San Miguel de Allende

Pronounced: San Migelle day Ayenday

Defintion: colonial city in Mexico that has become a major base for American retirees ('gringos').

San Miguel de Allende...beautiful name, beautiful city - but depressigly westernized and now a tourist/expat hot spot!!

The city is preserved much like Guanajuato, so is beautiful to walk around - but less authentically Mehicano, and more like Sovereign Hill (set up for Tourists and filled w shops,
for tourists!) It is amazingly westernized - this does bring some amazing looking restaurants (beyond my bujet to actually try of course!) it does mean that we seriously had to hunt to find somewhere to eat that was actually Mexican (instead we found lots of Italian, even argentine Italian and French too!)...and our final, exasperted choice turned out to be very proudly owned by 'Fannie and Dan' - have you ever heard of two less Mehicano sounding names before?!! That said, the chicken burritoes were truly amazing! Went for a jog in the morning and it turns out that most of the expats actually live in gated communities, some of
the houses were pretty impressive!!

Hostel was average - shared a room amongst others with a 50+ yr old American woman who was visiting to learn sculpture - apparently one of her life long dreams...must admit I definitely could not see my own Cazi doing such a thing!! I think her loyalties lie well and truly with the five star types rather than at Hostal Alcatraz!!

Returned to Mehico City tonight (Bon voyage to my San Fran friend) and very excited to meet up w my new travel buddy Maya! Unfort my planned bus was full when I turned up, so had to buy a ticket for the 'economie' bus service - never a good thing!! Epic milk run!!! We picked up and dropped off countless randoms, literally from the side of the hwy (as you do in Mexico)... 5 hrs later - I had watched three movies, all in espanol (comprehension levels next to zero!!). And finallllly arrived back in the big smoke - nervously arranged a cab (am somewhat paranoid w my increasingly valuable pack, due to certain shopping forays!!) only to be told that the cab couldn't enter the street of my hostel and I would have to walk...?!!

Three blocks of darkness in mehico city walking solo is not exactly an appealing thought - despite my attempts to convince the cabbie - 'no quiero caminar solo por favor!!!', I was made to walk nonetheless!! Thankfully there were plenty of people around - but I still half ran down the road, looking like a right loony in my technicoloured maxi dress, flip flops and paranoia-eyes inspecting every dark shadow!!

Ahhh such are the highs and lows of backpacking!!

Be in touch again soon and apologies for the excessive post - can't sleep!!

LiZZie
xx