Santa Fe
After having visited the Meow Wolf exhibit in Vegas earlier this year, Nick and I had discussed going to Santa Fe to visit the original Meow Wolf exhibit there. We also wanted to see the various art that Santa Fe is known for, and in particular, the art of Georgia O’Keeffe. So after some time, we were able to actually plan this trip and my cousin Tiffany and her boyfriend Mike came along with us too!
Our trip actually came at a great time. If you haven’t read the news lately, the Pacific Northwest has been hammered by multiple atmospheric rivers and extreme wind storms. I think we might have had the wettest fall season in Seattle’s history, so that’s saying something. It’s been extremely wet and gray the past couple of months, so getting away from it for a long weekend was a wonderful respite. But first, Seattle wouldn’t let us leave on a Friday afternoon without traffic, so after trudging through that to the airport, all of us boarded the plane headed to Albuquerque.
About three hours later, we landed and were immediately greeted with Southwest desert decor in the airport, which really means a lot of terra cotta color palettes. When we made it outside, we could immediately feel the cold desert air, but at least it was dry outside. We took the shuttle to the car rental center, where they were experiencing a staffing shortage. It took longer than expected to get our car, but once we did, we loaded it up and headed off on our one hour drive to Santa Fe.
On the way to Santa Fe, we were talking about what to do for dinner, and since we were arriving fairly late, our options were limited. Someone noticed that Sonic Drive-ins exist there, and since none of us have been, we decided to go to one. Instead of doing the drive-in though, we did drive-thru so that we could eat at the house we were renting. The only problem was that no one was in line, and the menu was essentially where you ordered, so we drove up and immediately started skimming the rather large menu, and then a voice suddenly asked us what we wanted, and we were all like ‘um…hold on.’ We basically ordered at an awkward pace of one order every 15 seconds as all of us were trying to digest the menu and figure out what we wanted. I’m pretty sure the person taking our order thought we were high, but that can’t be new to them.
We finally made it to our Airbnb, which was really nice. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos except for this wonderful welcome basket that we were greeted with:
There were many unique art pieces around the house that made it special, and it was probably the most well-stocked Airbnb I’ve ever stayed at. The bottle of wine in the basket was from Chateau Ste Michele, which we found amusing due to it being from Woodinville. It’s like we never left home…
After enjoying our dinner from Sonic, we went to bed to get ready for our first full day in Santa Fe. I, on the other hand, couldn’t really sleep mainly due to having too much of Nick’s milkshake before bed.
The next morning, we headed to Dolina Cafe and Bakery, where we met up with Nick’s uncle Chris and his girlfrend Floery. Nick, Mike, and Chris ordered their breakfast burrito, which they all enjoyed, Floery and I had the baked eggs, which were amazing, and Tiffany had their omelette, which she enjoyed as well. It was wonderful to catch up with them after many years, and they gave us some great recommendations.
Next, we headed into the heart of Santa Fe, and our first stop was the Palace of the Governors and the New Mexico History Museum. The palace used to be the where the New Mexican government was held, and the adobe structure itself dates back to the 1600s. It’s currently being renovated, but you can still see some of the original foundation and adobework:
Even the doors appeared to be original, as Nick found out when trying to enter the palace:
The museum seemed fairly new, and the main thing that I remembered from walking through is that the Southwest went through a lot of invasions, resulting in the displacement of the Native Americans who lived there first.
After learning about the rather somber history of the state, we headed off to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. She’s one of the most famous female American artists, known for her paintings of flowers and animal skulls. She spent the latter part of her life in the Santa Fe area, and I think you can visit the homes she lived in outside the city, but we didn’t have time for that this trip. The museum itself is rather small, but it was still worth it to see some of her amazing works:
We weren’t allowed to take photos of some of the more well-known pieces, but her lesser known works are just as amazing.
After a quick coffee break, we headed off to the Loretto Chapel. Now that I’m writing about this, I realized that the main attraction there is the ‘mysterious staircase,’ which is a spiral staircase that appears to be supported without a central pole. I totally didn’t pay attention to this when we visited, and instead looked at the intricately designed altar and stained glass windows:
There were many people sitting in the pews, and some making prayers, but for us, we left after a few minutes. I think being inside the chapel triggered some not-so-fond memories for Nick and Mike…
We then headed off to the famed Canyon Road, which houses many art galleries, especially sculpture art. We had no plan here, we simply walked up the road and walked through the many sculpture gardens there:
My favorite gallery by far was the Prescott Studio. When were walking near it, all of us stopped in awe of the amazing metal work that we saw in the sculpture garden, but when we went inside, we learned that you could make all of them move, and we were encouraged to do so. I tried to convince Nick to get a giraffe to put in our front yard, but he wouldn’t budge. It was so much fun to see all the different pieces and interact with them:
We continued up the road, when we started hearing a bird loudly squawking. We thought it was a crow, because they’re quite prevalent in the city, and also very loud. But then we looked closer and noticed that it was actually this:
Yeah, it’s just your usual day where a peacock struts around on the rooftop of art galleries loudly squawking at cars driving by. We’re not sure why it was there, but our best guess was that it belonged to one of the gallery owners.
We continued walking and were easily swayed by a man insisting we go to their wine garden. It was located in the back of an art gallery, with some live music being performed. It was a wonderful place to have a quick drink and cheese and crackers. By the time we left, it was nighttime, so we headed back to the car and were greeted with the Christmas lights in the plaza:
So pretty…
We made a quick stop back at the house before we headed off to Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return. Nick and I, as well as Tiffany and Mike, have already been to Omega Mart in Vegas, and we thoroughly enjoyed our times there, so we were all excited to see the original one in Santa Fe. While smaller than the other two, it was still crazy, weird, and awesome. I think the story is that someone who owned the mansion is missing, and the clues you can find in the exhibit seem to point that there’s a portal somewhere and he’s possibly in it? We actually didn’t spend much time trying to unravel the story; actually, I wasn’t sure where to begin. So instead, we just walked through a fireplace, into a fridge, down a washing machine—totally normal…
Mike, Nick and I actually solved one riddle in a room, but there was a safe with a code that we couldn’t figure out the clues for. There was a large binder in the living room that contained a lot of story, but I just skimmed through it. And in the office were tons of random papers that you could read too. I guess if you wanted to solve the mystery, you could spend hours there, but we needed to find dinner. At this point, it was 9pm, and almost all the restaurants in Santa Fe were either closed, or about to close, so we ended up going to Desert Dogs Brewery. We thought it would be a brewpub, but it was really a beer place that also served street tacos. It wasn’t really our scene, but we were desperate, so we ordered a bunch of tacos, and Nick got a beer. Maybe it was because I was super hungry, but the street tacos were amazing. They had a Banh Mi street taco, and that was so delicious I ordered a second. So yeah, dive bar esthetic with incredible international-fusion street tacos.
And that was it for our only full day in Santa Fe. We all got a good night’s rest and then the next morning, we checked-out of our Airbnb and headed off to the Santa Fe Railyard. Every Sunday, there’s an artisan craft market with various vendors, and I love craft markets so I wanted to know what one in Santa Fe looked like. There was a lot of art and jewelry, as expected, some skin care booths, and some clothing stalls. It was fun to just walk through the venue, but nothing really caught my eye except for the yarn stall that was actually outside the main venue. The owner was having a sale on all her hand-dyed yarn, and I immediately jumped on the opportunity to buy some mohair blend yarns. Not that I have any idea what the make with them, but I loved the color and the price, so I’ll figure out a pattern later.
After a quick lunch, we drove about an hour away to Bandelier National Monument. The area is known for being the home to the Pueblo people starting in 1150. The sheer cliffs there allowed them to live in the cliffs in caves, and the land around the cliffs was used for gardens. They left the area in the 1500s, but the cliff cave dwellings are still there, and you can actually climb into a few of them. Nick wasn’t a huge fan of climbing in to the cave dwellings, primarily due to the short height of the ceilings, but it was still cool to be able to explore inside them:
It was finally time to leave Santa Fe, and head back to Albuquerque. Our flight the next morning was at 7:45am, so we opted to spend the night at a hotel next to the airport so that we could wake up and walk over and not have to deal with driving or shuttles. But before we went to bed, Chris and Floery recommended that we have dinner at Campo at Los Poblanos. There weren't any reservations available, but we were lucky that there was open seating at the bar, so we jumped on that opportunity. It was an amazing dinner, and the grounds were beautifully decorated for the holidays:
It was a great way to end a wonderful trip in Santa Fe with Tiffany and Mike, and we loved seeing Chris and Floery again. Hopefully it won’t be another 10 years between visits…