Planning for Santa Fe

[flexagon]

Hotel snafus are fixed... now we'll be staying in three different hotels over four nights. One night expensive, for ease of wandering around the Plaza without having to worry about driving home drunk in the dark, and three nights cheap.

a_kosmos, you've been to Santa Fe more recently than I have; what would you recommend we do while there? I wanted to see the tent rocks, but they're closed for road paving. Wandering the Plaza, and going to the flea market and my old favorite restaurants (Gabriel's and the Blue Corn Cafe), are the sum total of what I have planned.

There's some FUD in my group at work. Our performance ratings were done differently this last quarter than in the past, and some of my teammates got scored lower as a result of that (though I didn't). It has also been announced that the Noid is leaving our group -- the team that's left doesn't suck, but we have no replacement Noid-level technical superstar. I could fret over this stuff if I felt like it, but... yawn.

Comments

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

Santa Fe is such an incredible place for wandering. You know about Canyon Road, I'm sure. I highly recommend hitting Collected Works books in its new location http://www.collectedworksbookstore.com/, and Garcia Street Books http://garciastreetbooks.com/ is a great jewel of a bookstore. Have you ever been out to Shidoni? It's been a while since we've been out there, but you could get some incredible photos out there doing yoga poses http://www.shidoni.com/html/home.asp.

If you are looking for more of a hiking area, you might drive out to Bandalier http://www.nps.gov/band/index.htm, which is stunning, and you can climb into some of the dwellings.

As for restaurants, you might try La Boca: they have gorgeous Spanish tapas. There's another tapas place out on Canyon Road called El Farrol, which is good, but not as good as La Boca. Il Piatta has lovely Italian, and I'm pretty fond of Pranzo's chippino; Bistro 315 is French but not to saucy and overdone. La Choza is owned by the same people as the Shed, but they are always the winner for me because La Choza has fabulous tamales.

Have a wonderful time, and remember: turquoise is immune from the laws of minimalism!

[flexagon]

A belated thanks for this thoughtful reply! I just now had the chance to add many of these sites to the Google Map I'm making for the trip. I hadn't known about Shidoni, and both heisenbug and I are now really interested in seeing them do a bronze pour. I want to go to the flea market too, so both those things are good for spending part of Saturday a little north of the town. Both bookstores and several restaurants are also on the map.

Good to know about the interaction between turquoise and minimalism, too. Natural materials sometimes have the most fascinating properties... :)

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

I love the Flea. I got one of my all-time best jewelry deals there. I guess I should have mentioned that Shidoni was a foundary, hmmm. Playing in their sculpture garden is a lot of fun, and the drive out there is lovely.