Girls Getaway to Santa Fe - What We Did

My touring continued with a two-hour walking tour of Santa Fe. Many thanks to Joel Stein of Historic Walks of Santa Fe (http://www.historicwalksofsantafe.com/) for this educational tour of the city’s unique history. We learned interesting things about several of Santa Fe’s historical sites, such as the Palace of the Governors, the New Mexico History Museum, St Francis Cathedral, Loretto Chapel and its Miraculous Staircase, as well as the back rooms of The Rainbow Man.

For some relaxation, we drove about 20 minutes from downtown to Ten Thousand Waves (www.TenThousandWaves.com), a luxury mountain spa resort that feels like a Japanese onsen. Teresa and I had our privacy in the New Kojiro hot bath. Once we finally figured out how to get the jets turned on, we enjoyed the steam and 55 minutes of girl talk.

In order to better understand at art of Southwestern cooking, we attended a demonstration class at the Santa Fe School of Cooking (http://www.santafeschoolofcooking.com/) where we learned how to cook (and eat) Chipotle Spinach and Goats Cheese Quiche, Blue Corn Pecan Pancakes, Fresh Berry Compote, Huevos Rancheros and Chorizo Cottage Fried Potatoes. Chef Rocky Durham walked us through the process of assembling and cooking all of the dishes. He told us that the key to good cooking is to “Assess, Adjust, Proceed.” We also learned some new tricks, such as burning bay leaves before adding them to a dish and using beans to properly prep a quiche shell.

With the strong visual images Georgia O’Keeffe portrayed from this part of the country, we knew we had to stop at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (http://www.okeeffeemuseum.org/). The visit started with a great video highlighting her life and work, as well as her love of the Southwest landscape. We also got to see several of her greatest works. The museum has a really nice gift shop that is great for picking up gifts and souvenirs.

With a visit to the second oldest city in the U.S. (only behind St. Augustine, FL), you can’t pass up a visit to the New Mexico History Museum (www.NMHistoryMuseum.org), located on the Plaza. Encompassing part of the Palace of Governors building, which is the oldest publicly-used building in the city, the history museum takes visitors on a journey of six broad time periods in its permanent exhibit, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now. We especially enjoyed the current exhibit, Fashioning New Mexico, which takes visitors on a trip back in time via the fashions of various eras in New Mexico.

Next posts...where we ate and where we shopped.

PHOTO: Chefs Rocky and Noe at the Santa Fe School of Cooking.