I’m in mexico now and plan to stay here until at least April.

We started in Guadalajara, then took a bus to Guanajuato, and are now in San Miguel de Allende.

Where we’ve stayed so far

In each city, we stay for a little more than a month to take advantage of good airbnb pricing.

I’ll write more about each place we stayed with the goal to give you some good info you can take to the city, but here’s my short thoughts for now:

Guadalajara

My favorite city in mexico so far. It’s a large city with many universities and has a lot going on.

We stayed in the center between Centro and Chapultapec, and we had great options for food at whatever variety or price we wanted. A mercado nearby provided all the fresh and dry food we needed to cook, and the nightlife was so fun.

Guanajuato City

It’s beautiful! And we had a great airbnb overlooking the city. Most foreigners I met learned the word “callejón” – spanish for “alley” – within the first week. Navigating the city certainly means walking these narrow streets and up steep stairs.

The city is a good mix of foreign tourists, domestic tourists, college students, and residents. That mix means the central area feels like a constant party, with the main roads crowded with tourists and taxis. But outside of it, life goes on as normal.

This is where I took two weeks away from work to study spanish.

San Miguel de Allende

San Miguel de Allende is a resort town, mostly for american retirees and the rich. There’s been enough negative things said about it (much is true) but I’ll find time to talk about what we enjoyed here.

Centro caters exclusively to tourists, mostly foreign. Fancy restaurants, rooftop bars, and souvenir shops selling hats seem to be the main attractions. Beyond this, I’m sure there are more hidden pockets of more specific communities for art and longer-term residents to the north, east, and south. To the west looks more local and seems to be where the workers catering to the tourists live. Every afternoon and late evening there is a migration from the centro to the outskirts by foot or bus.

In the centro and to the est it feels strangely empty compared to the first two cities we went to. But we explored to the west it’s just like your typical mexican city.

I’m glad we decided to stay here (if only for two weeks) since it’s giving us a chance to see what the equivalent of a “americatown” looks like in mexico. New york’s Flushing is a chinatown in the US and was a good visit, so why not see the mexican equivalent for americans. But I’m glad we’re only spending a short time here.

Future posts

I’d really like to make some more in-depth posts about my time in mexico.

• Learning practical traveler’s spanish: It’s not like china where I knew the language enough to have conversations and figure things out, but spanish is close enough to english where I can get by and I’ve been doing my flash cards!
• How to stay places for more than a month: It’s difficult uprooting every month, but we’ve found some strategies that have worked for us.
• “Getting the most out of it”: After leaving China I felt like I missed out on some things and would never have the opportunity to do them again. I’m trying to avoid that here, and would love to write about it.