San Miguel de Allende

After a wonderful stay in Guadalajara, we headed off to San Miguel de Allende in the state of Guanajuato on Wednesday.  Thanks to my excellent navigational skills and Louie’s speedy mountain driving, we made it to San Miguel in only 8 hours, instead of the 4 hours that mapquest predicted J  It was a really lovely drive though, and we got lost in some really cute Mexican towns!!  Louie was a bit scared once, when two teenagers on a moped volunteered to lead us back to the highway, but we made it out safely. 

Once we finally arrived at our hotel (after one VERY STEEP and scary road), things started looking up.  The hotel is completely adorable with a huge courtyard for Maya to play in and a swimming pool, and our room is gigantic.  It is quite far up a hill, so we have a beautiful view of the city, but it is a very steep walk up here.  We have taken a cab almost every day, and one time, our cab driver even refused to take us all the way up the hill because he said his car wouldn’t make it! 

The view from about half way up the hill to our hotel!!

The courtyard at our hotel

 We’ve have a lovely time in the beautiful town of San Miguel de Allende.  We guided ourselves on a walking tour (my navigational skills are significantly better with a street map and on foot!)  Actually, I would like to take this moment to say that it is really difficult to navigate in a foreign country.  I only had printed mapquest directions and a giant highway map of the entire country of Mexico.  I would read the direction to Louie plenty in advance, then all of the sudden, the road would split three ways and Louie would shout “which way, which way???,” and I would have to make a split second decision based on the information that I had just read aloud to him 2 minutes earlier, which didn’t seem to make any sense given the intersection, and as expected, I was right about 1/3 of the time.  It really was confusing, but I think that we are going to do a lot better on the way home J

 Anyway, back to San Miguel.  We guided ourselves on a walking tour and saw 15 churches!  And Louie took 2 pictures of each one, one in color and one in black and white.  We’ll be sure to post them all on facebook J  We also made it to a toy museum and an old textile mill that was converted into art galleries and studios.  Louie was super excited about all the art in one place!  And of course, we ate at several fabulous restaurants.  One of our favorite things, however, was definitely the hot springs that we visited.  The water was so warm, and it was very beautiful.

One of the most beautiful churches.

Hot springs

 Today we are off to the city of Guanajuato, which I have heard is amazing.  And we drove through it on the way to San Miguel, so we know it is beautiful and we should know the way there!!  I really hope we don’t get lost!