The Best Place To Meet A Secret Lover In San Miguel de Allende

Monday, June 6, 2005
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Along the ancient streets of San Miguel de Allende, you'll find a hidden
gem on almost every block. Joseph Harmes knows most of them.

Dear International Living Reader,

Here in San Miguel de Allende, we often suffer from an embarrassment of riches. So much history, so many things to do and see, so many nooks and crannies to explore.

Fortunately, excellent guidebooks for the San Miguel area have been published…we seem to be rich in information as well.

The old standby is Archie Dean's comprehensive "The Insider's Guide to San Miguel," now in its 15th edition. It's a local standard, and our copy is dog-eared from constant use.

Now there is a newcomer as well, and we bought it as soon as it came out. "The Best of San Miguel de Allende," by Joseph Harmes, is one of those guidebooks that is so well-written, informative, and entertaining you sometimes read it for fun.

Harmes has a personable, humorous, often wry style that makes "The Best of San Miguel de Allende" much more than a list of restaurants, hotels, and historical sites. How can you resist headings like Best Gasoline Pumps, Best Midwifery School, Best Places To Look For Your Teenager At 3 A.M., Best ATM When The Rest Are Empty, and Best Plastic Surgery?

Here are two of our personal favorites:

"Best Places To Meet A Secret Lover: Anywhere but San Miguel. A secret lasts, at most, 20 minutes here."

"Best Places to Ponder Existentialism: El Jardin (San Miguel's central square). The ever-revolving cast of characters seems so different from yourself."

Gems like these are strewn throughout helpful and practical pointers and some surprisingly (even for residents) well-kept secrets and little-known hotspots.

That's why we're very happy to report that Joseph Harmes plans to be in attendance at our Live and Invest in Mexico Seminar this July 18-20, right here in San Miguel de Allende.

Harmes moved permanently to San Miguel in 2002, but as a professional journalist he's been working the Mexico, Latin American, and world beat for years. He's a native of San Antonio, Texas, with a heap of writing credentials to his credit. He served as both the Miami and Houston bureau chief for People magazine and has written for Newsweek and Time-Life. For us, though, his most impressive credential is being the only U.S. journalist invited to the party thrown by novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez after he won the Nobel Prize.

You can get Joseph's book on Amazon, but why not get a copy right from the source, right here in San Miguel? If you come to the Live and Invest in Mexico Seminar this July, you'll have a chance to meet Joseph and pick up your own copy of one of the best "best of" guidebooks we've ever read. And you can even ask him to sign your copy.

Here's another of our favorites from the book:

"Best Restaurants For Smokers: Almost any. As one waiter in a restaurant packed with politically correct gringos once told a visitor, 'It's a free country.'"

Suzan Haskins and Dan Prescher
For International Living in Mexico
Editors, Mexico Insider
http://www.mexicoinsider.com/

P.S. If you haven't already signed up for this July's Live and Invest in Mexico Seminar in San Miguel de Allende, you'd better hurry: the early bird discount for this event expires June 18. To secure your spot today at the discounted price, visit IL's tour page here. Don't miss your chance to see for yourself what Joseph Harmes so engagingly reveals about San Miguel de Allende in his excellent book.

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Mexico: further reading
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* Read more from Dan and Suzan in their article, "The ins and outs (and headaches!) of renovating a home south of the border," available in this month's issue of IL in print for current subscribers here. To find out more about the benefits of a print subscription to IL, read more here.

* Mexico offers something for everyone…from a laid-back, down-to-earth lifestyle to luxury resort-style mansion living. Now you can benefit from first-hand insights about living in this enormous, diverse, and enchanting country…gain direct access to Mexico's most timely and attractive lifestyle and investment opportunities…and learn everything you need to know to safely and affordably buy real estate in Mexico…through our monthly publication, Mexico Insider--written and researched by Suzan Haskins and Dan Prescher, IL's husband-and-wife team in Mexico.

* "Fiestas and festivals….that's one of the reasons everyone enjoys San Miguel de Allende so much. By some accounts, this little town has more fiestas during the year than anyplace else in Mexico…"

* In the sun-drenched, flower-laden towns of Mexico's colonial heartland, the weather is perfect and the living is good. Plus, right now, you can own your dream home for less--a lot less--than you'd pay for a less-than-comparable lifestyle in the States. Read on for more about how you can live better for less in Mexico.