January 3, 2020
We had two goals in mind for the day, first we wanted to take a motorized trolley tour which had one English language trip a day at 9:20 AM and we wanted to visit some language schools to see about Spanish classes. The bus did not show up for a while so I booked an Uber which while cheap at 68 pesos ($3.25) still took a while to get to us so we didn’t arrive until 9:30 and missed the tour. No worries, we just bought tickets for next day. The tour tickets were cheap too at 65 pesos for adults and 45 pesos for Olivia.
Instead we went to a café named Los Milagros on the main square and had breakfast and enjoy the morning. In Sacramento we almost never went out for breakfast, certainly not at some chic street side café on a cute square with live music playing. We had coffee, hot chocolate, a fruit plate and they had free bread and jam. We really enjoyed the ambiance, the warm sun and watching the people going by and at 185 pesos ($9) it cost less than a couple of cappuccinos at Starbucks.
Refreshed we went in search of a language school. The first school we went to was the Warren Hardy school. The classes were taught by Americans and charged almost $700 for the two of us for a two and a half week course to learn verbs along with 12 other students. No kid’s classes. We pretty much ruled Warren Hardy out immediately, dang that was more than USA prices.
Next we went to another school but it was not open, finally we went to the Institute de Allende. They had classes for $630 for the two of us but it was for a full month and it would most likely be just the two of us. They did not have classes for kids either but since it would basically be a private class, Olivia could hang out. Also somewhat expensive but better than Warren Hardy. We decided to put a pin in that one.
We stopped at some street food stands for some tacos before heading for the Rosewood Hotel, the fanciest hotel in San Miguel with prices starting at over $550 a night. The hotel was very nice and had a very nice pool with luxury loungers, beautiful landscaping and what I assume is impeccable service. We had a nice time enjoying the grounds and taking pictures of the hotel for free but would rather stay in Rover for $20 a night. No matter how fancy the hotel, nothing is as good as your own room and your own bed. Holly did mention that it would be nice if we could just park Rover at the Rosewood and use their facilities. Personally, I find all that high end luxury nice and pretty but a bit boring.
After touring the Rosewood we went back to Juárez Park which was nearby. It was another beautiful day and Olivia immediately met some kids about her same age who spoke English. It turns out that the parents were from Chile but the kids were born in and grew up in Washington DC. They had moved to San Miguel for work and had lived in San Miguel for about a year. As we sat we there was the smell of fresh popcorn and Holly went off to buy a bag from a nearby vendor. She came back empty handed though because of some confusion over price of the popcorn. This led to me giving Holly and impromptu lesson in Mexican money and Spanish numbers. I was going to get a bag of popcorn but by then the popcorn vendor had disappeared. Instead I got a corn on the cob with mayo and salt for 25 pesos. Mexicans like to eat their corn on the cob with lots of mayo and spicy pepper but I passed on the pepper.
We stayed at the park for a while before walking back across to check out the library which was reputed to have one of the largest collections of English books in Mexico. It was one of the most unique and nice libraries I have seen. Housed in a former mansion it had an inviting courtyard with comfortable chairs and sofas, a warren of different rooms housing the books and a very nice restaurant with a beautiful courtyard where we had a late lunch. Holly took the opportunity to do some schoolwork with Olivia while I wandered around a bit.
After spending a couple hours at the library, we started back towards the bus stop, passing by a small artist’s street selling all sorts of handcrafts and we had a good time meandering our way through the shops. One good thing about living in a small RV is that while we enjoyed looking around we were not tempted to buy anything since we wouldn’t have room for it anyway. The bus back was totally packed but Olivia had a good time standing right up front next to the driver. Safe? No, but fun and different.
We got back to Rover by late afternoon and spent the rest of the day with schooling, updating the blog and dinner. I had not been able to update the blog for a while since the internet was poor but got it done, it just took a lot longer.