SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Mexico -- Having grown up in Los Angeles, where only the sanest of fireworks were legally sold, I was taught that colorful sparks shooting up higher than 30 cm would surely make someone pay for their reckless abandon. How happy I was to discover here that it's not necessarily true.
After emerging unscathed from the falling embers of a 10-meter-high castillo (fireworks tower), I moved to a safer location for the next two castillos and watched as children danced below with cardboard umbrellas in the brilliant storm.
Located in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende offers more than just pyrotechnics. The well-preserved colonial city is home to beautiful historic buildings that center around a magnificent cathedral, a masterpiece of 18th-century Mexican Baroque architecture. The Biblioteca Publica, a library run by foreign residents of San Miguel, also hosts Sunday tours of colonial homes.