Marie and I spent 3 wonderful days in San Miguel de Allende, a 16/17th century Spanish colonial town located a few hours NW of Mexico City. A world heritage site, San Miguel is St. Michael the Archangel and Allende is the name of a famous Mexican general involved with Mexicoβs independence from Spain in 1821.
What we liked about the town is its cleanliness – an army of cleaners hit the streets at 5 am every morning and βsweep baby sweepβ. Vehicle tires literally squeak on the polished cobblestone streets.
Spanish colonial architecture is everywhere: beautiful dark wood doors open up onto hundreds of tranquil courtyards with fresh green leaves, shady tree bright flowers and lazy fountains.
The overall atmosphere is one of peace. Despite heavy vehicle and motorcycle traffic at times including many city buses, people are calm, relaxed, friendly and cheerful. The sidewalks are narrow. One must pay attention. It was Mardi Gras time and the kids were having fun cracking confetti filled eggs over each other.
There was some street theatre too.
The hundreds of little boutique shops, tasty food eateries, art stores and museums complete the picture. We loved it all.
For 3 days we ate tacos of every kind – Al pastor, fish, beef, vegetarian, All were incredibly cheap and yummy. We walked and walked and climbed hills and staircases until we dropped. We recuperated in our lovely 2 floor suite and then went out and did it again.
We attended Ash Wednesday Mass at Parraquia de San Miguel and thanked God for this wonderful place and our visit – hopefully to be repeated again someday soon. Highly recommended place to go.
mattersofthemoment 
We visited there several times while living in Mexico City. Drove past smoking Popo volcano on the way.
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