slowly she turned

We decided to begin using Uber rides to get uphill to the center of town and walking back down to the hotel. This worked really well in Mexico, as compared to our Uber tribulations in Portugal last year. We never had a problem.

First we found lunch at a pretty little courtyard cafe named Marluz. You can see in this photo a motif that was everywhere in San Miguel de Allende – the heart of Mexico. It was often crafted in metal. I had one of my favorite meals here – enmoladas de pollo. I knew that I needed to try mole sauce again because I didn’t like it when I ate it years ago. I LOVED IT.

Our goal for the day was to explore the big central market/artisan market. In some ways it was disappointing because the artisan part absolutely catered to tourists. But there were interesting shops and foods inside and I picked up a few items. I had a friend, Pat, who studied herbal medicine in Mexico. I can see why.

We mainly dipped in and out of shops on the streets, and bought ourselves a few shirts. We peeped into this hotel because we thought it might be a cafe and were invited in to see and photograph their huge collection of Talavera sun faces. I think that it was called Hotel del Sol.

The heart of San Miguel de Allende is the Jardin Allende. This is where most of the important historic buildings still stand from their Spanish colonial past. It is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site. We would return here often. It was a pleasant shady place to sit and people watch. There were many pretty smaller gardens and squares where you could sit on a bench and have something to eat or drink.

We took plenty of time to rest every day, usually in the afternoon, and then most of the time we had dinner pretty early and came back to the room before dark. I learned my lesson from planning to do too much in Portugal last year so I scheduled this extra time into our vacation.

We walked around our neighborhood a lot that evening trying to find a restaurant with a rooftop where we could watch the sunset. The one we had picked was closed for the month. We ended up giving up on the rooftop and ate dinner at Tené Kitchen & Bar which was located in the courtyard of an old mansion that had been converted into a hotel. I went for the grilled salmon and it did not disappoint! And we are always ready for flan.