Blogs from Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, North America - page 16

Oy, what a day! We started out pretty early, leaving the hotel around 7:30 to get to the Santa Fe plaza pretty eartly. The Santa Fe Plaza is a historical district, with one of the oldest continuously occupied buildings in the U.S., a grand basilica dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi, the area of which is basically a big shopping mall. It's a little dis-heartening that such a grand building, dedicated to such a grand man, is basically a tourist attraction. However, beyond that observation the plaza was somewhat interesting. This is coming from someone who HATES shopping so it must be good. There was an arts fair going on and the entire plaza was covered with artisans selling their wares. Laurie purchased a glass cross necklace, and something else, and we bought a really cool ... read more

Santa Fe wasn't on our original itinerary, but Sophie who we'd met in Fiji said they were going and it sounded like a really nice place so we decided to go on a slight detour before heading up north. The journey was again long and very hot (in the 90s) but we were starting to get used to it and we'd been able to download some new podcasts by Chris Moyles and Scott Mills (good old Radio 1) so that kept us going. We arrived late in the afternoon and quickly found a fairly cheap motel just outside of town. Ofcourse now we were in New Mexico we had to do the right thing and eat mexican food.... so we did, but dont know if it really counts as it was a burito from Taco ... read more

That night we stayed in our ohhh so charming motel in Santa Fe. Yes, the Silver Saddle Motel is accross the street from the one strip club in Santa Fe, 'Cheeks'. Leave it to us to find the one seedy area of an otherwise really hippie/artsy city. Honestly though the people at the motel were extremely nice and helpful, to the point that they agreed to leave our door open with the key inside so we could arrive late. Got to love New Mexico. We woke up the next morning and went to downtown Santa Fe. We had a limited time there so we headed to the main plaza to see some of the cool artwork that is sold on the street there. Apparently you aren't allowed to take pictures of their artwork? Jerks. Overall though ... read more

After a long day of llama trekking, the Touchstone Crystal achievers had the fun experience of visiting the Santa Fe School of Cooking. Led by Chef Rocky, we all tried our hands at some new techniques. A couple of our group members were not self-proclaimed chefs, but they were good sports and got involved in the activities. Our menu was pork carne adovada, enchiladas, homemade tortillas, green chile sauce, guacamole, refried beans and a fabulous bread pudding. We had good wine, a good sunset, good felllowship and great food. ... read more

We departed Tucumcari around 10:30 am local -- MDT. We'd planned Santa Fe as a fuel stop with an intended destination of Page AZ. Things started off fairly well, flying-wise, but then the wind and turbulence kicked in with a vengeance. After only two hours in the air, Ruth wrote at just after 1 pm EDT: "We are down at Santa Fe, 26 knot winds down the runway...plan to wait a bit and see. Beautiful country...challenging flying for eastern greenhorns!" The landing was indeed challenging -- once we found the airport at all. We discovered that some airports in the southwest can be very hard to find, even with the help of GPS, when you're used to scanning a green environment a nice strip of blacktop. The controller had to guide two out of three planes ... read more