A Walk In The Park: Checking out an old friend

Last visit to San Miguel de Allende we started out every day with a walk to our favorite park, Parque Benito Juarez. Benito Juarez was the 26th president of Mexico and the first indigenous president. We are staying further from the park this visit, and we have been busier than the first time. For those poor reasons we did not go to the park until yesterday. When we walked to the park we found it was closer than we thought. It was as serene and clean as ever. It is full of diverse little segments. Because it was Saturday there were about 10 artists displaying their painted wares along the paths. Much of the art was tremendous quality. It remains a great strolling park.

We walked past the toy museum, and though we are unimpressed by that museum the façade strikes us as gorgeous.

Around the corner from the toy museum is a building that is about 100feet long. I apologize for not taking a closeup, but the entire length of this building has pebbles imbedded in it. They are meticulously spaced. I urge you to zoom in on the image. This is so emblematic of the detailed work we see from the cobble stone streets, to the gardens in squares and on peoples’ rooftops, the brickwork in the buildings themselves, the doorways and doors themselves.

As noted in other posts, San Miguel is very hilly and the old part of town is all cobblestones. We are on a hill about 6 blocks above the main downtown square. You will see in the picture below a lot of houses further up a hill. We figured many of the houses on the hill were newer and belonged to rich folks. So, today  we decided to walk up the hill and check out our theory. We walked up streets that were much steeper than the streets down into town. It appears some streets were 30% grades. We were pleased we were able to do this without being out of breath. Lungs and legs are definitely stronger, and apparently there is no longer anything wrong with Sheila’s heart. Once we got up there we realized that houses we thought were new were simply stuccoed and painted thus looked newer. Many were historic buildings that had been around over 100 years. We expected to see a lot of gringos, but rather it was almost all natives. There is another neighborhood on the hill further south we will check out soon. It makes sense the houses weren’t new because San Miguel is a World Unesco Heritage site and thus has some strict building restrictions.

Tonight we ate out for the third time in this city this trip. We went to a humble looking building a block from our apartment called Fish Taco. Inside a steep stairway led to a roof top overlooking down town. Fish is the highlight and we shared 4 fish tacos. We had crab, marlin, octopus and shrimp tacos. We agreed the crab was our least favorite followed by the shrimp, the marlin, then the octopus. We try octopus when given the chance and are usually disappointed. Not this time. The octopus was tender and rich.

That’s it for tonight, up tomorrow for 4 hours of Spanish class.