Living in Versalles Puerto Vallarta

Living in Versalles Puerto Vallarta means living inland, between the Hotel Zone and downtown. It began as an ordinary local residential area and has turned into the part of the city with the restaurants, the cafés and most of the new condo building.

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It is not a tourist district, and that is the whole point of it. Grocery stores, gyms, medical services and cafés here serve the people who live in them rather than the people visiting. The neighbourhood works in September the same way it works in February, because the population that uses it does not leave.

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Doug and Charlotte's other areas are all shaped around people arriving. This one is not, and for a certain kind of reader that is the most interesting sentence on the site.

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The food

This is what Versalles is known for and it is the reason most people end up looking at it.

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A concentration of restaurants, coffee shops and bakeries well beyond what a residential neighbourhood of this size would normally carry. If going out to eat well is a regular part of how you want to spend six months, rather than an occasional event, this is the address that supports it.

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Worth saying plainly: you would be walking to restaurants where people live, rather than to restaurants where people holiday. Those are different rooms.

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Where everything is

Central, which is most of the practical argument for it.

• The beach, five to ten minutes away

• Centro, ten to fifteen

• Marina Vallarta, ten to fifteen

• Costco, La Comer, the hospitals and the major services, close

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The beach, and the honest cost

Versalles is not on the beach and does not pretend to be.

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Most residents drive, cycle, take a bus or call an Uber to get to the water. Five to ten minutes is not far, and it is also not a walk out of your door in flip-flops, which is what a good many people are actually picturing when they imagine this life.

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If the beach is the point, this is the wrong neighbourhood and Zona Romántica is the right one. If the beach is something you want several times a week rather than every morning, Versalles buys you a great deal in exchange.

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That is the third time on this site that being near the water and being able to use it have turned out to be different questions. It is worth asking everywhere.

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Getting around

Walkable inside the neighbourhood, and more car-dependent than downtown.

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Within Versalles you can live on foot: restaurants, cafés, groceries, the gym. Beyond it, most people use a car, a bike or an Uber more often than a Centro resident would.

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Parking is easier than downtown, which sounds small and is not, if you have been reading about Centro and Zona Romántica. New building does put pressure on it in places.

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The construction

This is the thing nobody mentions, and it comes from the same place as everything good about Versalles.

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The neighbourhood is in the middle of a run of new condo development. That is why there are modern buildings, why the restaurants arrived, and why it has the services it has. It is also why there is building work going on, in some streets more than others, and it will be going on while you live there.

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Those are the same fact seen from two sides, in the same way that the density of Bucerías is both why you can walk everywhere and why it is loud.

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So the question to ask about any specific address here is not whether there is construction in Versalles. It is what is happening on this street, and what is approved for the empty lot across from it. The answer changes what six months in that building is like, and it is not in the listing.

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Noise and pace

Quieter than Zona Romántica, and active rather than sleepy.

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There are restaurants and bars and a social life, and it is not a nightlife district. The late noise that defines the busiest parts of downtown is largely absent here. The daytime noise of a neighbourhood being built is not.

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Who is here

The most mixed population on this site, and the most year-round.

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Mexican professionals and families, full-time foreign residents, remote workers, and retirees who wanted an active life with less noise than downtown. Not a season, a neighbourhood.

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If you answered question four on Narrowing It Down with "less than most people assume," Versalles is the clearest answer this site has. Every other area here fills up with Canadians and Americans on your schedule. This one does not, and that is deliberate on the part of the people who choose it.

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In February, and in September

February. Busy in the way a city neighbourhood is busy. The restaurants are full and there are more people about, but the visitor traffic that transforms downtown mostly does not reach here.

September. Much the same, with fewer people in the restaurants. The shops open, the gyms open, the clinics open, because the people who use them live here.

Why it matters. This is the smallest swing of any area on the site. Nuevo Vallarta empties, Zona Romántica and Centro shed their crowds, Punta Mita closes up. Versalles more or less carries on. If the September version of a place is what worries you, this is the one that answers it best.

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Worth knowing: the three city options

Most people who get this far are choosing between Versalles, Centro and Zona Romántica.

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Versalles is residential and modern, a short ride from the water, walkable within itself, easier for parking, and the one whose September looks much like its February. Centro is historic and civic, walkable everywhere, beside the ocean with the beach further than it looks. Zona Romántica is social and beach-led, the most international of the three and the loudest, with Los Muertos a short walk.

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None of the three is better. They suit different people, and the question is which of convenience, history or the beach you would give up last.

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Centro →                                                               Zona Romántica →                                              All ten areas, side by side →

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If this sounds like you

Versalles suits people who intend to live here rather than holiday here, who eat out often, who want a newer building and easier parking, and who are content to travel a few minutes to the water.

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It does not suit people who want to walk onto a beach, who came for cobblestones and old Vallarta, or who would find building work outside the window a problem rather than a phase.

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