas, all the gigantic wooden doorways through which the carriages of […]

Intriguing writer Michael Dickson, aka Felipe Zapata atop his famous blog, once said of San Miguel de Allende: “It’s a great place to live if you want to ‘live in Mexico’ without actually living in Mexico.” It is sometimes difficult to tell when Felipe is serious and when he is just stirring the pot but […]

San Miguel de Allende: A Place in the Heart – Expatriates Find Themselves Living in Mexico By John Scherber Outskirts Press, Inc., 2010 Available from Amazon Books: Paperback I like to read about the daily lives of ordinary people, why they live where they do, what they do with their days, how place — sometimes new place — affects them, […]

San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato & The Bajío By Julie Doherty y Meade A Moon Handbook First Edition Avalon Travel, 2011 Available from Amazon Books: Paperback I like the Moon Handbooks and I own several of them — well used, I might add. They are sturdy, easy to read, compact and therefore easily packable whether in luggage or […]

Flirting in Spanish: What Mexico taught me about love, living and forgiveness By Susan McKinney de Ortega Antaeus Books, Inc., 2011 Available from Amazon Books: Paperback   Flirting in Spanish is not a “how-to-do-it” book. It is the true story of Susan McKinney, the 33-year-old daughter of former NBA coach Jack McKinney, who moved to Mexico to […]

The Devil’s Workshop By John Scherber San Miguel de Allende Books, 2011 Available from Amazon Books: Paperback I do not normally read fantasy fiction, but because The Devil’s Workshop is by John Scherber, a writer I admire, and because most of it is set in Mexico, I read it… and found it fascinating. The story begins as Mark […]

The Theft of the Virgin By John Scherber Outskirts Press, Inc., 2012 Available from Amazon Books: Paperback The Theft of the Virgin is the ninth book in John Scherber’s Murder in Mexico series. Others include titles like Twenty Centavos, The Fifth Codex, Vanishing Act, and Daddy’s Girl. He has also published the first two titles in his The Townshend Vampire Trilogy: And […]

The Girl from Veracruz By John Scherber Kindle Edition $6.69 San Miguel Allende Books www.sanmiguelallendebooks.com The Girl from Veracruz is the twelfth and latest novel in John Scherber’s Murder in Mexico mystery series. Like most of the others, it is set largely in San Miguel de Allende (although there is a trip to Veracruz). It features […]

It all began on Monday morning, one day before Constitution Day, in the Jardin, the local square, of San Miguel de Allende. My wife constantly reminds me that I am obsessive, and she is right. I feel that the only way to live is to have a question before you that needs answering. My current […]

Founded in 1542, San Juan de los Lagos is set in the Los Altos region of Jalisco, an area distinguished by its devotion to the Roman Catholic faith. The Cathedral there is home to the diminutive image of the Virgin of the Immaculate Concepcion. Since 1623, numberless miracles have been attributed to the little Virgin, […]

Admit it. Next to simmering on the beach or sunning poolside slathered in oil, you visit Mexico to shop. In fact, if you’re a real shopper you bypass beach resorts altogether. On at least one trip each year, you head into the interior, into cities such as Guadalajara, Guanajuato, Morelia, San Miguel de Allende, and […]

We woke to the sound of gunshots – six in rapid succession. My husband levitated off the bed shouting “What! What was that?” The shots continued, punctuated by long black silence between them. Eventually we braved getting out of bed and peeking out the window. Behind the brick wall of a nearby church courtyard, we […]

Here is San Miguel de Allende – the town, its people, its fiestas – celebrated through the eyes of thirty talented photographers, in a visually exciting book published by Dean and Luna Enterprises. “Foundations of Greatness”, the first of four sections, opens with a wonderfully atmospheric untitled black-and-white photo (Bill Begalke) showing the town center emerging from […]

(The following account represents my personal feelings and subjective impressions as I experienced Semana Santa last year. Since I am neither Catholic nor Mexican, I don’t fully understand all the religious significance of the processions and pageantry. Although Holy Week is celebrated throughout Mexico, the colonial mountain town of San Miguel de Allende is famous […]

The Instituto Allende is a Spanish language and Art school in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. I recently attended sculpture classes there, and found it enjoyable and worthwhile. The Instituto offers Spanish classes, and a wide range of art classes. Group classes in Spanish as a second language are offered in various intensities, with […]

The Valle de Maiz drops away from the old highway to Queretaro into a narrow, gloomy gulch, the dirt streets bounded by broken walls, unfinished homes, dark shadowed places and an occasional vacant lot cluttered with refuse wind blown down the canyon from the nearby Mexican mesa. It is where the witches and sorcerers live. […]

If you’re contemplating a lengthy escape from northern winters, think seriously about the Grand Plateau of Mexico. On this great land mass between the eastern and western branches of the Sierra Madre Mountains thrives the economic and cultural soul of the country. Here, Spanish conquistadors ruled, Zorro righted wrongs and caballeros sported ponchos and sombreros. […]

Cogan’s Reviews Here’s a most unusual collection of photographs and MexConnect is delighted to bring them to you. They are all, despite the title, photos taken in San Miguel de Allende where photographer Carol Stein visited last year. All of them exhibit odd and striking views of the town as well as the unusual abstract approach that […]

Holy Week — from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday — is observed throughout Mexico. However San Miguel de Allende’s fervor and pageantry are some of the most powerful and beautiful. The image of El Señor de la Columna is carried in a procession from Atotonilco on the Sunday before Palm Sunday, and visits churches in […]

I took one look around the tiny, dingy room I had rented and began questioning my sanity. It was December 2 and I was in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, after a tiring 24-hour bus ride one thousand miles south of the border. During an earlier October visit, I had rented the cheap second-floor room […]

Earlier this year, a woman said to me at a cocktail party, “So you hate the United States?” “What?” I’m sure my eyebrows leaped nearly to my hairline with surprise. I wondered whether she’d been lying in wait for me. “You call yourself an expatriate. You even admit it right here.” Her left hand raised […]

For some northerners, heading south of the border to live after a busy career, Mexico looks like the land of mañana. All they have to do is kick back and watch the monarch butterflies pass on their annual trek down to the state of Michoacan, while the maid whips up another batch of margaritas. This view does […]

I’m sitting in a third grade class at the Independencia School in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Aside from the charming teacher, there’s hardly a full set of teeth in the room, although nobody’s smile appears to be diminished by this defect. The teacher’s name is Fatima Almeida and she does not work for the […]

It started in 2001 with supplying a pair of shoes so that a young man didn’t have to go to college barefoot. He’d already won a scholarship. A San Miguel woman named Helen Morris provided them, and a relationship blossomed from there. Soon she was joined by Virginia Wheelwright and several others in providing financial […]

The church bells have been tolling most of the night, interrupted only intermittently by the blast of rockets soaring into the night sky. One resounding boom echoes throughout the city at midnight. This is when thousands of pilgrims will join the Processión del Señor de la Columna (Procession of Our Lord of the Column — so named for […]

San Miguel de Allende has, for decades, been one of the shining jewels of Colonial Mexico, a mecca for painters, writers, musicians or anyone with artistic sensibilities who has been touched by its ancient cobblestone streets, by the way the light and shadows fall across the distant hills or by the adobe walls painted the […]

It is late afternoon in Mexico, two days before Palm Sunday, and it is the day that honours Nuestra Señora de los Dolores — Our Lady of Sorrows. All over town, San Miguel de Allende’s families and business owners have constructed altars dedicated to sadness: the sorrow of the Virgin Mary for the loss of her […]

Celebrations for El Señor de La Conquista (The Lord of the Conquest) completely filled the Jardin Principal of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Hundreds of colourful conchero or “Chichimeca” dancers dressed in pre-Hispanic style outfits arrived from the surrounding towns, representing different styles of dance and dress. Flashes of colour. Hypnotic drum beats. The shake, shake, shake […]

Almost every community of any consequence in Mexico has an annual day or week set aside when a saint or revered person is honored with some type of celebration. If, for example, a town’s name honors San Patricio or San José or San Francisco, then on those Saint’s Days there will usually be fireworks, parades, […]

The Through Line: A Journey from Darkness into Life By Jay Koppelman. CreateSpace, 2010 Available from Amazon Books: Paperback Popular Ajijic photographer Jay Koppelman has two things to celebrate this winter: one, the recent opening of Studio 18, on Colón 18 in Ajijic, which features exclusively his photographs; and two, the recent publication of the first […]

Brown, arid hillsides barely visible in a distant haze. Isolated green cacti with contorted, knotted arms, coarse, spiny fingers and bright red, seemingly nailpolished fruits set against an endless tanned landscape. This may not seem like an area likely to guard tourist treasures, but beneath the surface lie hidden surprises. For hundreds of years, chunks […]

Mexico Notes The Anglos of San Miguel remind me of the frog that happily swims round and round in a pot of cold water, brought so slowly to a boil, that he doesn’t recognize his demise until it’s too late. They still live in “cool” San Miguel, and fail to register the rising destruction of […]

Posted by Soren on January 26, 1998 I am curious about this place. I have heard it described in relation to the gringos at least, as a rather bitchy art colony but students come and go. What is the nature of the more permanent expat community?? Can any help? Regards, Soren Posted by geri on […]