The quaint street in Guanajuato where Escuela Mexicana is located. (Photo by Helen Paris Riemer)

I am sitting in the Jardin de la Union, trying to conjure up visual images to remember informal Spanish commands. Across from me, Rini, is surrounded by Mariachis and belting out “Mexico Lindo” while swinging her wine glass in ecstasy. Her lesson book has been tossed aside and her homework forgotten.

Yes, there are mummified human bodies on display in Guanajuato, but that's not what we are here for. We are here to attend classes.

Guanajuato is an absolute treasure. Having barely heard of it a month before, now we were enchanted. Take a week, enroll in Spanish school and rent a private apartment. Ours was fully furnished with a king size upper loft and had an incredibly stocked kitchen, not just pans and glassware but coffee, rice, juices, spices, pancake mix and more.

It was run by blushing, flirty Ruben. He said he was single, but who was the Latin lovely peeking from his quarters downstairs?

Casa Carcamanes (the apartment) is very secure. The ground floor entry door was always locked and Ruben was forever tending his garden café and fountain on the main floor (delightful for chocolate cake in the afternoon).

And it’s just around the corner from the Jardin de Union – Guanajuato’s meeting, strolling, eating and listening to mariachis place. A bottle of wine in that plaza is $20, a mariachi song is $10 - not exactly cheap, but who needs cheap when you can have this?

Besides, the apartment is inexpensive; $300 for six nights, located right in the thick of things. The school, Escuela Mexicana, is also cheap; $100 for the first week with a one time registration fee of $35. Each week thereafter is $100 or less with special deals for longer stays.

They also provide economical accommodations close to the school – students can rent private rooms in a local residence and share the living areas.

The building, which is located on a car-free cobbled street close to everything, is segmented into many little classrooms, stairs and open sky areas. On arrival you take a seat in a café type room with other first timers. A staff member then has everyone put their name on a list. One by one you are called to a private room for a two minute interview, where your level of proficiency is determined.

Casa Carcamanes, the apartment where we stayed. (Photo by Helen Paris Riemer)

Back in the little café you’ll be brought a piece of paper outlining your schedule, and classes will start immediately. Most students take the regular program of four one-hour classes per day. The teachers are bright, intelligent, young locals who are all in love with language and teaching, all with training and certification.

Your fellow students will be an eclectic and interesting mix. Our classmates included a mysterious Japanese tango teacher from Argentina; she would disappear from town on Fridays, not to be seen till Monday – “Exploring,” she said. There was a lady lawyer from Philadelphia, an elegant single woman ‘in finance’ from Boston, a shy male Norwegian writer who stuttered of the Fjords, and many others.

Guanajuato is very safe, and the camaraderie of the daily classes inevitably leads to encountering new buddies for excursions and glasses of wine in the plazas and restaurants.

After classes, go exploring. Try strolling through the little city to the Presa (the reservoir) past the market where you can perch on stools at the spotless, stainless steel ceviche stand. Here you can order crispy tostadas heaped with shrimp on avocado, garnished with shredded lettuce and chunks of tomato, and squish lime over it – moan with pleasure while you munch. Ride the local bus and visit the museums (the stoic can investigate the museum of mummies on the other end of town).

After 4 p.m. the university students spill out and fill the streets with vivacity, beauty, youth and exuberance. They sit on the stairs of the theatre Juarez, fill the plazas and clog the pedestrian only roads. They buy plastic cups of spiced shucked corn, sit on curbs and eat with disposable spoons while they flirt. They talk, laugh, and mill about in all the free spaces as we sip wine in the Jardin restaurants, and buy songs from the mariachis.

The exit from the underground road. (Photo by Helen Paris Riemer)

Day trips from Guanajuato include the lovely San Miguel de Allende, which is one hour away); Guadalajara, four hours; and Tlaquepaque, three hours.

Vehicles taking you to the bus station will travel normally above ground, past shops and houses, but coming back you will be driving underground in the abandoned silver mines that tunnel under the city and are now used as one way roads. You disembark in a softly lit cave, at the sign that reads, “Centro Historico," and follow the crowd to the stairs and up into the sunshine.

Pilates and yoga classes are held daily at the health club near the corner where the Jardin street curves toward the school. Up the stairs, on the second floor, an inner walkway hangs over the open lower level, railings corral participants waiting with rolled up towels.

The small studios for aerobics, spinning, and yoga are packed with gyrating figures and pulsating music. The walk-in price is $4. Drop by earlier in the day and put your name on the list because you are not guaranteed a space. Our Pilates teacher was an exotic butterfly bird of a woman. Her small tight body was full of energy and irrepressible flow. With her eyes alight, she kept dancing and moving when the class was over, like a pixie.

On the way to school you cut through a small plaza between Casa Carcamanes and the Jardin. Breakfast in the square is tamales, buns and pastries. A few half-awake students sit talking on the curb with open cornhusk wraps. Fingers pinch off firm, hot polenta hiding a bit of chopped chicken spiced with zesty green sauce. The bun and pastry man is on the corner with his big basket, the coffee nook is open for takeout, and the tamale lady is on the other side of the fountain, beside the flower vender.

In the evening, coming home, the scene has changed. Customers crowd around a taco stand with a single bulb gently spotlighting the family operation – dad cooking, mom helping and kid handling the money.

Fat hisses and onions pop on the hot metal grill where dad tends to four kinds of deliciously spiced meat, chopping it fine for the tacos, dishing out mounds onto tiny hot tortillas and adding a pinch of cilantro – you add your own salsa and lime. Even though you’ll be tired and your stomach will be full from the evening of wine, food and music in the Jardin, who could resist?