Christmas Eve in Santa Fe

---

Slept in today, Tarragon was very happy to be in the bed between us for a bit longer this morning. While we are in Santa Fe, we will be having breakfast at the hotel every day, mainly to take advantage of our food credit with comes with the gold level of Hilton Honors.

As we walked to the restaurant the fireplace in the lobby was a blaze, with real pinon wood. The smell was delightful. Jerry has been talking about the smell of a pinon wood fire for weeks before this trip and now I understand why.

There are three choices for breakfast, the standard buffet, eggs, bacon, etc., only difference is that the condiments are salsa and jalapeños, a breakfast burrito or a continental buffet. I had the burrito, which was really good, green chilis on the inside red chili sauce for the outside. Jerry had the continental.

At the moment we are just getting ready for our day out about the town. Tarragon is crashed on his blanket and quite content.

Traveling with Tarragon

One of my followers asked me what it was like to travel with a cat, so I thought I would take a few moments to explain how we do it. First, he has been traveling with us for a few years so he is pretty use to it. Second, when we fly with him, we fly first class so that he has more room under the seat in front of us, yes Tarragon is very spoiled and has never flown economy in his life. Finally, he has a special travel only carrier so he can distinguish between the vet carrier and the travel carrier. He also has his own suit case that contains his food, litter box, scooper, litter (I suppose you could buy it upon arrival, we just find it easier to have it upon landing), his brush and of course his laser toy.

When we fly, we try very hard to get direct flights so we can avoid long layovers, the ideal time for flying is nor more than 9 hours, including layovers. When driving we try to keep the drive time to less than 6 hours and time our arrival to any destination at check in time. We did discover this summer that he gets sea sick if the water is choppy so we try to keep in as much in the middle of the boat as possible.

The hardest thing about traveling with him is finding hotels that are pet friendly. Even if they say they are pet friendly you have to be careful that their definition of pet includes cats, we have had some issues with that in the past. Several Hilton and IHG (especially Kimpton) are dog and cat friendly.

Finally, we make sure we bring something, like a blanket, that he is familiar with so he is always comfortable in the room.

Back to our day.

After breakfast, we were off to the state capital building. Why would we go to the capital building? Mainly because it has an art display on the 4^th floor which is free to the public. Unfortunately, it was closed, even though the website said it would be open on Christmas Eve. We will just work it into another day.

Next was a short walk to the oldest house in the United States, built in 1640 something. It was a nice walk not to cold but very gray and a slight drizzle, the forecast was for rain most of the day, so before we left the hotel, we picked up some umbrellas from the front desk. This of course meant we were walking advertisements for Hilton all day, but at least we were dry.

After our morning walking tour was had to go to Whole Foods to get some chips for our picnic tomorrow and a few other items we needed for the room. Before that we went to a deli called Sassella and got sandwiches for our day in the mountains tomorrow. The deli was a great Italian style deli and looking forward to the picnic tomorrow.

After our errands it was lunch time and we went to Tomasita’s. This is the place to go in Santa Fe, everyone I talked to that has been here or was from here said this was a must. They were right, everything was very good. The sign coming in says “Our Red Chili is Hot” and hot it was, but oh so good. They also make a very good Sangria of which I had two. We started by each having a cup of Tortilla soup, it was good but needed a little heat and some salt. We both then had a version of tamale and enchiladas, only difference was mine had two tamales and a cheese enchilada while Jerry’s had one with a beef enchilada. The tamales were stuffed with pork and were excellent, both covered with red sauce and the enchilada with green. With every meal no matter what you had you also got an order of sopaipillas. These were different than the last batch we had as they were sprinkled with sugar and served with a honey butter. They were really good, even though I am not a huge fan of honey.

After lunch was a bit of a driving tour of some drive by sights, the US Court house, Scottish Rites Masonic Temple and the highlight was the Cross of the Martyrs. We walked to the top and along the path were 20 different plagues that outlined the history of Santa Fe from 500 AD to the present. It was very interesting and the view at the top was spectacular even if it was a cloudy and rainy day.

The sightseeing portion done it was back to the room for a bit of wine-thirty before the Farolito walk on Canyon Road. This is a long-standing tradition on Christmas Eve in Santa Fe. Many of the art galleries (and there are hundreds) and homes long Canyon Road place paper bags filled with sand and a candle in the middle to line the path of their driveways or businesses. The history of the Farolito dates back to 1590 and the time of the Spanish control of New Mexico. To get to the start, or our start, we opted to take a Lyft, because to walk there and back would have been over 4 miles and my ankle could not take it, we walked 2 miles touring the Farolito walk as it was.

The rain did put a bit of a damper on the festivities, but it was still a pretty amazing sight and the pinon smell of the scatter bonfires filled the air. We started our walk at exactly the right time, yes some of the places were still setting up, but if we would have waited any longer the crowds would have been overwhelming. By the end of our walk, it was already almost wall to wall people.

The end of the walk was still over a mile from our hotel so we continued on until we arrived back. We had a bit more wine as we got dressed for Christmas Even Dinner at La Fonda, one of the oldest hotels in Santa Fe. Tarragon also got a fair amount of attention. He is having a very difficult time deciding where to sleep, and when we got back, he could barely be bothered to look up at us let alone get off the couch for his welcome petting.

Dinner was a short walk, which was good since in total we walked 6.4 miles today (including to and back from dinner.) Should you ever find yourself in Santa Fe, this is a must go to restaurant (and we have 7 more to hit before we leave.) The menu is a combination of classic fine dining with a New Mexican twist. Best part was we got a great table, no cold breeze, and were not rushed in any way. We departed from our standard vacation aperitif of Champagne and had Martinis instead. They were perfect, the classes chilled, and old-style cocktail glasses out of the 20’s. Then the food began to roll in. We started with a pretty good tortilla soup, better than this afternoon, that we split. We then both had a Caesar Salad, the twist here was the dressing was cotija cheese instead of parmesan and the croutons were red chile sourdough. It was a great salad; it makes the top 5.

Jerry went totally New Mexican and had the Rellenos de La Fonda. Tow chile rellenos served with pasole, black beans, sopaipilla and Christmas Chili (red and green.) He said it was the best chile rellenos he ever had and the sauces were spot on. The rellenos were very good, crispy and flavorful.

One of the specialties is the prime rib, which they informed us they were out of, so instead I ordered the Wagyu beef, it had some very interesting sides pearl pasta stuffed with roasted red onion and a poblano chimichurri. However, it turned out they were out of that, but suddenly prime rib was back on the table. It was perfectly cut and huge, I could not finish it. It was served with asparagus covered in hollandaise sauce and some silky mashed potatoes. The thing that put it over the top was not only the sour cream horseradish sauce, but the roasted red pepper sauce with a kick. When you combined the two it was a flavor bomb.

It was a lovely evening, so much better than some of our Christmas Eve experiences dining out. After dinner was a slow walk home, not only stuffed but the ankle was killing me. Now back in the room having some Sparkling Gruet to finish out the Christmas Eve and finishing my blog post.

The dish of the day was a very difficult choice, the tamales were fantastic, Jerry’s rellenos were the best ever, and the prime rib was one of the best I have ever had. It was a close call but at the end of the day the rellenos won out.

Tomorrow is a day trip so less walking more driving.

---

Photos

Rellenos la Fonda
Dish of the Day