San Miguel de Allende

We spent two nights, & one and a half days in Guanajuato. Sunday, also Ben's birthday, we had our splendid breakfast in the city, then checked out of our airbnb, hopped in our rental car, got lost in the tunnels of Guanajuato, and eventually made it to the highway to drive to San Miguel de Allende. About fifteen miles out of the city, we stopped at Templo de Valencia because someone recommended seeing inside the cathedral. It did not disappoint: there was a TON of gold!

 The outside of the cathedral

 The spectacular inside

 View of the countryside. This is such a beautiful region of Mexico!

Thankfully, when we arrived in San Miguel, we discovered that our airbnb was much nicer than our last one! It was clean, quiet, beautifully decorated, and Ben and I even got a queen bed!

The garden outside of our rented home.

Aren't the birds of paradise awesome?

After loving Guanajuato so much, we were a bit dubious that we would enjoy San Miguel as well. However, it was another fantastic city. It's more European feeling than Guanajuato and lacks the vibrant colors; however, I enjoyed the more subdued colors and clean lines of this new city.

 Each door post had ornate wrought iron lanterns and a lot had these dried flowered swags...as if each door was pretty enough on its own!

Beautiful streets

The streets were cobblestone, and were wider and more orderly than those of Guanajuato.

 The cathedral in San Miguel is the main event! 

 The inside.

We changed up things a bit during our afternoon in San Miguel: Ben took the boys to play in a park and I got some alone time to roam the streets and the artisan market. My brain was tired and needed a kid break. Ben is so good to me! 

 The big tourist souvenir was these dried flowered headbands and halos for the women. All the ladies spent the day posing in front of the cathedral with their flower wreaths. I was dying for a daughter to buy one for and eventually bought one for myself and Nate and Holly's girls. 

Market food

Mexican fruit is the best! 

Flowers everywhere in the city of eternal spring.

It felt like there were cathedrals and squares with cool statues on every corner.

We all reconvened for Ben's birthday dinner at a cool little Peruvian restaurant. Ben (who traveled to Peru when he was 10) couldn't wait for the boys to try Inca Cola (special soda from Peru). Each of the boys got a whole can and loved it (check back in with us later that night when 2 out of 3 boys were awake until midnight because of the caffeine). Despite the consequences of the Inca Cola, it was still a delightful dinner.

We moseyed back to the main square together. In my opinion, this was the most picturesque street in San Miguel.  

 Unfortunately, it was also a fairly busy street, so hard to get a stranger-less family picture. Maybe my mom can photo shop the people out for me.

 Cropped 'em out of this one, but I prefer us centered on the street.

Walking back the cathedral...just another beautiful wall.

 Sweet lighting on the cathedral.

 It was hard to decide which lighting made the cathedral look best. In fact, I liked it all. We sat in the square for over an hour that evening just watching the sky turn dark and the moon move over the cathedral. It as wonderful. 

Which is your favorite?

 Meanwhile, we bought our boys this giant torpedo balloon-thing which turned out to be hours of entertainment. Basically they would slam the flat end down on the pavement and it would shoot up  into the air and they run like banshees to catch it. Thankfully, ours weren't the only unruly kids doing this in the square. It was fun for the kids to just play and not be tourists.

Such a fun birthday with my love!

The next day we woke up TIRED, but still fairly early thanks to those beautiful church bells ringing. Sleep was not our strong-point this trip. Thankfully, food was: we found this amazing cafe that gave us not only a great breakfast, but an unbelievable view.  

 Rooftop terraces for restaurants is very common in San Miguel. 

 We needed a break from city walking, so found the library which just happens to have the largest collection of English books in Mexico. Boys were we envious--we have nothing like this in Monterrey!

 We spent almost two hours just reading and resting. It was just what our weary travel souls needed. 

 We headed to the square one last time and I found my perfect dried-flower halo.  

 On the walk back to our airbnb

 Another picturesque street

 I love Mexico for it's colors.

 That afternoon we drove up to the scenic overlook for one last look of San Miguel de Allende before driving on to our final destination: Queretaro. We drank in the scene and then found an awesome family-ran taco stand to fill our bellies before the drive. 

While Guanajuato was my favorite city of our trip, I would still return to San Miguel de Allende in a heartbeat! I could have spent weeks there and been thrilled, Reviews of the city had complained that there was too many American retirees there, but we didn't really agree. Although you did see many white-haired Americans on the streets, Mexicans were definitely still the majority. And hey, we understand why there were so many retired Americans there: perfect spring-like weather year round, awesome food, beautiful streets and buildings, and a HUGE library. Maybe we'll spend some of our retired years there! San Miguel was clean, artistic, and just plain beautiful.