Trip of Giants - San Miguel de Allende

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All prepped for the big tour, we arrive at reception before 10am, then wait til quarter past. Martin arrives with Alehandro. For some reason although Alehandro does the whole tour for us in english, he does not drive. Alehandro is approx 40, friendly but appears preoccupied with conducting his narrative and does not readily take on our comments or questions.However through the day he covers a much wider subject than the tour content, telling us about the famous singer Jimenez (Himenez) and taking us to his memorial, talking about Guanajuato life and how not to live in the hills outside town because of all the scorpions. He also goes over all the stuff about Guanajuato that we'd not really understood from the previous day.

The tour starts in Dolores Hidalgo after the stop at the cemetary where Himenez is buried. We are shown a large mural depicting Hidalgo, Morelos, and Guerrera, then are taken inside the church Parroquia de Nuestra Senora de los Dolores at the town square. Joseph purchases a ball with ribbon attached which keeps him amused through the day. We walk to the museum house of Hidalgo (Casa del Diezmo), then Alehandro takes us back to sample the icecreams at a street stall. There are a range of flavours including vanilla, chocolate, lime, avocado, corn, tequila and margherita
. Yes you read correctly. Liam had the chocolate, Joseph says he likes the margherita but we tell him he can't have it so he opts for the lime sherbert. I have the avocado icecream complete with chunks of avocado in it.
Very nice.

Next to Atotonilco and the beautiful church both inside and out (I forget the name now, will look it up later). We wait outside at first while a three year old girl is presented to Jesus, then we look around inside. The artwork and carvings are a close second to the quality of work we've seen in the Italian churches.

Then on to San Miguel de Allende. We stop for lunch at a restaurant where the boys and I have meat dishes, each very similar with rice, avocado, salad, grilled beef. I get fried beans with mine, and a nice spicy chilli sauce on top while Joseph gets guacamole and french fries. The french fries are limp like the curly fries we had in Corvallis. We are also given tortillas to eat all this with, and Ky gets an extra plate to sample from ours. Liam samples a tortilla with beef and rice in it and proceeds to eat four of them. "I really like the tortilas" he says (mispronouncing tortilla which should sound like tortilya). Total $290.

In San Miguel de Allende we are left to our own devices for an hour and a half. We take a look inside the gothic styled church Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel after hunting around for toilets for Ky. She likes spending four pesos, the cost of attending the Sanitarios or Banyos. San Miguel is much more organised in its street layout, although the narrow streets with high sidewalks are the rule of this town also. We are told the buildings date from the sixteenth century when the town was founded by a friar (note the guide prounounces Allende as ajende rather than alyende). Interestingly the buildings are also colourful but unlike Guanajuato where any bright colour is in, SMdA is mostly reds and yellows.

Next stop is definitely the market, which we enter at the food end (for some reason we always enter at the fruits part). We head down to some clothing shops, then along an alley and suddenly find ourselves in a much larger space with all the colourful arts and crafts we'd wanted to see. The stalls run for several blocks, covering a wonderful array of goods including items from other parts of Mexico.
Liam finds a set of plastic mexican wrestlers, one of which Alehandro later explains is the famous wrestler "La Presa"
, all in silver.

We return to the van and head home, stopping only for a brief detour as Martin has forgotten his logbook due to him chatting up a girl at the restaurant. Alehandro continues to tell us about Guanajuato and the histories, so the day turns out to be very well spent.

Back at the hotel the pool is having chemicals added so we have dinner in the room and watch movies and play games.

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Photos

Parroquia de Nuestra Senora de los Dolores
Dolores Hidalgo

Casa del Diezmo
Dolores Hidalgo

Icecreams
Dolores Hidalgo

Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel 1
San Miguel de Allende

Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel 2
San Miguel de Allende

Plaza
San Miguel de Allende - note workers manually removing stone road.

San Miguel de Allende 2
San Miguel de Allende