San Miguel, so popular no one will go there - Eric

Ah, San Miguel de Allende, you may have been done in by your awesomeness.
Yogi Berra used to talk about a place so popular no one goes there anymore. For now, crowds are flooding into San Miguel, especially during the high season. That's one of our problems with it. Just too crowded. With too many people, one man's 15th Century World Historic Site with ancient architecture, churches and central plaza just becomes another's 21st Century tourist trap.
Butt our main problem is pollution, especially from bus exhaust. With Marge's health concerns, that's a no-go. Also, San Miguel is way up in the high desert country. It's 6,000 foot elevation is twice as high as Snoqualmie Pass. Also hard on Marge's health.
It wasn't Yogi who said you never get a second chance to make a first impression. But our drive into San Miguel made us feel we had been transported into the most rural area of eastern Washington. The directions were like "Go 18 kilometers past Othello, turn left 20 kilometers to Washtucna and then left 10 kilometers to Dusty." All of a sudden, in the middle of nowhere appears a city of 85,000 people with nasty speed bumps and jammed narrow streets. Not quite the quaint little village promoted by retirees who moved here and reinvented themselves as authors or artists.
After all the research, we had high hopes for San Miguel. Trouble is when searching for the Land of Milk and Honey, once you arrive the milk might be nonfat when you wanted whole.