Sonya's Blog - Day 252 - Santa Fe

Sonya’s Blog - Day 252 - February 29th - Santa Fe

We drove to Santa Fe today to check it out. We went to the historic district and walked around for a bit. It is a lot of shops and restaurants. We found St. Francis of Assisi church, St. Francis is the patron saint of Santa Fe. It was a nice church. In the classic style, but very different colours and it was the first time we have seen a baptismal font in the centre.

We then went and had lunch. I had packed a lunch and there was a picnic table along the Santa Fe river, so we had a nice lunch there.

Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico, so we headed over to the State Capitol building. It was nice. It is a large, round building. We only saw the main galleries.

We then walked over and checked out the oldest church structure in the United States. It was a Mission at first, as I think most of the church buildings would have been. Certainly all the ones down my San Antonio were. Right next to the church is the oldest house in Santa Fe. It was adobe construction and you can see that the walls are crumbling away a bit. It was built, not long after the church. We went in and had a look around.

The silver tokens are called Milagros and are given as a type of offering, for healing purposes or votive offerings.

Above is the oldest house from the outside and the inside is below:

We were all feeling a little sluggish, so we stopped for a coffee at an cafe. While Blake was ordering Natasha and I went and checked out an Aritist's shop that was next door. It had all sorts of different rooms, with a different artist showing off their wares in each room. Some of it was really nice, but super pricey. They had great tiling inside and outside, here is a shot of the staircase:

Having a break at a cafe:

We then wanted to check out the Miracle Staircases at St. Loretto’s. I thought we could just have a quick look, but it was paid admission and we had Kizmet, so we will have to go another time. Hopefully, we will make it back. The staircase has confounded engineers for generations, as it has no nails and they cannot figure out it's consturction. The story is that the nuns hired a carpenter to build it and when it was finished they went to pay him and he had disappeared (who was that mysterious carpenter?). The staircase was built so unusually that it has become legendary.

We then headed back towards Albuquerque. We wanted to take the Turquoise Trail back, which is the scenic route (the old highway) through the mountains. It was very pretty. We didn’t stop because it was late in the day and we didn’t want to be on the highway past dark.

Sonya