The past couple of days I’ve been staying with a friend in Albuquerque, NM and yesterday we took a day trip up to Santa Fe. Santa Fe is somewhere that I’ve always wanted to go, perhaps because in my mind it had seemed like a quintessential Southwestern town- colorful and exotic. Unfortunately this weekend there has been a cold front moving through New Mexico and instead of the sunny weather I had been expecting, the thermostat has hovered in the thirties and it has snowed and been quite windy… not ideal for exploring the charming downtown area of Santa Fe.
It was a fun day nonetheless that began at the famers market (luckily indoors). Visiting a farmers market is one of the best ways to gain insight into a certain place, and seeing the regional crops (so different from any New England market) of the Southwest was really cool. All I can say is that here chilies reign supreme.
Our next stop was Santa Fe Brewing, the oldest microbrewery in New Mexico! Every Saturday at noon they offer a free tour which we went on. Although it was far from the most organized tour I’ve taken we were able to sample as many beers at the end as we wanted for free! My favorite was one of their award winners, the Nut Brown Ale.
After leaving the brewery we headed downtown and went to SITE Santa Fe, a modern art gallery/museum that was holding an exhibition on sustainable living design, which was really interesting. From there we walked around the main square which kind of reminded me of the square in downtown Jackson Hole. The shops seemed to all cater to tourists selling western art, turquoise jewelry, etc but there were also some Native American craftspeople selling handmade jewelry and other small items. Downtown Santa Fe is much more cohesive and put together than Albuquerque. The buildings are very similar in style and tend to stick with the architectural roots of the Southwest region (clay/adobe pueblo type). It just amazes me that a place like Santa Fe is part of the same country as say Boston… the diversity of the US is truly astounding.
The WORLD discovered 