Seattle retirees are reinventing themselves in the hills of San Miguel
It's Friday night at Bella Italia, and if it weren't for the smell of corn roasting on a sidewalk grill and the mariachis singing in the town square a block away, you might think this crowded Italian restaurant tucked behind stone walls in an outdoor courtyard was somewhere in Rome — not in San Miguel de Allende, a desert town deep in the heart of Mexico.
Lights strung across the trees flicker in the warm breeze as waiters uncork bottles of Chianti and deliver plates of fresh mozzarella, salami and roasted peppers. At a table near the bar, a group from Seattle polishes off platters of roasted duck as jazz trumpeter and Oregon native son Doc Severinsen takes the stage.
Looking much younger than 81 in his bluejeans and white shirt, he's packed the house as he always does when he leaves his retirement retreat in the hills above town to jam with a local Mexican band.
"There's an old saying," says Larry Sands, a former advertising executive from Tacoma, glancing at a group of silver-haired women shimmying and swaying at the next table over.
"People go to Florida to die. People come to San Miguel to live."
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