Super Easy Baked Salmon
Day one we wake up to a town with no billboards, no national chains of restaurants or anything else. The buildings are all very old and most of them are fully restored. The streets are cobblestone. Some of those narrow streets date back over 450 years and they are still in working order. No pot holes here! (You have to wear sensible shoes in SMA or you might get an up-close look at those cobblestones. They jokingly call it the town of “fallen women” because those who try to wear high heels are often tripping and slipping. You learn fast.)
Like I said, every building is OLD. They are also all painted in colors of the sunset and blend nicely into the horizon. The mountains are in the distance. Everything is amazingly clean. One of my favorite scenes was of shopkeepers who open their shop every morning just after they have tossed a bucket or two of water out their front door and they proceed to clean the sidewalk out front of their business. It’s not that it needed it. They just do it.
Here’s what else we saw. (Remember, it’s still Day 1).
We get to the bottom of the first hill and we hear a Mexican marching band. We turn the corner and see the parade. We rush up to get a close look. The entire parade is little children. I mean like kindergarten or younger. They are all dressed as little signs of Spring. This is the first day of Spring and the children are celebrated as a sign of new growth. The first kids I saw in costume were dressed as a bunch of strawberries. Those were closely followed by little pineapple people. There were lots of butterflies and bees. I even saw a carrot, some peas in a pod and a boy dressed as a banana. Some went beyond the spring theme and dressed their kids as colorful dragons or fairies. Every costume was cute beyond belief. They were almost exclusively homemade from felt, ribbons and other more ornate fabrics. These people went all out with the glitter, and from the smiles on the children’s faces, you could see they were proud to wear those costumes and march through the streets with the drums banging and the horns playing. The parade ended at La Parroquia.
Did I mention La Parroquia yet? The most famous building in San Miguel de Allende?
Here it is in both day and night.
The architecture leaves you speechless. This is not the only church either. There are several; especially for such a small town. Bells ring throughout the day. They don’t really seem to correspond to what time it is. When you are looking for an explanation on what time they ring or how many rings they toll, the people you ask just tell you that that particular church is calling people to Mass. And they just leave it at that. I don’t think they know either.
There are other celebrations too. There were 10 weddings there the first weekend we were around. On Day 1 we saw a donkey draped in flowers, preceded by a band playing traditional Mexican parade music. Behind him marched a “bride and groom” that were actually people in giant costumes of a bride and groom walking on stilts. (Like Mardi Gras). They towered over the rest of the parade made up with members of the family as well as friends. That was all topped off by the real bride and groom on the way from the ceremony to the reception. They might be walking as they were on Day 1, but we even saw one cute couple cruising along on a little motorcycle; the bride’s veil blowing in the breeze.
Musicians play on just about every street corner all day long. Mariachi bands are the most prominent but guys playing guitars and harmonicas are pretty prevalent too, as well as the younger set who might be doing covers of American hits.
Every night the sky fills with fireworks. They might be celebrating that same wedding. Or they just might be having fun lighting up the sky.
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