We spent another day enjoying Santa Fe.
Like yesterday, we started the day with breakfast at one of the local eateries, The French Pastry Shop. After this, we returned to the hotel and took Emerson back to the pool, which she really enjoys.
By late morning, we’d changed for the day and picked up the car from the valet to drive to Museum Hill, which houses (unsurprisingly) a number of museums.
We started by visiting the Museum of International Folk Art. Wow! Talk about eclectic. Here’s a sample of what we saw on display…
An exquisitely detailed miniature circus:
A Spanish heritage exhibition dedicated to Flamenco:
An exploration of sacred blessings and good fortune across Asia:
And, Alexander Girard’s vast collection and purpose-built display of over 100,000 toys, dolls, icons, and other forms of ethnic expressions from around the world:
We then had lunch at the Museum Hill Cafe before heading the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens, which was enjoyable though still a bit of a work-in-progress:
We then returned to the historical downtown, dropped off our car, and explored more on foot.
First, we visited the Cathedral Basilica of Santa Fe:
Here is its surprisingly light interior:
Then we visited the Loretto Chapel, which is most famous for its “miraculous” spiral staircase (that didn’t originally have the handrail you now see attached to it):
From there, we window shopped a bit and found a lovely independent bookshop with an attached coffee shop, where I tried a “Bullet Proof” coffee for first time. What’s that? Basically, it’s a regular cup of drip coffee blended with butter and (I think the barista said) “honey.” It was alright… though I didn’t completely love the texture.
We continued strolling around downtown and popped into unusual, arty shops along the way. Eventually, we made our way to the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, which was also hosting an exhibition on the designer, artist, and educator Lloyd Kiva New in commemoration of his 100th birthday (he died in 2002).
These are some of my favorite paintings of his:
For dinner, we ate at the very popular restaurant called The Shed. Once again, we enjoyed traditional New Mexican fare, which is certainty one of the joys of this city. Here’s Libby drinking a prickly pear margarita:
Santa Fe is an interesting town that I really like (and want to love). The weather, food, and culture here are all pretty much ideal from my perspective. Yet, I’m not completely enamored of it, and I’m not really sure why. I think we need to see more of it, especially away from the historical / tourist district new our hotel. That said, we like it well enough that I’m sure we’ll return and might opt to spend some extended time here in our retirement.