San Miguel Friends
San Miguel de Allende is a friendly place. It’s not unusual to strike up a conversation with strangers and then wind up having dinner together. That’s how we ended up at Don Taco Tequila with Julie and Charlie from San Francisco, who were visiting San Miguel for the first time. They had kids similar in age to ours, so there was plenty to talk about. Charlie was an SFFD Battalion Chief and career firefighter who briefly served as Fire Response Specialist for Tesla. He had some interesting stories about how Elon Musk managed the Tesla factory.
Tour groups are another place to make new friends. We met Dixie on the tour of Guanajuato and had lunch together. She was staying with a longtime friend in San Miguel de Allende who would soon celebrate her 100th birthday! Dixie worked for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Wisconsin and Arizona, and her late husband was Pedro E. Guerrero, who was Wright’s photographer for 20 years. Again, such interesting stories!
Our friends Elaine and Moose have a house in San Miguel, and we got together a few times while we’ve been here. Elaine and I met online (Princeton Parent-Net) over twenty years ago, and finally met in person last year - right when Elaine had just been diagnosed with multiple myeloma. Elaine has now completed her cancer treatment, which included a bone marrow transplant. She looks wonderful!
We invited Elaine and Moose to have dinner at our condo, and they brought along two friends, Barb and Stu, formerly from Chicago and now living in San Miguel. For dinner, I decided to hire a private chef - something I’ve been curious to try for some time now. Chef Julian did all the shopping, prep, cooking and clean-up. The smoke alarms were over-sensitive and went off more than once, but otherwise the evening went smoothly. It was nice being able to relax with our friends and not have to worry about the meal. We talked for hours about travel, life in San Miguel, adventures with our kids, and bucket lists. I hope we’ll cross paths again soon.
