Day of the Dead in San Miguel De Allende

Much as I hate taking a tour - I wound up taking several tours that were quite good. One good one and one bad one was sponsored by the Biblioteca Publica, several were with a private tour guide (both in town and out), and a couple of tours I sort of latched onto - mostly for Mexican school children visiting historical buildings.

San Miguel is packed full of Mexican history and you really are missing out if you don't know the background of the town, the buildings and churches.

My bad tour was a house tour sponsored by the Biblioteca. It was quite horrific, and though I've been told I was on the worst house tour that ever happened I will never attend another one to find out whether they get better.

Quick Tips:

Best Way To Get Around:

There are cabs for when your feet are no longer able to handle the cobblestones, very inexpensive. I think the most we spent was 30 pesos, approx. 3 dollars. There are also many car services if you need to get away from the city. We hired a private tour guide on the days we wanted to get away because we've driven in Mexico and don't like it one little bit.

Now the rooms are $40 and up, still quite reasonable in a town with $300 a night rooms nearby. The rooms are very simple and the place is built rather along the lines of what I think of as a motel - like one of the old motor court hotels.

The three best things about the Quinta Loreto are the price, the location (at the edge of the Mercado Artesanias) and the excellent restaurant. Also, they have a huge parking lot, one of the few in town.

The lemonade comes in little misshapen aluminum pitchers, the quesadillas are made with handmade tortillas, the tamales are fantastic. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive, just plain food well prepared.

You get to the restaurant by walking up the little incline - walk along the left side of the hotel - the restaurant is at the end of the building. Look for the sleeping dogs on the steps and bird cages on the patio.

You can eat on the patio looking over the garden or in the huge dining room - I always chose the patio.

The grounds are beautiful (I think someone told me this was originally the bishop's palace or something like), after you've finished eating take a walk back towards fountains and down the steps to the huge lawn - this is also a hotel with really gorgeous (and equally expensive) rooms.

Everyone raved to me about Tio Lucas and while the food is quite good the atmosphere was not my favorite.

My main problem was that the place was full of smoke, more full of smoke than anyplace I've ever been in my life - if you are a smoker, you may enjoy it. There were two women sitting behind me who never, for a single moment, were without a lit cigarette or two in their hands and to my left was a man who actually downed three cigars in an hour.

Besides the smoke, the seating is very cramped - our table locked a couple between their table and a wall. When they left seven people had to stand up and two tables had to be moved for them to leave.

There is live music and it was very good, also the owner is an extremely nice man who seemed concerned that I was turning purple from all the smoke.

So, overall I recommend it if you want noise and crowds, I also loved the food - really it's quite excellent, but if you want to breathe easy go somewhere else.

The food is not necessarily Mexican though they do serve Mexican food - they also have things like eggs benedict and Thai noodles but I stick to the tacos.

El Pegaso also functions as an art gallery that shows work produced by local artists. Some of it is in my living room right now.

The food is decent, the drinks are good, the best part about this place is you can sit here - in a patio just off the Jardine - for hours and hours drinking, laughing and talking. Very child friendly.

The service is fantastically attentive and after brunch you can walk around the grounds - definitely worth a visit.

If you go on the Biblioteca's house tour La Puerticita provides a free van from the last house to the hotel for the brunch. The hotel is on a hill in a residential neighborhood - rather out of the way - so if you are unfamiliar with the city or not enjoying walking on cobblestones (or late at night since the streets are not lighted) you should take a cab. When you leave, if the van driver is still on duty, he will drive you back to the main part of town or to your hotel, whichever is closest.

The Biblioteca should be your first stop. The Biblioteca is the largest English library in San Miguel, and I think the second largest in Mexico. It is chock full of helpful English speaking expatriates that want to talk to you and help you. I think part of their desire to chat must stem from the need to talk to new people as in my month in San Miguel even I got quite tired of running into the same 6 people over and over and over and... well you get the idea.

Anyway, the Biblioteca sells tour books and maps of the city (and other things) - and is also a library/educational center/restaurant/great spot to sit and do nothing.

Go to the Biblioteca your first day and buy yourself a map. Some of the streets change their names from block to block so a map is a most helpful thing if you plan on getting somewhere other than by happenstance. For example - the street Prolongacion Aldama becomes the Canadita de los Aguacates which becomes Recreo, except that if you make a left off of Canadita you wind up on Prolongacion Aldama again which then becomes Aldama, jogs left and becomes Cuna de Allende then Hidalgo which then turns right and is called Calzada de la Aurora. How do I know all that - because I still have my map.

The tour books they have in the Biblioteca are quite good, some excellent. I looked around bookstores at home before my trip but there was never more than a page or two on San Miguel. Amazon.com had a book about San Miguel that they said was out of print - that book was available for sale in the Biblioteca. They also have lots of books on walking tours of the town and surrounding areas.

The Biblioteca also sponsors tours - the money from which goes to children's education. The house tour is what they are best known for and it takes place every Sunday morning. I hated it more than you can possibly imagine. They also have tours of the city that are much better. My tour was given by an elderly American gentleman (but don't tell him I said that he was elderly) who knew everything and everybody. It wasn't the best tour I've ever been on in my life but it did give me a good overview of the town and how to get around it.

It was rather hard trying to provide an address for the Jardine as the way I always found it was by looking for the steeple of the Parroquia (big pink church) and walking toward it. You can almost always see the steeple as it is sort of in the middle of town both vertically and horizontally. I'm sure there really is an address for the Jardine but I don't know what it is.

On my worn out little map the Jardine is on either Correo or Umaran on the south side (Correo becomes Umaran, or perhaps Umaran becomes Correo?), and it's on either Canal or San Francisco on the north side (same thing with the streets switching names), on the east is definitely Reloj but on the west could be Cuna de Allende or Hidalgo (switching again). Everyone knows where it is and if you've at least mastered your directions in Spanish it should not be a problem having someone point you there.

The night before the Day of the Dead there were fireworks and bands and people partying in the Jardine into the early morning hours - lots of kids in costume with bags full of candy and coins. It was quite a good time. On most holidays there is something going on around the Jardine.

On non-festive days there is still quite a bit to see - there are trees and pigeon poop covered benches, street vendors, students, cafes, churches, a bank (with ATM), an ice cream shop and a police station all on or facing the Jardine.

You may find yourself spending a portion of every day either sitting in or walking through the Jardine. In the early morning it's full of newspaper readers, in the afternoons with mothers & children, late afternoon is for the older students, and night is for everyone in town. If you're bored you can go to the Jardine and find someone looking for a chat, if you're hating the people with whom you are on vacation you can go the Jardine to escape them, if you want to see who is new in town they're bound to be walking lost around the Jardine, want to run into someone that's lived in San Miguel for years - go to the Jardine.

If you want to be completely alone and wish to neither see nor be seen - don't go to the Jardine, instead go to the Parque Benito Juarez.

From the outside the church is quite beautiful - the inside, well, there are better. The churches in Atotonilco and Dolores Hidalgo have more interesting interiors - but La Parroquia has an exterior that is truly magnificent.

I understand that the church was designed by a local who had no architectural training but who had studied photographs of European churches - mostly from postcards. If you stand at the base of the church near the front doors and look up it's almost like you're standing in the air near the spires of a big european cathedral, sort of like the architect chopped a larger church in two and threw away the bottom half.

Because La Parroquia is the largest church in town and across from the both the Jardine and Allende's birthplace it is definitely someplace to see and walk through on one of your first days in town. The in-town Biblioteca tour goes through the church quite thoroughly.

I was told, before I got to San Miguel, that November 1st (or 2nd) was the only day you could tour the crypt under the main altar. I totally forgot about going - but after I got home I found written in one of my travel guides (that I never bothered to read while in San Miguel) that you can get into the crypt whenever you want by tipping one of the church workers. Several of the ex-President's of Mexico are in the crypt.

Getting there is easy, after you've walked up the front steps at the front of La Parroquia (facing the Jardine) - look to your left and you'll see the front of Santa Escuela.

It's now a museum with not so very good standing exhibits. The best part of going through the house is the house itself. The first floor is rustic with only a few large rooms meant to be inhabited by animals and, I suppose the servants. The second floor is a more refined living space.

For the Day of the Dead the first floor courtyard was adorned with a huge altar in honor of Allende and was full of groups of school children.

The room I liked best was the kitchen, it was the only space left almost with original, or close to, furnishings. It's on the second floor in the southwest corner.

So, if you'd like to see a nice clean example of 18th century Mexican residential architecture (original wood floors, glass, etc) definitely take a look, if you want to see a good view of the Jardine and the Parroquia (and possibly take a few pictures) from a second floor window definitely go in. If neither of those things interests you I suggest sitting in the cafe directly across the street where they serve really absolutely fantastic coffee (wish I remembered the name of the place).

The convent has a beautiful church, a large quiet paved courtyard, cloistered nuns and a store at the rear (west) end of the courtyard where they sell really good cookies.

The convent was founded by the daughter of the Canal family - the family that at one time owned and run much of San Miguel.

The altar is very very gold & full of floral arrangements that are put in place by disembodied hands - I can only hope the hands belong to the nuns. There are a series of heavy curtains behind the altar and the nuns are just behind them. There are so many churches in San Miguel I was rather 'churched out' by the time I got to this one so I can't say to much more about it, but again, I can recommend the cookies.

Next door is the Bellas Artes.

The building used to be part of the convent next door (Las Monjas) but the stairways are the only original bit left of the interior - or so I was told.

As you enter, the exhibition gallery is to the left after the second entry archway. While I was there the exhibit was of some pieces made of slick plastic sheeting stabbed through with long plastic things - the thingies that stores use to attach price tags to clothes. I would say the exhibit was definitely odd - especially the piece shaped like a hairy teepee.

Anyway, the courtyard is a great place to waste time, it's shady and has a lovely fountain.

In the far northwest corner is a room that is unlocked only a few hours a day. It contains an unfinished mural of the life of Allende by David Alfaro Siqueiros. The legend of the mural is that the school, which was once private, went bankrupt and couldn't afford to pay for the mural to be finished. However, my tour guide told me that the legend is wrong - that she knew some of his students and that the mural was finished by the artist and then was painted over as a lesson for his students to do it over again with him - but he got into a fight with the school's administration and left. I suppose the room could be x-rayed to discover the truth but in the meantime a controversy, no matter how small, is always a good thing.

There are other murals around the building,not many but they are good ones, all painted in the 1940s.

At night there are films, art exhibits, musical events, etc. at the Bellas Artes. A schedule is always on the chalk board at right inside the front door.

The hall itself looks like something Miss Kitty would have sung in - very Wild Wild West with white painted railings and red velvety cushions. The front of the building is covered in bullet holes that date back to the early 1900s.

There is a cafe in the lobby.

One of my favorite things about this building was the looped ropes along the walls of the two lobbies - turns out the ropes are a means of hanging posters and notices without damaging the white painted wood panelling. Instead of sticking a nail into the wall you poke a pin through the poster into the rope. It's the small & seemingly insignificant details that make a vacation special - right?

This church is dedicated to 'Our Lady of Health' and is very simple. Above the front door is a huge but rather unadorned clam shell (San Diego in Spain used shells for baptisms), it is one of the least adorned church facades in town.

The painting of the walls and ceiling inside are wonderful and there's an icon to the Holy Child of Health on the left at the front of the church. His altar is full of everything from milagros to Tonka trucks.

I was in there every morning buying flowers - and for the Day of the Dead there was an extra large flower market set up on the streets surrounding.

Advice - don't eat the green oranges - they make great juice but don't taste very good. If you are dying for a taste of fresh fruit or a salad you can buy water treatment tablets at all the grocery stores. You put the food in water (tap or bottled), add some drops and let it all sit for 20-30 minutes.

The market runs at an angle down three or four blocks and you can enter it at several spots - on Loreto, on Reloj and on Hidalgo. There are signs on the buildings nearby pointing the way. If you are at the Jardine, just walk north on Reloj and you can't miss it.

The building used to be the summer house of the Canal family - their winter house was up on the hill near the Jardine I believe. After the Canals the building became a convent - supposedly there are underground tunnels from the building to many of the churches in town. Finally in the 1930's an American turned the building into an art school.

The gallery that sells student and teachers' work is to the left of the patio. There is silver jewelry, sculpture, batik and paintings. The work was impressive.

For the Day of the Dead there were several altars in the gallery and one in what seemed to be an old chapel.

There was an old woman at the door to the Instituto selling marigold wreaths for Day of the Dead - of course she was quite gorgeous sitting there with her wreaths. She charged gringos $10 per click of the shutter and her son and husband were sitting just inside the patio waiting for someone to try and take a snap without paying.

There are basketball courts on the Diezmo Viejo edge of the park near Sollano, across the street from the house we rented. When the high school lets out at 2pm the courts start to fill up and the games don't stop until the sun goes down. I never saw any gringos play ball but I suppose it's not prohibited.

The park is kept up quite well - most of it is very clean though there is lots of graffiti (the same gang markings as I see here in Los Angeles actually) around the edges. Don't worry about drive by shootings though - the cobblestones keep the average driving speed down around 15 miles an hour so whatever gang activity is going on in the park is very quiet and on foot.

There are picnic tables in the middle of the park along the path that crosses from Diezmo Viejo to Baeza and a few grills for charcoal as well.

This park is definitely a place to spend some quiet/alone time, sort of the inverse of the Jardine.

This is a great church, even if you don't really care much for visiting churches. The painted walls and ceilings are truly fantastic. Sadly it seems as though the church is being restored by artisans with painting ability but no training in restoration - which is to say they are repainting the place not restoring it.

The paintings as you enter the door are of crazy looking devils with words and poems wrapped around their heads. Part of the early 'restoration' involved painting over parts of the door, I can only hope they don't plan any more of that.

World Watch has adopted this church as one of the 100 most important historical buildings in the world and is supposed to be sending money for better trained restorers.

This is also a church of the penitents - across the square you can buy actual crowns of thorns (yes, very sharp) and flogging implements (or would that be instruments) - anyway - when I was a kid I remember driving along the main dirt road in Atotonilco and seeing some people crawling along the road flogging themselves but now I am told they keep everything private so I suppose you flog yourself behind the huge white walls. San Miguel also used to have penitents but the town decided it was bad for tourism so it is now cause for being arrested.

You probably won't want to walk to Atotonilco from San Miguel - I mean I suppose you could, it's only about 10 miles but not along a road I'd care to traverse on foot and not because there's a problem with the road - more so because there is no sidewalk and people drive kind of crazy. I've only travelled to Atotonilco by car. This visit I hired a driver for the day - but there is a bus if you like that sort of thing - that sort of thing meaning bouncing along dirt roads perched on metal bench seats that easily accomodate only those 5 feet 4 and under - as I am a great bit taller than that I find the local buses almost unbearable and prefer to save my pennies elsewhere.

Other than the church there's not much going on in Atotonilco, no restaurants or stores that I can think of. Go on market day (don't remember which day that is but someone can tell you) if you want to stay around for more than just the church.

First of all I never knew that they only showed homes that were either for sale or rent - so you are not seeing the best of the best. You are only seeing the best that's for rent or sale that week. You are paying for the privilege of doing what real estate agents should pay you to do. The money from the tour goes to a good cause but I'd rather have known I was going on a sales pitch before I got on the bus.

Secondly, the tour I went on started on a school bus. Mexican school buses are not comfortable. They are not clean. They have metal seats made for short people. There were 6 or 7 buses altogether and there was a fight amongst the tall people to get the middle seat on the back bench - where there was no seat in front of us to destroy our knee caps. We were then driven 30 minutes out into the countryside to see one of the most unattractive houses ever. The best/worst part of this house was - in the unattractive brick 'gazebo' there was a table covered in the same cheesy plastic tablecloth I got my mother at Target last summer (red with big tropical fruits - she likes that stuff) and then! The flyer about the tour mentioned repeatedly that there was an antique children's carousel on the south lawn. Carousel my eyeball. It was one of those iron things from a city playground with the painted animals (horse, hippo, etc) that goes around in circles if you kick the sand around it. Sort of a large sit and spin and in other words - carousel my eyeball. It was so very bad.

The other two homes on the tour were not impressive in the least & had no gardens. They were smaller and not as well furnished as the house we rented. An extreme dissapointment.

To the tour's credit, if credit there be - everyone was complaining & several people told me that this was the worst tour that they'd ever been on and I should come back the following week.

The hotel La Puertecita supplies a van to the last house on the tour and will drive you to their fantastic Sunday brunch. That was actually the highlight of the house and garden tour for me - I'd have never gone to La Puerticita for a huge fat brunch if I'd not had a terrible time on the tour so I guess I can thank them for that.

Helene used to be a buyer for jewelry stores in the states so she mainly offers shopping/artisan studio tours however she easily accomodated my desire to NOT shop and instead indulged me with all the architectural detail I could stand. She's very knowledgeable, friendly and easy going.

There's a review on this site of a trip to Dolores Hidalgo - in which the writer apparently enjoys DH as much as I enjoyed the house and garden tour (in other words, not).

Visiting Dolores Hidalgo is sort of like visiting Brooklyn. There are great pottery studios and interesting churches and wonderful restaurants but you probably won't find them by yourself. The pottery making in DH isn't done in homes - it's not a quaint little sideline for this town - it's a huge business and is conducted like any huge business anywhere, behind closed doors. There are a few factory shops (I use factory loosely) if you know where to find them where you will not get a great price break but you do get to see things that aren't available anywhere else. I doubt that you'd find these places on your own as they are not on, or even near, the town square.

Helene, despite my no-shopping protestations, watched me shop in several of the pottery studios then gave me more architecture and history - and a great lunch of enmolodas (like an en-chila-da but with mole - that's why it's an en-mola-da). The ice cream that DH is famous for was terrible but the town square was full of sugar skulls and such for day of the dead.