- Hello Tandrani's from San Miguel de Allende.
- This city is incredibly popular with ex-pats
and travelers alike.
But why are ex-pats flocking here?
Today we're going to tell you.
- The city is situated at about 6,000 feet above sea level.
It has pretty nice year round weather.
It's getting a little hot right now in April
but we're coming into the hottest time of year,
April and May are probably the hottest month of the year.
- And by hottest, we're talking 90 degree highs
but it really cools down in the evenings and at night.
So that's another awesome thing.
You get a little reprieve from the heat every single day.
- Something else people love about San Miguel is
that there are some fun things to do nearby.
For example, there's a lot of vineyards around the city.
- Wait, I just saw go back a bunny. I just saw a bunny.
- We're in this vineyard right now called
San Jose de Lavista
and we're down in the basement in the wine cellar.
We're in the area where they have all the wines aging
in the Oak barrels.
So they age six months in one barrel,
switch it to another barrel and for six months,
and then they put them in a bottle for six months
before they sell it to the public.
- He was also just telling us that
they don't use any pesticides on their grapes,
which is super cool.
And they don't use any sulfites in their wine either.
Which means you might be able to try it.
- Yeah. Maybe because some wines give me like
a throat problem where I feel like I can't breathe.
- By the way it's San Jose Lavista.
- San Jose Lavista? - Yeah.
I also had to point out inside this wine cellar,
they have the most beautiful giant bovada ceilings.
It might be kind of hard to tell,
but it's like a big arch in the center made out of bricks.
This is absolutely spectacular.
- At this vineyard They actually just opened a restaurant
called Tarragon and we're going to try that in just a moment
but right now we're up here with these amazing views
at the top.
It's absolutely beautiful.
- And then here on this upper level,
I can't even describe to you how elaborate and amazing
this bovada ceiling is.
It goes all way up there and it has like these
tiered levels to it like, Oh, everything about this,
what'd you say?
- What I just said.
- Let's buy this Hacienda.
- Might be a little bit out of our price range,
- Oh maybe just a smidge,
- A couple of billion dollars out of our budget.
I don't know how much this opinion even costs.
- Another major appeal for ex-pats
coming to San Miguel de Allende is that the architecture
especially around historic center is absolutely gorgeous.
You've got these beautiful well-maintained city facades,
and you can see the history and all the buildings.
- Speaking of well-maintained,
this is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
which is yet another reason why people find it appealing.
And since it's a UNESCO site,
they have to maintain certain looks of the buildings.
And there's a lot of restrictions on what they can do
with Greenville.
What's up?
- Was losing my mask.
- Who's in your mind.
- Always.
- For example here, we're in front of this hotel,
there's a sign that's flat to the wall.
The businesses here aren't allowed to have signs
sticking out from the wall
and at a place like a convenience store,
let's say oak store for example,
they normally have a bright red sign
but here it has to be neutral colors.
And sometimes they also add like ribbons
or something to indicate they're at business.
- Perhaps one of the most beautiful displays of architecture
in the whole city, or maybe even in Mexico as a whole,
is this Parroquia de San Miguel.
I think it reminds me a whole lot of
La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona
and that was done by the famous architect Gaudi.
It's an unfinished masterpiece of his.
Try to do some research in this to find out
if this inspired that or Los Clara Familia inspired this.
Couldn't really get a clear answer on this.
So maybe you guys know you can comment down below
but just look at this beauty,
absolutely stunning.
I do really love spending time and this historic center area
or centro as we always call it
because they have some of the streets closed off
to car traffic
which means you can walk freely
and not have to worry about getting hit.
There's lots of shops to look into.
You can grab yourself a snack from one of the vendors
or a drink or a coffee, or just poke around
and enjoy all the beautiful architecture.
- One thing I do not like about coming into this center area
is that to get in here they make you walk through these
sanitation tunnels.
- Yeah, where they're spraying
some type of unknown chemical.
Yesterday it got in my eye
and it was watering for like half an hour.
- But I got a great solution for that.
(fumigation machine spraying)
(Foreign language)
- Another reason San Miguel de Allende is a very appealing
option for ex-pats is that it is incredibly clean.
I wouldn't say this is the cleanest city we've seen.
Queretaro it definitely takes the cake on that one.
You go Queretaro,
but it is very, very clean all throughout the city
especially in the very well-maintained historic center.
Another reason that ex-pats love San Miguel de Allende
is that it is a very walkable city.
I think you could walk from about tip to tip in the center
of the historic center area in about 30 minutes
plus it's got really nice and flat sidewalks.
The only thing you have to worry about is slipping
because some of the stones can be a bit slick.
- Yeah. Depending on your shoes,
you've gone almost tumbling a couple of times.
- Yeah. To be fair though.
I don't know that everybody would consider these
the nicest sidewalks,
because for instance, if you were in a wheelchair,
I think you'd have a very hard time going over these stones,
but they are aesthetically pleasing
and they do exist in some cities.
There are no sidewalks.
So you're walking in the street
or you're walking on these cobbly roads,
which can be very difficult.
- Yet another big reason why a lot of people come here
is because of the art culture.
There are art galleries all over the city
and artists come from all over the world
to come to San Miguel.
We're at this place called Fabrica La Aurora
which used to be a factory but now it's been transformed
into tons of art galleries and coffee shops.
And there's places like this
and art scattered all across the city.
- There's actually a lot of beautiful murals
all around the city as well.
- And also at Fabrica La Aurora there's art installations
like these cool chubby little guys
climbing ladders and doing ladder tricks.
Here in San Miguel they make sure pigs wear masks
all the time.
- Another highly appealing aspect of San Miguel de Allende
is that you can live a life of luxury if you want to.
There are some absolutely gorgeous properties
all around the city,
including the one that we're staying at right now,
which is called La Chispa or Casa Chispa.
I keep wanting to call it.
I'll give you guys just a little tour
of the place that we're staying in right now.
For instance, right behind me
that is a historic chapel that they restored
to its former glory,
this whole house it's like a giant hacienda.
It's super big with trees and plants
and greenery all around.
It's a total sanctuary
and we're staying in one room in the house.
And there, I think there's a handful of four rooms total
if I'm not mistaken.
So let me go show you our place.
Walking in the door here we have this big
luxurious King size bed
with super silky soft linens, such a treat.
We've slept like angels the whole time we've been here
so far, the few days.
We've got this beautiful chandelier.
One of my favorite things about it
although every single detail about this apartment
our hosts were telling us that they picked it out
individually.
A lot of the furniture is custom made
like there's stories behind every single aspect.
We've got this big beautiful living room with a gigantic TV
that's about the same size as I am tall.
We've got a fully stocked kitchen.
This is probably the most well-stocked kitchen.
I think we've even come across
like in all of our travels in Mexico.
Then we come up a few steps here to my favorite feature
of the entire place, and that's the bathroom.
With this dream worthy bath.
Like seriously, all my dreams came true.
Having baths like these, they are so rare in Mexico.
So this was amazing.
This room and a handful of others they have available
on this property are available to rent.
And if you want to see more pictures
and check out more details, you can go to
airbnbsanmiguel.com.
We'll also link that below in the description.
Another awesome thing about San Miguel de Allende
is just overall it's very photogenic.
It's an extremely photogenic city
with the beautiful building facades
like we've mentioned architecture and the Parroquia
and other churches and other features about the city.
Right now where we're standing this is actually,
what we were told, is the most photographed street,
the most photographed spot in the entire city,
and I can see why.
(soft music)
It's a whole vibe.
- This is our first video we've made in
San Miguel de Allende.
But if you're interested in learning about other
ex-pat retirement destinations in Mexico
we actually lived in one called Ajijic for a while,
made a ton of videos while we were there.
- So we'll link that playlist of videos right up here
as you can see another very popular ex-pat destination.
- At times a city seems like a bit of a concrete jungle
but then there's some really nice parks around
like this is Parque de Juarez. Is it?
- That sounds about right.
- I looked that up a few days ago
so I might be wrong about that.
But yeah, you're just surrounded by trees and shade and
- And because the one over there was closed,
just like every other one,
El Centro of El Centro.
It's been so long since we've been able to do that
because of COVID-19.
They basically closed off all the center squares
at every city that we visited,
but not today.
Get the satisfaction finally.
Okay. We just looked it up to clarify
this is Parque Benito Juarez.
So Jordan, you're very close.
But we're here, it's Sunday
and there's this tianguis of local products.
I saw some rugs, some more artwork, lots of jewelry.
And this is set up, did they say on the weekends?
- No. They said they are here on Sunday.`
Set up on the weekends,
more local products and stuff to enjoy.
Wanting to let you guys know really quick
that we release a new video about Mexico
every single Saturday.
So if you want to see our upcoming vlogs
hit that subscribe button.
Another highly appealing thing about San Miguel de Allende
is that it's very centrally located in Mexico.
So you have a number of cities within like an hours drive,
like Queretaro where we were right before this,
and also for instance Mexico city is about
a three-hour bus ride away.
So you have lots at your fingertips.
If you want to travel and see more of Mexico
but make some Miguel de Allende your home base.
One minor bummer about the location though
is that there's no Chiosco within the city.
- There's no Chiosco, what a shame.
- First world problems. Oh my gosh, no Chiosco
but there are three different Chioscos
within an hour's drive in the city of Queretaro,
Leon and Celaya, America, right?
- Mh
- So once again, you still have tons of stuff
at your disposal within like an hour or less.
This might be kind of an obvious one
but why are ex-pats locking to San Miguel de Allende?
Because there's a large ex-pat community already here
and more people are coming every single year.
So it can be very nice when you're going to a new country
with a foreign language to acclimate to the culture
with people who you're familiar with, people...
- Who speak your language, who know your culture
or things like that.
But one problem you are going to run into
I guarantee you when you come to Mexico is that
all the websites you visit
are all going to switch to Spanish
and degrees are going to switch to Celsius,
and all the measurements are going to switch to
what they call that the metric system or something?
(light laughter)
- What the entire rest of the world uses besides US.
But anyway, as you're dealing with getting used
to the culture,
figuring out how to pay your bills and stuff,
you're going to all your favorite websites
and they're now in Spanish,
that's a one extra headache that you're having to deal with
throughout the day.
- But a solution to this is getting a VPN.
Our favorite VPN can be found at tangerinevpn.com.
That's our affiliate link.
But what this does it allows you to change your location
easily just with the click of a button to the U S.
Your websites are back in English.
This really helped us out in the beginning of the year
because we were watching this show on Netflix,
Gossip Girl and then...
- It went out of the U S library, I think?
- Yes.
- And so we had to change our location to Japan
to be able to watch that show again.
- But the choices were paid $2 a month for a VPN or
buy the seasons on Amazon for 25 or $30 a season,
and there were seven of them.
- You want to check out a VPN and get this benefit
along with many others, you can go to tangerinevpn.com
Right now they're actually running a sale.
I believe it's 83% off.
- Plus three months free.
So it's a really small investment to save yourself a lot
of headache down the road.
Another reason ex-pats rave about San Miguel de Allende
is the great variety of restaurants in the city.
For such a relatively small place,
there are just dozens upon dozens
maybe hundreds of restaurants with cuisine
from all over the world and world-class chefs as well.
- Yeah, they say here is one of the best culinary varieties
in Mexico and if you want like a really fancy meal,
you can do that.
And you can, there's also a taco stands
you won't find elsewhere.
- By the way, we're at a rooftop terrace restaurant called
Casa Nostra.
It has really cool ambience.
And if you get the upper level
you have great views of the Parroquia de San Miguel.
Unfortunately, we made a mistake
and we recommend that if you want to come here
you don't make a reservation on open table
because when you arrive,
they're going to tell you to hurry up and get on your flight
so you can book it over to Florida
where that reservation is actually for.
The plates here range from about 150 to upwards of
- 400
- pesos.
So this is on the higher end of the restaurant offerings
here in San Miguel de Allende.
But like you were saying you can get cheap food,
street food, and then go into the market
and find a meal for like 60 pesos.
- Yeah. It's definitely not the cheapest city we've been to
but they have a wide variety of food.
- Food just came out.
It looks delicious, very gummy.
And just to give you an idea of the prices
my ensalada mediterranea is a 145
and your pizza thingy.
- My pizza thing I forget what it's called.
It was a word I've never seen before in my life,
was like 220 pesos.
It's a salute.
- Salute.
- We got beautiful drinks here.
There are about 160 pesos each, give or take a little bit.
But in our last video
we were at a vineyard and someone commented.
All I took away from this video was
that Maddie drink four glasses of wine in 26 minutes.
- I did not.
- I know that's what someone commented.
- Oh.
- But
- Okay, come on. Where's the math on that?
- I mean it took us five hours to record
for a glass of wine, five hours.
That's that's normally what it's like.
- I feel like I need to explain myself now.
That is totally unfair.
One of them was a half size bottle anyway.
Be sure to subscribe to our channel
because next week we have another San Miguel de Allende
video coming out.
One more thing before you go .
- All right kick.
- And gong that bell so you get notified
when that video comes out.
In the meantime, though, you can keep watching
a playlist of videos that we made in another very popular
ex-pat destination that we mentioned before.
- Down right here.
- We'll leave that on the screen right now.
Ajijic Lake Chapala
and you can continue watching those videos
until we see you next Saturday.