Photo taken sitting on a bench in the Jardin, framed by laurel trees.

Yesterday I talked about the Jardin, and what would the Jardin be without its cornerstone—the Parroquia. Even though it looks like a catherdral, it isn't. It's just a parish church. The original church was built in the 17th century with a baroque façadae and three tall towers. In the 19th century, Mexican architect Zeferino Gutiérrez drastically changed the façade to that you see today. It's rumored that he based his design on postcards of European catherdrals. 

From a distance it looks like a totallly pink confection, but up close you can see the mixture of pink and gray stones. It has many facets.

Here is peek inside:

And straight up while standing in front of it:

From the side:

The bells that can be heard all over town. They startled us awake many a morning and rang throughout the day although we could never figure out just why.

From a distance:

At night:

No matter how you look at it, it's a beautiful sight.

The Jardin, (pronounded Har-DEEN) the main park in the square surrounding the Parroquia, is the focal point of San Miguel. Both houses were only a short walk away this wonderful place. People hang out here: families with children, ex-pats, hawkers, and of course, touristas. It's pretty much the pulse of the city. It even has wi-fi, or it used to. We were not able to access the wi-fi this time, so maybe since so many people now have it in their homes they've discontinued it. But wi-fi and all that new gadgetry is not the reason people flock here. It's to sit and chat under the gorgeous impeccabley trimmed laurel trees. For children to play within the watchful eye of parents. Lovers meet here. Ex-pats come here to meet and greet. 

To shop.

To eat.

To just people watch.

Or perhaps just to relax.

It's the heart of this city and it's pulsing with life.

We are home once again, arriving around 10:00 p.m. last night. Our two flights home were uneventful and very fast. Not so fast were the multiple lines at customs that we had to go through and nearly missed our connection if not for the man with the little handicapped cart. I've never seen lines at customs like that before and even though Houston had a new system installed with kiosks that you scan your passport in and answer all the agricultural questions on first, it was still crazy. (By the way, even if the answer on those custom forms is "yes" for you -- always tick the "no" box.)

Our view no longer looks like the above photo which was taken at sunset from the upper patio of our first home in San Miguel. We also cannot walk down to the Jardin for a "whiskey rojo" to cap off the night and watch the little children and families have fun together, nor will the little man who waited on us wrap me up in a warm fluffy wrap when it's cold. 

In a few days our feet will adjust to not walking on cobblestone streets and uneven sidewalks, of which we usually step down from to let the local people have the narrow sidewalk. I was just settling in to picking up some new Spanish words when now all I hear around me is English. There are plenty of ex-pats from the U.S. and Canada living in San Miguel so that you hear English spoken all the time and you could probably get by without knowing Spanish, but I always like to try and speak the local language. It gives me a feeling of satisfaction when I am understood and they don't switch back over to English.

It was a wonderful vacation. For me, the best kinds of vacations are those taken to places completely out of your normal "comfort zone" and into something completely different. This was such a vacation. I have many photos to share now that we are home. Our second house did not have reliable wi-fi, so I wasn't able to to a last blog post from there. I hope you don't mind if I stay in Mexico (blog-wise) for the next week instead of switching back to boring New Jersy that hasn't even leafed out yet.

It's good to be home yet I will miss many things about San Miguel. More to come. I promise

5 Almada: our new home away from home (the green and orange house on the left)

Our time in San Miguel is almost over. It's been wonderful so far and the time does not seem to be passing too quickly. We have now switched houses and are feeling like poor little church mice after the other house we were staying in. The owner is coming home today, so we are now in the house we had originally booked to stay in but had sold. It's kind of bare bones since the old owners moved all their nice things out and the new owners are starting to remodel it. So we have a few paint cans and ladders around, and it does not look like the house we booked anymore. But, it's nice enough and it's only for one day and a half. Plus, the location is great -- only a few blocks away from the Jardin and the Parroquia with no uphill steep climb. (The town of San Miguel is very hilly.)

I am sitting outside on the enclosed courtyard patio right now being serenaded (or scolded, I don't know which) by a boat-tailed grackle. He's noisy. A little while ago he made a convincing sound like a doorbell and Rick's mom went to answer the door only to find no one there. The bird sure had her fooled! He sounds kind of like a parrot and has quite the range of melodic chatter.

Tonight we are going to a Peruvian restaurant and my goal is to drink a Pisco sour and eat ceviché. We've had great authentic Mexican food (not to be confused with American Tex-Mex). Last night we ate a great restaurant that seemed to be mostly occupied with the local ex-pat crew on the rooftop with a great view of the town. We drank Tamarind Margaritas, the restaurant's signature drink. It was frozen and took us our entire meal to drink it as it slowly melted. Very yummy. Our meal was delicious as well and the wait staff were fun.

Our upload speed for photos is very slow here so I will wait until we get home to bombard you with more photos. I will try to blog tomorrow before our departure on Friday morning back to rainy New Jersey. Ugh.

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Don't hate me, but this is the view from our outside patio looking out over the beautiful center of San Miguel. We spend a lot of time out here. I'll be sharing more views later on.

The house is enormous and at first I thought I was going to need a map just to navigate around it. As is typical with these types of houses, they look like nothing at all from the front, but when the door opens a whole other world is revealed. The house is beautifully decorated, so beautifully that it's almost like being in a museum. I'm kind of afraid to sit in some of the rooms. We tend to spend most of our time in the library, where I am now, the kitchen and outside soaking up the spectacular view. Some of the rooms can only be accessed by the outside, also typical. Not so good in rainy weather though, which thankfully we have not really had. It was stormy when we arrived on Saturday afternoon but it soon cleared up by dinner time.

And then there's Skipper, the resident bassett hound.

Or pretzel dog as I have begun to call him. I guess he's so long that he can get himself into odd positions. He's a super sweet dog and he attached himself to us right away. So much so that I think we are spoiling him a little. He follows us around and wants to be in whatever space we are in. Last night I could not stand the sad, soulful eyes looking in the door at bedtime, so we let him in and he happily hopped up the stairs and laid down at the foot of our bed. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning he got me up and I followed him downstairs to let him out. He disappeared for only a few mintues, only to reappear at the door and it was obvious he did't want to spend the rest of the night outside (where they told us he usually sleeps). But we are cutting him some slack since his buddy Gracie went to dog heaven a few short weeks ago. We did correspond with the owner to make sure it was okay and he was thrilled that we were looking after him so well.

We've been eating out since we got here except for this morning when Jaunita made us huevos rancheros -- oh so good! Plus fresh papaya, apple slices and bananas. The owner told us that she makes a mean American breakfast but when we got here and first met her we told her we did not want "American" breakfast. She just grinned from ear to ear. She doesn't speak much English but she understands it just fine and so far we've managed to communicate.

We've been doing lots of walking and a lot of it is up and down hills on the knobby cobblestone streets. We're having a great time! More soon, I don't want to overload you with photos!

In the last photo you can see all the plants where people have rooftop patios.