Santa Fe, New Mexico
From Taos, we drove down south to the state capital, Santa Fe. Santa Fe is one of the oldest cities in the American West and has a lot of history to it.
Just south of Taos, in Rancho de Taos, we visited this church (San Francisco de Asis) that has some distinctive American Southwest architecture.
The church is home to a famous painting of Christ that you pay to see. The custodian lets you view it in the light first and then turns out the light. When the lights are turned out, a mysterious cross appears on Christ's shoulder that isn't there when the lights are on. This mystery has baffled thousands of people for over a century. They are very strict about photography around the painting. I managed to find this picture on the internet of the painting in light, but I couldn't find one of the painting in the dark.
If you're interested in more info, here are two interesting articles pertaining to the painting:
http://www.visionsofjesuschrist.com/weeping80.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_1_29/ai_n8642070
Then it was onto Santa Fe. One of the best things to see in Santa Fe is the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (we also recommend the cafe attached to the museum). It has one of the best collections of O'Keeffe's works, as she lived most of her adult life in and absolutely loved New Mexico. If you are unfamiliar with her work, this site has a great gallery displaying her stuff: http://www.artst.org/okeefe/.
One of the lasting images of the southwest is the ubiquitous chili pepper. Here you can see many strings of them hung on a restaurant balcony downtown. These strings of chili peppers are called "ristras" and are used for decoration. Some claim they bring good luck. You can see variations of the chili pepper decoration throughout many parts of Latin America (Mexico, Central and South America, etc.).
Although we've now seen this in a few other American cities, Santa Fe was the first place we saw a US Postal Service mailbox designed like R2D2 from the Star Wars films. The Postal Service launched these mailboxes this year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars films, first launched in 1977.
Here's the old Governor's mansion in downtown Santa Fe, now the site of a Native American market. Frankly, the market and the people working there reminded us both a lot of the markets we saw in South America.
One of the hotels downtown, showing typical Southwestern architecture.
Santa Fe is also a main stop on the Old Santa Fe Trail, recognized by the National Park Service as an historic trail. The old trail helped connect the Midwest with the new lands in the Southwest gained in the mid-1800s and was instrumental in opening up the new lands to new settlers.
Even the cathedral in town had ristras hanging from the church candles. I think that's the first time I've seen chili peppers in a church.
Ristras for sale! Get your red hot ristras!
I didn't actually go in this store (I wasn't in the market for a new hat), but I thought this store front was great. The historic center of Santa Fe had a great sense of its history and the urban planning was quite good. Very pedestrian friendly and had lots of independent stores that were quirky, but also paid attention to the city's heritage.
Ah yes, more food pictures. Although this one wasn't as gross as the one in South Dakota, I'm including this one to show the mega-buffet that we got in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We didn't particularly want to eat here as we knew it wasn't going to be good, but we got to our hotel late and it was the only thing close by. And, a mere $7.50 for all-you-can-eat buffet was very tempting, no matter how good it was. If you really want to know why so many Americans are so fat, stop looking at McDonald's and the like and start visiting the mega-buffets that are way too common in the US, particularly in the Midwest and the South.
That buffet was next to our hotel in Albuquerque, which is the largest city in New Mexico. We highly recommend taking the scenic drive between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, as the scenery is beautiful. This means avoiding the interstate and driving through a few real ghost towns. But the drive is only an hour and a half so it's not a big detour. We did a quick drive by of Albuquerque and have to say that it's mighty disappointing, especially once you've seen beautiful Santa Fe. We were told it was a bit sad, but it wasn't too far out of the way, so we decided to do a quick tour, but it wasn't even worth a slight detour. So, here's the grand total of 3 pictures I took in Albuquerque.
Lampposts against the classic Southwestern stucco wall:
And a traditional Southwestern image - native blankets, a dried up animal head and, yup, more ristras.
Just south of Taos, in Rancho de Taos, we visited this church (San Francisco de Asis) that has some distinctive American Southwest architecture.
The church is home to a famous painting of Christ that you pay to see. The custodian lets you view it in the light first and then turns out the light. When the lights are turned out, a mysterious cross appears on Christ's shoulder that isn't there when the lights are on. This mystery has baffled thousands of people for over a century. They are very strict about photography around the painting. I managed to find this picture on the internet of the painting in light, but I couldn't find one of the painting in the dark.
If you're interested in more info, here are two interesting articles pertaining to the painting:
http://www.visionsofjesuschrist.com/weeping80.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_1_29/ai_n8642070
Then it was onto Santa Fe. One of the best things to see in Santa Fe is the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (we also recommend the cafe attached to the museum). It has one of the best collections of O'Keeffe's works, as she lived most of her adult life in and absolutely loved New Mexico. If you are unfamiliar with her work, this site has a great gallery displaying her stuff: http://www.artst.org/okeefe/.
One of the lasting images of the southwest is the ubiquitous chili pepper. Here you can see many strings of them hung on a restaurant balcony downtown. These strings of chili peppers are called "ristras" and are used for decoration. Some claim they bring good luck. You can see variations of the chili pepper decoration throughout many parts of Latin America (Mexico, Central and South America, etc.).
Although we've now seen this in a few other American cities, Santa Fe was the first place we saw a US Postal Service mailbox designed like R2D2 from the Star Wars films. The Postal Service launched these mailboxes this year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars films, first launched in 1977.
Here's the old Governor's mansion in downtown Santa Fe, now the site of a Native American market. Frankly, the market and the people working there reminded us both a lot of the markets we saw in South America.
One of the hotels downtown, showing typical Southwestern architecture.
Santa Fe is also a main stop on the Old Santa Fe Trail, recognized by the National Park Service as an historic trail. The old trail helped connect the Midwest with the new lands in the Southwest gained in the mid-1800s and was instrumental in opening up the new lands to new settlers.
Even the cathedral in town had ristras hanging from the church candles. I think that's the first time I've seen chili peppers in a church.
Ristras for sale! Get your red hot ristras!
I didn't actually go in this store (I wasn't in the market for a new hat), but I thought this store front was great. The historic center of Santa Fe had a great sense of its history and the urban planning was quite good. Very pedestrian friendly and had lots of independent stores that were quirky, but also paid attention to the city's heritage.
Ah yes, more food pictures. Although this one wasn't as gross as the one in South Dakota, I'm including this one to show the mega-buffet that we got in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We didn't particularly want to eat here as we knew it wasn't going to be good, but we got to our hotel late and it was the only thing close by. And, a mere $7.50 for all-you-can-eat buffet was very tempting, no matter how good it was. If you really want to know why so many Americans are so fat, stop looking at McDonald's and the like and start visiting the mega-buffets that are way too common in the US, particularly in the Midwest and the South.
That buffet was next to our hotel in Albuquerque, which is the largest city in New Mexico. We highly recommend taking the scenic drive between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, as the scenery is beautiful. This means avoiding the interstate and driving through a few real ghost towns. But the drive is only an hour and a half so it's not a big detour. We did a quick drive by of Albuquerque and have to say that it's mighty disappointing, especially once you've seen beautiful Santa Fe. We were told it was a bit sad, but it wasn't too far out of the way, so we decided to do a quick tour, but it wasn't even worth a slight detour. So, here's the grand total of 3 pictures I took in Albuquerque.
Lampposts against the classic Southwestern stucco wall:
And a traditional Southwestern image - native blankets, a dried up animal head and, yup, more ristras.
posted by Kevin at 9/04/2007 06:30:00 AM
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