I was awake pretty early. Nick said that although he was feeling better, he wasn’t interested in a real breakfast so I headed downstairs for a repeat of yesterday’s breakfast. Once back in the room, I made a plan and headed out while Nick conducted a one man snorechestra.
I took a couple pictures around the inn, and then walked a couple blocks to the Roundhouse. The Roundhouse is the New Mexico State Capitol building. It’s a) the most unique capitol building architecturally in the country and b) home to an art gallery that’s massive, open to the public, and free. Oh, and the building opens before basically anything else in this town.
It was an easy walk to the Roundhouse, and after a quick trip through the metal detector and signing in, I was free to wander. There was an incredible amount of art in this building. There also was the horrifying discovery of my first cell phone in a Sci-Fi display. But overall, this was a very worthwhile stop.
After exploring, I headed back to the hotel, where Nick was up and eating crackers. Kim texted about the same time I got back to the hotel and said they’d be at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum shortly, so, since Nick didn’t want to look at art, I left him in the hotel room and walked over to the museum. It was about a 7 minute walk and I got there a few minutes before they did. So I took some pictures while waiting.
Now, I wasn’t very optimistic that we’d be able to get tickets for any time soon based on what I’d seen about ticket availability on their website, but we headed inside, and surprisingly we were able to get 3 tickets to get into the museum immediately.
This was a very well done museum, and apparently quite a bit bigger (and perhaps in a different spot) than when Kim and John last visited. We were here for probably a solid hour.
Once we’d made it out of the museum, we headed for the Plaza, stopping to shop and take pictures along the way. Nick found us in one of the stores and then continued on with us from there. Our next stop after he found us was the Five and Dime.
Kim had read that Frito Pie in a Frito bag from the lunch counter at the Five and Dime is THE thing in Santa Fe, so she needed to have that for lunch. I think everyone but Nick got one. It was a very cheap lunch and tasted good too.
Frito pies consumed, we set out to continue exploring the Plaza.
After wandering a bit, John headed for one of the churches, and Kim, Nick and I headed for the New Mexico History Museum. This museum was fantastic. Honestly, we could have spent all day here. There was SO MUCH here to see and read. But it also was information overload.
After exploring the museum, we found John, agreed on a time to meet up with them tomorrow, and then parted ways. Their parking meter was up, and Nick was getting a craving for…McDonald’s? So we headed back to the hotel to get the car, and ventured out to McDonald’s a couple miles away, to get him some cheap “sustenance”. We also fueled the car up before tomorrow’s big driving day.
Back at the hotel, Nick settled in to see what happened after Mickey D’s, and I headed back towards the Plaza to do a bit more shopping. There are a lot of cute little stores in Santa Fe. I also went back to the Governors Plaza, where the Natives, through a lottery program, are granted a space to sell their crafts. Here I got a Christmas ornament that had been “painted” in Navajo sand painting.
While shopping in some of the shops, I overheard a pretty interesting conversation between store employees. They were talking about their school experiences. One of them shared that she had been held back because she had trouble saying her R. The other responded with “now they have speech therapy or something like that”. Needless to say, knowing about “speech therapy or something like that” I stayed quiet as I exited the store!
Once I felt like I’d sufficiently explored the Plaza, I headed to a place I’d seen on Instagram…the Churro Bar. Here they sell churro “flights” (3 different churros). I got the Classico, which had one churro with chocolate and almonds, one with strawberry sauce and coconut, and one with dulce de leche and pecans. I took them back to the hotel to enjoy (and enjoy I did!).
Nick was definitely feeling better, but wasn’t hungry for dinner, so I did dinner at Del Charro again, grateful that I’ve traveled solo so I was totally fine with going out to eat on my own. I had basically the same dinner as the night before, because it was delicious, but mixed up the margarita flavor. I am, after all, in Santa Fe, home of the margarita trail. So I had the blue corn chicken enchiladas and a passion fruit margarita this evening.
After dinner I settled in to pack. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the end of the trip which means 3 new hotels in 3 nights.
Packing mostly done, I showered and crashed. I think we both slept well this night.
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