Santa Fe, NM: A mini getaway. Part II

I wised up on Saturday night and used both earplugs AND a sleep mask and slept about 150% better than the night before.  Still woke up early, but refreshed this time instead of bleary-eyed.  DH and I were up and out of the hotel by 8:00 but were quite surprised to see that the little coffee shop & bakery across the street from the hotel was closed, so we turned around and decided to break our fast at the hotel's restaurant, Amaya, which gets good ratings on various travel forums.  We opted for the continental breakfast at $11 pp, adding some eggs (DH) and crispy bacon (me) for $4 apiece.  We ate outside in the pleasant courtyard and read our books and thus passed a very enjoyable morning.  I didn't take any photos of my own at breakfast, but here is one of the courtyard from the hotel website:

Hotel's photo, NOT mine. 

After breakfast we walked back downtown to the Plaza and poked around for a few hours.  It was very hot that morning, and though I was happy that I remembered to slather on the sunscreen, I was definitely wishing I had remembered to bring along a hat.  We have one major regret from that morning and that is not buying a CD from a woman playing guitar on one of the side streets near the Plaza.  The music was haunting and beautiful but we had no cash on us.  We walked around a bit in search of an ATM or a bank but didn't see any, and after a while we were too tired to persist.  With luck, my DH will be able to find her again sometime this week while he's still in Santa Fe and will bring home the prized CD.

Here are some photos from our wanderings downtown on Sunday:

These beautiful doors were in a courtyard with other gorgeous woodwork

I'm a sucker for brightly colored glassware

After a few hours wandering around downtown we were starting to drag our feet, so we went back to the hotel for an hour or so to read & recharge before heading over to St. John's campus to check in for the Glen Conference and inspect the studio where DH would be teaching for the week.  After that we headed to Museum Hill and chose the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture somewhat randomly from the four to choose form.  In retrospect, I wish we would have chosen the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, but there's always next time.  MIAC was a very impressive museum, nicely appointed and designed.  But as with the Spanish Market, I found myself getting museum fatigue all too soon because to my untrained eye, many displays looked nearly identical.  The various diorama were very interesting and thoughtfully put-together, particularly the cross-section wickiup, and I would have enjoyed seeing more of those.

Koi pond at St. John's

View from DH's studio at St. John's

Museum Hill

Museum Hill

After stopping for a cold drink at the outdoor cafe on Museum Hill, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our 5:30 dinner reservation at Amavi.  It was necessarily early because originally Karin and Linford were joining us but felt compelled to leave in time to attend the welcome reception for the Glen, which started at 7:00.  As it turned out, Amavi exuded its allure on them and they stayed with us through the entire meal instead of leaving after appetizers.  Well, we all just loved it, me especially.  I had done a little research on travel forums, particularly at Trip Advisor, and this was one of the places recommended to me.  Its Mediterranean cuisine combines the best of Spanish, French, Italian, and Greek culinary traditions to provide tasty and inventive dishes.  We had the chilled cucumber gazpacho (DH), the Mezze Salad Trio (Linford), the arugula salad (Karin) and the sweet red pepper panna cotta (me), all of which were passed around.

I'm startin' with the man in the mirror (DH)

They thoughtfully provided a palate cleanser in the form of a cucumber-mint sorbet, which let us dive into our entrees with a renewed sense of anticipation.  All of their meats are locally farmed, cruelty-free, FYI.  We ordered the beef & lentil stuffed eggplant (DH), the grass-fed lamb tortellone (Karin & me), and the summer vegetable fettuccini (Linford).  Everything was excellent, but my personal favorite was my own dish.  Karin and I also had a couple of rounds of the Snap Dragon cocktail, which was a delightful and refreshing vodka & ginger liqueur concoction and the gentlemen drank wine & martinis.  Much to my own disappointment, we had neither the room nor the time to sample dessert, which is truly a pity since their dessert menu is one of the most interesting ones I've run across in simply ages.  Four appetizers, four entrees, four cocktails and one glass of wine brought our grand total to only $198, or basically just under $50 per person.  Add in the fine company, the cheerful atmosphere, and our very engaging server, and I'd call that a bargain.

My sweet DH

The congenial bar

After dinner we made a brief appearance at the college before heading back to the hotel for me to pack.  My flight left ABQ at 8:30 so we had to get up pretty early to check out of the hotel, return the rental car, rent a new one for DH, and get me to the church airport on time.  I'm not normally very chipper at that time of day, but the stunning sunrise that greeted us on the open road made slight amends.  I wish I had been better able to photograph it!  Flights home were relatively crash free AND on time, so I have no complains.   I also finished the Harbach book, The Art of Fielding, and got a good start on Pie Town by Lynne Hinton, which I finished when I got home.  The latter isn't very good, and for the first third of the book I was kicking myself for not test-driving the first chapter before purchasing it.  It improved a bit on acquaintance, though I probably would not have stuck with it if I'd had an alternative to read.  That being said, my July reading slump seems to be over because including The Emerald Atlas, which I read on the way out to Santa Fe, I read over 1,200 pages in the last 60 hours, and that's even with a pretty full schedule!

Sunset at St. John's College

Sunrise reflected in a raindrop-ridden rearview mirror

Too bad about the resolution on this one but I had try to shoot this rainbow sundog. 

DH driving me back to ABQ.  We were both a little sad.

Santa Fe, NM: a mini getaway. Part I

Every year my husband teaches a week-long workshop at the Glen, held every August on the campus of St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM.  It's sponsored by the journal Image, whose tagline is "Arts, Faith, Mystery," and they hire experts in various fields such as painting, poetry, songwriting, fiction writing, drawing, photography, etc, with evening lectures and concerts given by some of the workshop leaders.  It's largely, though not exclusively, an ecumenical Christian setting.

Last year I joined my husband for approximately 30 hours at the end of his gig at the Glen, but this year I added on an extra night (for a grand total of 54 hours in NM) and we went out a couple of days ahead of the workshop--my schedule at work dictated that it be this particular weekend, but we had the serendipity of meeting up with our friends, Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, collectively known as the music group Over the Rhine.  Not only were we on the same flight landing in ABQ, we booked ourselves into the same hotel and we had the great privilege of seeing them in concert in Santa Fe!

Flying Star Cafe in Albuquerque

Friday was taken up with travel, with a delay out of Atlanta (as always--they like to brag that it's the world's busiest airport but they're not so forthcoming with their on-time record, that's for sure!), which means that our Santa Fe dinner plans were scrapped in favor of eating in Albuquerque.  Knowing how much I love desserts, Karin & Linford recommended the Flying Star Cafe.  Very fun & funky interior, pretty good food (would have been better if the salads hadn't been positively swimming in dressing) served up fast, and a dessert display that could put you in a diabetic coma just by looking at it.  They had three refrigerated cases to showcase their desserts, one for their pies alone.  Too bad we were tired and reluctant to get hopped up on sugar that late at night to do more damage 'cause the peach-raspberry pie a la mode split four ways was the highlight of my meal.  Food was a little bit on the pricey side (slice of pie a la mode was $9, one salad + beer was $18), but the portions were fairly ample. 

Here is but one of their dessert case displays

Our home for the weekend was the Hotel Santa Fe & Hacienda, about a 15 minute walk from the Plaza.  We booked it online knowing very little about it other than it claims to be the only Native American-owned hotel in the city and it was one of the few places within walking distance of the Plaza that still had rooms available for under $200/night.  Good enough for us.  My husband and I really lucked out because we booked a regular king bedroom for $169/night but they upgraded us to a jr. suite (a $265/night value), so we had an additional living area with a pull-out sofa, desk/table, wet bar area, and television.  It's a large(ish) hotel, at least to us--we mostly stay in smaller inns or B&Bs when we travel--but it doesn't have that impersonal feel I associate  with other hotels of similar size.  And may I just say here that I LOVE that it doesn't go over the top with Southwestern kitsch? It's mostly understated Southwestern elegance in the public spaces and in our room, and I love the many sculptures and local art featured all around the property. All of the staff members we encountered were extremely pleasant, as was the property in general.  All other things being equal, I would stay here again in a heartbeat.  We made plans to use the inviting swimming pool and hot tub a couple of times but we never actually made it down there. I guess I packed my bathing suit for nothin'. 

Our living room

This bed was amazingly comfortable!

Desk & wet bar

One of the many sculptures around the property

A beautiful urn set into the wall

We agreed to meet Karin & Linford for a late breakfast at Pasqual's on Saturday, so when I woke up at 6:00, still on Eastern Time despite only about 5 hours of sleep, I got ready for the day and when my husband woke up, we decided to go out and explore.  We sought our first destination, Collected Works, a wonderful independent bookstore in the old town, with a twofold purpose: to replace a missing copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Orchard Keeper that my husband had been counting on reading this week and to fortify ourselves with some coffee to keep us going until our breakfast at 11:00.  I also picked up a small box of salted caramels (alas, disappointing) and a novel called Pie Town by Lynne Hinton.  I had a customer tell me about this book just last week and since it's set in New Mexico, I bought it for the trip home. 

Colorful Cafe Pasqual's

Breakfast at  Cafe Pasqual's was a lot of fun, not to mention colorful!  They offer a very wide range of breakfast and lunch items and we all enjoyed our smoked salmon & cucumber on toasted brioche (DH), smoked trout hash with poached eggs (Karin & Linford), and an egg and guacamole quesadilla (me).  Each couple also shared a cup of the cold avocado soup to start.  Three of us had a glass of freshly squeezed juice, and one a la carte order of toast & jam brought our meal to $96.  Again, I admit I was a little surprised with the price since it didn't seem like we had ordered extravagantly--we hadn't even ordered coffee, much less mimosas.  Coming off a recent vacation to Anguilla, I feel a little jaded when it comes to restaurant pricing, so that's saying something.  But it was all excellent and the company was even better, and best of all, our window table provided us with outstanding people-watching opportunities!

Our good buddies, Karin & Linford

 It was close to 1:00 when we parted ways: our friends back to the hotel to prepare for their concert while DH and I opted to walk around the Plaza.  I didn't know at the time of booking our hotel, but one reason there was such a dearth of reasonable accommodations was because it was Spanish Market weekend.  Streets were closed off all around the Plaza for artists and vendors to set up their booths.  The following comment just may mark me as a Philistine, but I have to admit that after walking up & down the second avenue of vendors that all of their wares started to look alike: the jewelry, the art, the religious icons & statues.  We poked around for about an hour and when it started to rain, we made for the Georgia O'Keeffe museum (admission $18 for the two of us), where we walked through the small galleries and watched the two short films.  I had read many reviews proclaiming disappointment that not many O'Keeffes were on exhibit, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were a good many of them.  I thought the museum was very well done, indeed.  We enjoyed the short film on O'Keeffe's life, narrated by Gene Hackman, but the second film on artists' use of photographs in their work was both clumsily edited and lacking articulate interviewees. 

No photos allowed inside the museum except for here in the lobby.  Note the signature poppies.

We saw this couple on our walk back to the hotel.  Fun!

We went back to the hotel to rest & freshen up (all that walking, the sun, & the altitude contrive to make one sleepy!) before leaving for the Over the Rhine concert at the intimate venue of Sol Santa Fe, about a 15 minute drive from the hotel.  They are the sweetest people in the world and reserved tickets and a table for us.  We ordered the local beer (excellent) and the grilled cheese from a very limited menu (it was god-awful AND they shortchanged us) and settled in to enjoy the show.  Now I'm clearly a biased source because OTR have been friends with my husband and me for quite some time now.  But I am not blowing wind up your ass when I say that they give as fine a live performance as I've ever heard.  No smoke & mirrors, no distraction, just a couple of performers and music at its purest-- searching, reaching, and revealing.  And this all in the face of some major technical difficulties.  Apparently someone tripped backstage somewhere and shorted out the lights.  They performed in near-darkness and had to put up with sound & light crew interrupting the flow of everything, but they are also commensurate professionals and kept up a steady stream of banter to distract us while ladders were being toted about behind them on stage.

View from the parking lot of Sol Santa Fe

First song--the lighting was spot-on.  (so to speak!)

Here's the odd orange mood lighting from the rest of the concert

NB: I have tried unsuccessfully to upload a video of my favorite Over the Rhine song that I shot with my iPhone that night.  OTR has given me permission to post it, but if any of you Blogger users can give me advice, I'd appreciate it.  When clicking on the "insert a video" icon and uploading, I get an error message.

After their post-concert obligations the four of us met up in our suite (that upgrade came in handy!) for some liquid vitamins.  Vitamins V and G, to be precise, supplemented with some medicinal tonic. We talked story until the wee hours.

TBC...but until then, here are a few photos from around Santa Fe:

How much is that gander in the window?

At the Spanish Market festival downtown

I loved these funky fishes

Just a cool tree

Here's Linford gesticulatin' for a story

NB: All photos in this post are mine, shot either with my iPhone or a small point and shoot Pentax. 

Four Kachinas B&B -- simply charming!

When I was in Santa Fe two weekends ago, my husband checked out of his dorm room at St. John's College to stay with me at a little b&B called The Four Kachinas. We ended up getting the last available room, and it was booked solid for *weeks* on either end of our stay, so it felt providential, as Anne Shirley might say.

The atmosphere is a serene one, with a courtyard fountain quietly bubbling away amidst gardens dappled with sunlight. Tables with chairs dotted around. We’re in the Kachina Room – high-ceilinged, queen-bedded, and bursting with Southwest charm. We have a door leading to a private patio for two on one side and a door leading to the garden courtyard on the other. There’s also a comfortable sofa, a flat screen tv(which we didn’t turn on once) and the quietest air conditioner I’ve ever heard. A ceiling fan and screened windows make the most of the high desert air to cool the room quite comfortably without the a/c, if one prefers. The bathroom is compact, with a bath-shower combo, thick, fluffy towels, and outfitted with Gilchrist & Soames toiletries.

Clockwise from top left: our private patio for two, a sleeper sofa in a decorate Kachina-
themed alcove, our very comfy queen bed, our bathroom where the kachina theme continues

The room is altogether charming and we felt damned lucky to get it—my weekend trip was booked completely last minute to join up with my husband who had already been out there for a week teaching a workshop at St. John’s College. The dorm room where the college put him up, while being perfectly adequate to his needs, was only furnished with a twin bed, so we had to scramble to find a room. I wanted a room where I could walk the downtown area while he was still teaching, but finding one with charm and local color that also didn’t break the bank was a challenge.

The breakfast spread is quite good. They offer one hot entrée each morning, and the first morning we were there it was a mushroom & cheese soufflé. They also offer a variety of breads, cereals, yogurt, and a remarkable fruit plate with ten different kinds of fresh fruit. Coffee, tea, and freshly squeezed orange juice rounded out the offerings. Because we had to leave before breakfast on our second morning to catch an early flight out of Albuquerque, Walt, the innkeeper, arranged to leave some yogurt and cereal for us in the communal refrigerator in the breakfast room.

The breakfast room doubles as a lounge or tea room for the remainder of the day, where the innkeepers provide complimentary coffee, tea, sodas, bottled water, and homemade cookies—perfect for that late afternoon pick-me-up after exploring all day. They also provide maps of the town and the region for guests to take with them, and they’ve collected menus from dozens of restaurants in town for guests to peruse in order to best choose their meals out. The communal refrigerator is also great for guests who have leftovers or who want to keep bottles of wine chilled to enjoy in their rooms later.

The Plaza was only a 10 minute leisurely stroll (shorter if one has a brisker pace or doesn’t stop to windowshop along the way), but the location was quiet enough not to be bothered by noise from traffic or tourists. In short, it was practically perfect in every way, and I look forward to my next trip to Santa Fe and the Four Kachinas.

Milagro 139 for dinner: we met some dear friends, the Detquists, for dinner on Friday night, and they made reservations for us at Milagro 139. We all enjoyed our meal in the pleasant, relaxed courtyard atmosphere. We had two rounds of Silverado margaritas, guacamole prepared at the table, two pear & spinach salads, one steak, one salmon, and two stuffed poblanos. We finished up with a trio of desserts: saffron flan, mango sorbet, and just to be as decadent as possible, a cheesecake chimichanga. Yes, I said deep-fried cheesecake. Considering that each round of drinks was $40, our bill wasn’t as outrageous as I was expecting—it came to about $230, plus tip. Everything was fresh and tasty, but above all it was the company that was so wonderful.

The Detquists, as we collectively call our friends, Karin Bergquist and Li'ford Detweiler from Over the Rhine, were at the same Image conference as my husband. They've been attending the Glen workshop together for nearly a decade now, and on the last night the duo performed songs from their new album. Showing a photo of them is as good as way to conclude this blogpost as any: