Paving stone, San Miguel de Allende
In San Miguel, with its ridiculously narrow sidewalks, irregular surfaces, cobblestones, and missing access covers, you can’t walk and look at the same time – you need to keep your focus clearly on the ground. However, this can be an unexpected delight, as many of the historic paving stones in El Centro display the most amazing patterns and colors. I have not found out what type of stone this is, or where it was quarried, but it has been polished to a wonderful sheen by the millions of Mexican feet passing over it over the years. I would assume the occlusions you can see, typical of all these stones, were possibly shellfish of some kind originally embedded in the surface.