San Miguel de Allende

Dean and I are on the next leg of our trip, in San Miguel de Allende. What a gorgeous little city. Narrow cobblestone streets, low 1-2 storey buildings, all sorts of galleries and restaurants and little shops, wonderful homes with inner courtyards and gardens and fountains.

Unfortunately, we *hated* our first hotel room (Hotel Del Portal). I had reserved it online at Expedia, and it looked nothing like the ads. A narrow steep stairway to climb up with all our luggage to the tiny reception desk. Our room was cramped and weirdly laid out, and smelled of Lysol. The bathroom had an awful shower head that came right out of the ceiling and was rotting the wallboard. And there was NO WINDOW. Is it legal to have a room with no window? We were not pleased. We asked for another room, but they said there were none, so we spent most of our first day shopping for a new hotel. Unfortunately, we arrived on some special feast day weekend of sorts (Baby Jesus is presented to the temple?) and we were told by several of the places that all the city was booked.

We were about to give up when we stumbled upon the Casa Rosada, not far the the Jardin Principal and the Parroquia. They had a "master suite" available. A little spendy, but it was so worth it to move out of the other awful place. We have a separate entry, lovely gardens, a sitting room, a huge bedroom and bath, and our own large deck looking over the city. And no Lysol smell! We are in heaven.

Spent much of our second day wandering the town and windowshopping. Had a great dinner at Woolis. We were going to go to a play that was showing in the local theater, but decided against it. And then, walking home there was the most incredible storm: wind, rain, hail, thunder, lightening. It seemed to just roll in over the mountains and across the valley. The roof drains were pouring into the streets, the streets were flowing with water like little rivers. It was amazing! We ducked into the entryway of a little restaurant-bar to try to wait it out, but it would not let up. So we dashed to our hotel all soaked. But it was fun!

Today, we took a lovely walk to Jaurez Park, then had lunch at this old hacienda that now houses the Hotel Nevada. The place was gorgeous, but practically deserted, so we had it to ourselves. The sun finally coming out after a cloudy morning. Ahhh . . .