Perched high in Mexico's central highlands, San Miguel de Allende shimmers with light and history.

The first time I came to San Miguel was 30 years ago.

When I returned three decades later, it felt like déjà vu. The magic hit me hard all over again.

The light dancing across the beautiful buildings. The glistening cobblestone streets. Church spires and mountain views everywhere I looked. And the quiet. Even in the middle of town, life somehow felt calmer.

But it wasn't until I started getting invited to dinners in people's homes, dancing with strangers who quickly became friends, and having conversations that lasted for hours that I realized the beauty wasn't what had captured my heart.

It was the people.

That's what makes San Miguel different.

After the Second World War, veterans from the United States discovered they could use the GI Bill to study art and Spanish at the Instituto Allende. Their money went further here than anywhere at home.

So the people who came weren't tourists or executives. They were painters. Musicians. Dancers. Poets. Philosophers. The iconoclasts, the ones who wanted to make something and needed room to do it.

That's who built the foreign community here 80 years ago, and it's still the DNA of this place.

There is nowhere else in Mexico quite like it. In a lot of towns, foreigners arrive and live alongside the local community. Here they've been intertwined for three generations. In a town of 174,000, there are more than 100 nonprofits, most started by newcomers working alongside Mexican neighbors. This town depends on them, embraces them, and celebrates them.

You are not the first foreigner to arrive. You're the latest in a very long line, and there's a place already made for you.

The one where you finally paint. Or write the book. Or learn to throw a pot, at 64, badly, with people who don't care.

That's not nostalgia for the 1940s. It's happening right now, every day, in studios all over this town.

And it draws the world in. The San Miguel Writers' Conference. The Guanajuato International Film Festival. Jazz festivals. Three operas in a town this size.

Warm and sunny nearly every day. Cool at night. Two months of rain a year, and even then it usually rains for about an hour in the afternoon before clearing up.

You'll want a sweater in the evening. That's about the extent of the problem.

Nobody is hurrying. Meals take longer. Conversations don't get cut short because someone has to be somewhere.

You'll find it frustrating for about three weeks. Then one day you'll notice your shoulders have come down, and you won't want to go back.

You keep running into people. You meet someone at dinner on Tuesday and see them at the market on Saturday. You have coffee with someone once, then they're at the same lecture, and then they introduce you to somebody else.

Everywhere else I've lived, it took years to feel like part of a community. Here it takes months.

But the town has changed since 2020, and the change is still happening.

Young families arrived, choosing to raise kids somewhere walkable and slower, where childhood still happens outdoors. Remote workers followed, people who wanted somewhere beautiful to live and work and had no interest in a big city built around nightlife.

The average age in Love in San Miguel, the singles community I founded here, is 53.

If you're wondering whether you'd be the youngest person in the room, you wouldn't.

More than 350 restaurants in a town this size.

Natural thermal hot springs, 10 to 15 minutes away, surrounded by beautiful gardens. People go every week. The water is genuinely healing, and the afternoon that follows is genuinely lost.

El Charco del Ingenio. Ancient aqueducts. Pyramids an hour away. Guanajuato, another UNESCO World Heritage city, just 90 minutes away.

Tennis. Swimming. Horseback riding. Hiking. A personal trainer for a fraction of what you'd pay back home.

Live music is everywhere. One of my favorite things is that most shows start around 6 p.m. and end by 9 or 10.

You can hear a wonderful band, have a proper night out, and still be home in bed by 10:30.

I'm 55, and I've never lived anywhere else quite like that.

There are late-night places if you want them. Most of us don't.

Whatever staying active means to you, you'll find it here. And it comes with built-in friends.

One afternoon at Hotel Matilda, a flash mob of opera singers appeared from every corner of the courtyard. Angelic voices rising into the sky.

That's just a Tuesday here.

There are people who've lived here happily for 20 years without learning a word, and I find that a little embarrassing to admit.

But if you want Mexican friends, not just an expat circle, you'll want the language.

The good news is that this town is set up for it. Excellent Spanish schools, private tutors, and regular conversation groups where nobody minds that you're terrible at first. Everybody is.

Most people feel it for the first few days.

And then there's another choice.

You can simply enjoy this town as it is. Plenty of people do. Or you can contribute something and leave it a little better than you found it.

In my experience, the happiest people choose the second.