On a recent trip to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico I found a Mexico that I knew 40 years ago. What we found was a city full of life and something interesting around every corner from parades, jazz groups playing on the corner or a mariachi band serenading a soon-to -be bride and her girlfriends. People always ask if we felt safe there and I can honestly say that every evening, after dinner, we would walk back 15  to 30 minutes to the house we rented (well, one night we did take a cab because we had already walked several miles that day) with no feeling of concern or foreboding. Many a time we would approach complete strangers on the street and ask for directions and if their English was not very good, they did the best they could to direct us. The only sirens I heard were from the ambulance on the way to a hospital near where we stayed. In fact, other than traffic enforcement officers, the only armed police we saw were assisting with traffic at a holiday parade we watched one day. More on this trip in posts to come but I did want to publish this photo I took one day while walking down the street. We saw few beggars in San Miguel (actually ran into more when we were in Italy last year) and in fact, were told that the authorities were trying to discourage this practice, but we did come across a few, mostly older women or women with young children. This scene was typical in that most people tried to ignore the person asking for the holdout or simply cross the street!