Christmas in Central Mexico: Querétaro and San Miguel de Allende

After starting my new job, I quickly learned one of many great perks of my company is that they close between Christmas and New Years. That meant I got two weeks off and only had to use four vacation days. Rather than stay home and become bored rather quickly, I was lucky enough to join my parents on their exploratory tour of central Mexico. We met up in Houston and landed at the Querétaro airport shortly after. It's really an easy trip. Our itinerary went something like this: two nights in Querétaro, five nights in San Miguel de Allende, four nights in Morelia, and four nights in Mexico City. I was able to do some research going into each destination, so the below is a lot of that plus the fun things we found along the way. I'll cover Querétaro and San Miguel de Allende here and then Morelia and Mexico City in a separate post.

Querétaro

We headed straight to our AirBnb situated in the center of the city. Here is the link. It was fine, nothing fancy and served it's purpose. I wouldn't need to stay here again, but that is also because the city wasn't our absolute favorite. Regardless, it was a central location within walking distance to everywhere worthwhile, which you'll notice in our opinion wasn't a lot.



Querétaro is known for it's Spanish colonial architecture, but not known well enough to be a tourist destination. We ran into basically no tourists until the day we were departing. But they all seemed to be congregating at this amazing little french bakery, Breton. A french bakery in Mexico sounds odd, doesn't it? Well it was delicious and I wish we found it sooner.



We also tried Las Gorditas del Portal for lunch and quickly found out that English menus aren't easy to come by. The Google Translate app was extremely handy and we would have been lost without it. We had tacos and they were fine, but I wouldn't need to go back. I'm sure if we had explored the menu a bit more we would've found something else we would've liked. But their decorations were quite fun!

Last up is the Dodo Cafe and their wonderful drinks. We popped in and enjoyed a few different cocktails, although I'm sure the food is good too. The staff was extremely friendly and used their decent English to walk us through the hand-crafted selections. I would definitely go back!



In between our food and drinks we did some walking. We went to Mirador de Los Arcos for a photo stop. It overlooks the aqueduct of the city and is a really cool viewpoint.

Generally, walking around the city is something we did a lot of. There were some fun little streets and hidden spots we found as we went. Not a ton of touristy things to do, but enjoyable to walk regardless.

San Miguel de Allende

We decided to take an Uber to San Miguel de Allende because they were inexpensive considering it was an 1.5 hour ride from Querétaro. It also helped being driven straight to the entrance of our AirBnB. The house was only a few blocks from the center of town and not too much of a hill.





The first thing we learned about San Miguel de Allende was that it's built on top of a hill and the streets can be pretty steep. We had four days to explore and found no lack of tourists and food options in this quaint, cobble stoned city.





The first thing I want to highlight is our Taste of San Miguel Food Tour, which I'm glad we did early in our trip because it gave us some good places to go for our time in the city. I usually hedge my bets with Google or Yelp reviews to find good restaurants, so it was great having some guidance on day one. I've made a * on the below if it was included on our tour.

• La Parada*: While we didn't totally enjoy what we tried at this Peruvian restaurant while on the tour, we did really enjoy going back for drinks and some corn and potatoes. My dad thoroughly enjoyed this and talked about it many times after we departed. This place was known for it's fish dishes, but that's not really our thing.

• Don Taco Tequila*: A surprisingly delicious spot that we happened to have also gone to the night we arrived in the city. It's vegan, but don't mix that up with lack of taste because the sauce selection was out of this world. Plus they had delicious margaritas that were very reasonably priced.

• Casa del Diezmo*: This made the list because of their Cochinitas Pibil. A dish that involves wrapping pig meat in banana leaves and baking it in a hand-dug pit underground. Topped with pickled onions and some sauce, this was a top-notch taco we went back for a few days later.

• Hecho en Mexico: This was less authentic but had some decent pasta and amazing fresh mango margaritas. We ended up going here twice and sitting on the upper level to enjoy the weather, and of course more margaritas.

• Quince: A high end rooftop bar that was certainly overpriced. We each got a cocktail to enjoy, but it was clearly for the high end tourist crowd who seemed to desire less of an authentic Mexican feel.

• Chocolates y Churros San Augustin*: This was the go-to spot for churros. We each got caramel (cajeta) filled ones and then get them again the following day. It did require you to wait in line, but it went by fairly fast.

• Ice Cream Cart*: Now I don't know the name of this place, but I included a picture for reference. It had homemade ice cream in way too many flavors.

As you can see, San Miguel had many more dining options than Querétaro, at least ones that we could find. It also offered a few non-food related things to see as well. This included walking the lovely streets and exploring the different doors decorated for the holiday season. I loved these wooden door frames filled with fresh flowers and would like to do this to my own one day.



There was also Parque Benito Juarez where my dad and I attempted to jog due to lack of flat streets elsewhere. There were many shops to explore along the Zacateros, especially art shops, which is why this city is such a big ex-pat destination.



We also took a taxi to Charco Del Ingenio and paid the small entrance fee to explore the trails of the botanical garden. It was really beautiful and a welcome change to the building-filled streets of the city. Plus you could enjoy some amazing views of the city from various areas throughout the park.





Our time in Querétaro was luckily short and I'm glad we spent more time in San Miguel de Allende to try some better food. I'd like to think our 4 days was plenty to see the city, but some people might need more time to try each and every restaurant. I wouldn't necessarily need to go back to San Miguel, as I would deem it more of a relaxing destination versus one with a ton to see, but I also wouldn't be opposed. Next up is our time in Morelia and Mexico City!