Santa Fe

Mona has done a great job as our tour guide for Santa Fe. We have seen just enough shops, just enough museums, just enough sights. We began our stay here with dinner down in the Railroad District. We walked and saw a little of the city at night. Santa Fe is sort of like a museum in the middle of a city. Old Town is very strictly kept old – cute little adobe houses, unpaved sidewalks just a few blocks from the Square – while the real city of Santa Fe is out closer to the freeway. Our condo is in the old part of town just a few blocks from the square. GO Guy and Mona got the master bedroom here with a bed out of some issue of House Beautiful. The condo is nice and has a kitchenette, a fireplace and skylights.

From Santa Fe

Day One

The first day we went down to the square to see what we could see. We could see lots of shops (most of which we only window shopped at – although GO Guy did find a $9000 sculpture he was thinking he couldn’t live without). Our first real tourist stop was the Cathedral. It was built in the middle/late 1800’s. The project was begun by Bishop Lamy, the bishop made famous by Willa Cather in her book Death Comes for the Archbishop. Bishop Lamy didn’t die like in her book, he retired and died of old age. It is a very beautiful church, quite different from those we saw in Europe this past spring. Most of those were about powerful people in the area of the church. This was very much about God. The only statues were those of Christ, Mary and the saints.

After good beer and great pizza on a balcony overlooking the square we wandered to the Loretto Chapel. This was the chapel for a girl’s school run by nuns. They needed a staircase to get to the choir loft and so prayed. A mysterious carpenter showed up and asked if he could do the job. He built a beautiful spiral staircase using minimal tools. When the staircase was finished he vanished without a trace and without leaving a bill for materials or workmanship. The staircase is lovely. It is freestanding and has no center support. It was originally built without a handrail but was just too scary for the girls to use so they added one.

We admired the “river”, really a sluggish stream running through town but with nice trees and wandered on to the “oldest church” in Santa Fe which is located next to the “oldest house”. Parts of both of them are alleged to have been built by Indians and were there when settlers first came to Santa Fe.

We had a fun wander up Canyon Road. This is a high-end gallery district and we saw several things that were a lot of fun but way too expensive. We visited Kakawa Chocolate House where we tasted some very unusual hot chocolate and bought treats for dessert. We finished our evening with a wonderful dinner at a restaurant called The Pink Adobe and a great walk home.

Day Two

We started this day with breakfast at Tia Sophia’s where we had eggs, beans, enchiladas and chili. It was very good. Then it was off to see museums. We cruised the gift shops at the Georgia O’Keefe Museum and at the Santa Fe Museum of Art. We have discovered that that is a great way to decide if you want to see what is inside. We are not really art museum people. We did, however, find a gallery of illustrated (think animated movies) art. We each found something that we loved. How can you not love Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner. We ended up at the New Mexico History Museum and the Governor’s Palace. This was more our style. The History Museum was really well done with lots of interesting exhibits. After ice cream on the square and a visit to the Indians selling jewelry on their blankets in front of the Governor’s Palace we came home to collapse. The boys fixed us steaks on the grill for dinner and it was very nice to eat in for a change.

Day Three

Another beautiful sunny day. The nights are clear and coolish – the natives say COLD! But when the sun gets up the temperature does too. I am running around in sleeveless tops while some of them have on their wool jackets. We started the day with Starbuck coffees while SewDiva created two of her “rubbing” scarves. (For new followers: I find a manhole cover that is evocative of the place, rub it with color crayons onto a silk scarf – think leaf rubbings in elementary school – and then dye the scarf when I get it home. They turn out great.) We wandered through the square where GO Guy had a belt custom made (while we watched) to go with his new silver belt buckle. Bear almost got a new Stetson drover style hat but decided that it probably wouldn’t look quite as good in Seattle as it did in Santa Fe. We toured the La Fonda hotel – a 20’s style grand hotel and had another New Mexican yummy lunch on yet another balcony overlooking the square. We drove up to the ski resort to see the sunset. When we left Santa Fe it was warm and sunny so we didn’t have on toasty clothes. By the time we got to the sunset overlook at 10,000’ with the sun going down it was not warm any longer. The boys popped out of the car and started shooting pictures – how much do we love digital! About 20 minutes later two popsicles that resembled Bear and GO Guy popped back into the car. The sun was down and they were frozen so we figured the show was over – we were wrong! That is when the sky exploded into the most beautiful shades of everything between red and yellow. Instead of the clear view from the overlook we got to take pictures from gaps in the trees along the road. Dinner was at Maria’s back in Santa Fe. Talk about yummy!