Surprising Truth About San Miguel de Allende Cost of Living! Complete Travel Guide

We are here in San Miguel de Alunday. Now we have been here for just under two weeks and in this video we are going to be sharing everything that you need to know when you visit. Now how do you get here? You have a couple options. Now you can fly in. There are a couple airports that are located near here. They're about an hour and a half away so not too bad. You can easily grab a bus to those. The other option is that you can arrive by bus. There is a small bus station here in San Miguel that is located just about a mile outside of town. That is how we arrived and we took a bus from Mexico City. So that's probably like the suggestion I would make to you if you're going to be traveling through Mexico. Now here in central Mexico you're always going to get great weather. November through April seems to be the best time of year to travel here but you may want to consider skipping the holidays. Easter is very busy here in San Miguel and so it's the day of the dead. The day of the dead is the end of October start of November so just keep that in mind before you book anything. Now what are the top sites that you want to see while you're here? Thankfully San Miguel has a lot to see and do just in itself. You don't have to search very hard for things to do but the starting point you want to do is El Jardin which is the city center. It is just a beautiful park and then surrounding it you have just a lot of sites to see and take it all in. You've got all the churches. You've got to see all the churches. They're all from walking distance and they're all a little bit different from each other so you've got to take in the churches. Now for us we've always said you see one church you've seen them all but that's not necessarily true here in San Miguel. Take some time and go explore these churches. Yeah and especially the one church right there next to El Jardin. You want to make sure that you allow time to see that at night lit up. It is absolutely spectacular. Now the other thing that you want to allow plenty of time to do is just to wander all the streets. That is what San Miguel is known about. You know all of the streets are absolutely beautiful. They all offer something just a little bit different but just the bright colors and just taking it all in. Yeah be careful on the cobblestone. I did slightly roll my ankle. I'm okay. I'm okay but I do like to complain a lot so Carrie's hearing about it and then she doesn't always want to hear about my bangs up, my bruises. So be careful on the cobblestones but when you do get out here and you do start walking around make sure you get up to the lookout El Mirador. It's a beautiful lookout. If you don't already have accommodations with that lookout you're going to want to get up there and you're going to want to look over the city. And it's quite a hike but it is absolutely worth it. You have to do it once while you're here. You can take an uber too to get up there so don't be afraid to get up there. Now the next area if you are somebody like us that likes to have a little bit of green space Parque Benito Juarez I believe is what it's called. That is where you also want to make your way to. It is a beautiful park, a lot of walking area and just a kind of escape from the heat and then also from just the crowds to get away from everything. Yeah we've been there a few times and we really enjoy it so it's worth the visit. Yeah and it's only maybe a I don't 10 minute walk down one of the most picturesque streets in the world I will say. So make sure and get there. Where do you want to stay once you get here? I would recommend staying up on the hill so you get that amazing view over the city. There are a lot of boutique hotels up there, a lot of short-term accommodations if that's what you'd like to do. But that's where I would stay. Second choice would be down here by the park where we're at right now because it's so quiet. We tried to shoot this whole video out in town and it was it's a Wednesday in the middle of October. We don't mind people but it was the traffic noise and the people noise that they brought us to this beautiful park. So I would stay around the park too if I had my choice. Yeah and I think those are really great choices. We're staying up on the hill and that's great. The other option is that just stay in the city center. If you're only going to be here for a couple days and you just want to be all near all of the action, that's a great place to be as well. A lot of boutique hotels down in that city center, I mean a lot of them, so you will have a great selection. Now the other option if you're coming here and you maybe are staying longer term, one of the things that I know that we like to be near is a good size grocery store. There is a grocery store and a market in the city center but we found them a little bit harder to shop for maybe making meals at home. But there are two very nice big grocery stores here, one called City Market, one called La Comer. They're right, I believe it's La Comer. They're right next to each other. So maybe look at the map and get yourself closer to those or maybe at a halfway point because they're about a mile outside of town and for us that's a bit far to carry our groceries. So you would be always stuck with getting an Uber or something to go to the grocery store. Yeah not only that but we're at the top of that hill too so carrying too many groceries up that hill would be a pain in the arse. Carrying one bag of groceries is a lot. How long do you want to visit San Miguel? That's really up to you. I would say you need to spend at least three days. You can take day trips out of here. There's wine tastings. There's a lot to do. So I'd go at least three days. Now we know of other people that we've met while we've been here. They're here for a month, three months. We know somebody that actually moved here with their kids and put their kids in school. They liked it so much. So it's really up to you how long you stay but give yourself at least three days. Yeah it's always kind of fun when you arrive at a place and it's like how long did you stay or should you stay for and sometimes like you only need a couple days. Here is really one of those places like Brian said you can be here as long as you want to be. It really checks a lot of boxes and that is why it's such a popular expat community. Now getting around San Miguel, how are you going to do that? It's actually super easy. There are Ubers and taxis. Plenty to come by. You're not going to have a problem there and then there's a lot of city buses and we've talked to people that have been using the city buses as well. So that's another option. Now back to how long should we stay. We've been here for two weeks and I honestly I could stay another two weeks. There are times I'm ready to go. I get bored. There's nothing to do. I want to go but with the place we have and the city itself and the view we have everything about it I could go in a couple weeks. We could yeah and that once again is always a great feeling when we're not so ready to go. Obviously we're ready to go to see a new location but this like we said checks so many boxes that we could stay here long term. One of the most important parts about any video is food or about travel alone or about travel alone right is the food. How is the food? Where is the food? When to eat the food? Any time of day is a good day to eat the food because the food is fantastic. The food is different everywhere we go. It has been you know each of the places that we have visited in Mexico so far every town has something different that they offer and to the point if you really like something in one town make sure you get enough of it because there's really good possibility you're going to get to the next town and they are not going to have it. It's going to be gone. Even the tortillas are different it seems like. I could be wrong but it seems to me like every place we've gone the tortillas have even been different and they're all homemade so they probably are different but we have really enjoyed the food here. We've got a couple recommendations we'll leave down below and the the one that we've been at three times it's probably before before we leave. Carnitas Alguero. This place is fantastic. I think it's three ladies. I don't know. I don't know. An older lady, a younger lady and an even younger lady but they make great food. Check it out. Even if you don't care about the lookout go out there and get some of those tacos. Yeah and very affordable and we mentioned we'll have some links down below or not links but places to look up when you're here to go check out. These are all the affordable options that we came across that we really like the food. Now you can choose if you're somebody that's looking for say something fancier and nicer there's a lot of that here in San Miguel. Probably a lot more than than the affordable options I would say. Now the other thing they have a ton of here is the rooftop bars so if you kind of want to get that overlook of the cathedral in town in the center or just that overlook of all that's going on downtown you have plenty of options as well. If you like fish tacos there's a great fish taco place. That's one of the places we'll put below. Fish tacos are great. One of the things that you think about or I know that we think about when we are visiting in Mexico is the street food scene. Now we have really loved that scene while we have been traveling but when we got to San Miguel we found that that was a lot more limited. There is not that say street taco scene that you have everywhere that you go. It was a lot more it was fruit there was a lot of ice cream. A lot of ice cream which is never a bad thing. Yeah some churros. Some churros stuff like that. Now it might have been a time of day we weren't out past seven eight o'clock at night but with that even being said every place else we've been there's been street food options all day long. Yeah so that's something that you might not get here but you might not need it either. Now I did mention excursions a little bit earlier there are some you can go on the winery I mentioned there's a few others that get you out of town if you're staying for an extended period of time. Right and there's also plenty of food tours if you want to kind of check out that food scene but you don't know where it goes that's a great way to be able to see it all and stay within your comfort zone. There's some history tours and then there's also hot air balloons which we've been watching the hot air balloons each morning when we get up bright and early and they kind of go over not right over the city center but they go around the city of San Miguel. Yeah you can see them out there it's not like Cappadocia Turkey but there's a few of them out there that are kind of fun to watch. Now we chose not to do any excursions on this stretch of our Mexican tour because we got big plans later on so if you want to see some excursions later on that Brian and Carrie are doing stay tuned. Now one question we are asked a lot especially traveling in Mexico is what about solo travel? Did you feel comfortable? Would you feel comfortable? I would say of all the places that we have been so far this would be the number one place that I would recommend if you are a solo travel traveler especially a female solo traveler this would be a really great starting point. Okay what about mobility? If you have any mobility issues you will probably be okay in the city square. Now sidewalks are narrow the streets are cobblestone so once you get out of that area you might struggle a little bit. Now at my ripe old age of 54 I did roll my ankle like I mentioned earlier it's not a big deal I like to continue to bring it up though so Carrie feels a little sympathy for me but that being said you can get around just be careful. Now the question you probably all had is what did we spend for these just about two weeks here in San Miguel? We were here to be exact 13 nights so accommodations is where we're going to start this is where we spend the most money and boy did we spend it here in San Miguel but before I tell you what we spent on it I want to tell you a little bit about our accommodations they were absolutely spectacular. Now if you need to save money on these accommodations you can absolutely go to one of those other areas and neighborhoods that we were talking about that we chose we wanted to be up that hill we wanted that view we felt it was worth it. Now the place that we stayed at was only one bedroom but it has two bathrooms has an absolutely really spacious living room a great dining space a totally functional kitchen and the other really cool thing about it was is it had a that is something we just never find so we would recommend the place we stayed but we totally understand if it might just not be in your budget we did end up paying $1,356 for 13 nights there. Now food out food out is always a big deal it's not only fun to do but you're getting really good food especially here in Mexico food out now again we didn't go to any of those boutique high-end price places that you might want to go we went to kind of more the hole in the wall mom paw shops but we still managed to spend $143 now that doesn't sound like a lot but we ate out almost every day. Now groceries this is where we did spend a little bit but not a whole lot because like I mentioned we weren't near one of those really nice grocery stores so we just tried to make do where we were at we weren't really making really great meals at home but like Brian just mentioned we were mainly eating out as far as for our dinner at least one of those big meals each day so our groceries came to $175 that included going to that grocery store we made sure and we ate breakfast at home we got our snacks we also hit the little city market where you could pick up your vegetables and everything like that and then Brian got some beer to have at the condo we also got some liquor we had some Kahlua and some tequila so that we could make some margaritas Entertainment how much money did we spend on entertainment while we were here we didn't spend any money on anything to get into our entertainment included those beers on the patio and those margaritas so we didn't spend any money on any extracurricular activities what about transportation one uber ride to get here from the bus stop only cost us five dollars so entertainment and our transportation was very minimal so now what did this total up to for our 13 nights here in San Miguel it came to $1,679 now I would say that when I broke all of these costs down all of that almost all of that is our accommodation so if you are looking to visit here even though this is a more expensive location you can absolutely cut those costs way back by picking an accommodation that is not with that view and just cost you a lot less money yeah that's about 129 a day approximately and again you can cut that way way down but god that view that view yeah we would probably still we would do it again the way that we did it but if we were to return we would not probably stay in that upper area we would stay closer to one of the bigger grocery stores kind of that middle mid section maybe near the park because that's kind of middle ground and have that green space the park we're in right now by the way I think it was worth it yeah totally worth it yeah so we hope that you found this informational but also fun um if San Miguel has not been on your list it absolutely 100% should be if you didn't see our other video on San Miguel where we kind of took you around and showed you everything that we did when we first arrived here make sure and check that out okay don't forget the thumbs up love for you to subscribe we'll see you next week cheers