12/20/2006

Ambling about Santa Fe

Last weekend after the snowshoe race spent a bit of time wandering around the square in santa fe. Winter usually is a great time to wander around downtown, it is usually better in January or Feb when it is still a nice chilly winter wonderland, but it relatively free of the tourist masses that plague the center of the city in the summer and around the holidays. Fortunately it was relatively calm this weekend. So in conclusion, I recommend, upon joing the hordes of tourist plaguing the city different, come in february when it is cold so there are no other hordes of tourists.

After the race I was ravenous so I first went down to Tia Sophias for some green chile covered bacon breakfast burritos. Now there are a bunch of places on the plaza in Santa Fe that people get breakfast at, the Plaza, Pasquals, but I am a Tia Sophia's man for breakfast:






I suggest the saturday am choriza breakfast burrito or the huevos rancheros with beans, cheese and extra green, glaaaarrgh, extra greeeeeen. Also the coffee is super weak so you can drink it by the gallon flavored with delicious cinnamon sugar. Or bacon.


click for big bacon burrito

Then I hoofed it up a few blocks past the La Fonda hotel to the the little park next to the St. Francis Cathedral. Here lies one of my favorite pieces of public art, a statue commerating the first settlers in Santa Fe. The first spanish settlers came to santa fe area in 1598, so this statue, placed in 1998, marks the quadricentennial of spanish occupation of native lands, I mean arrival here in New Mexico. Actually, the long spanish history here in NM makes it a really interesting place to live. Archaic spanish is spoken in the rural area outside of santa fe, also, there were lots of spaniards that came here to escape religious persecution in Spain, with some crypto-jew and penitente practices that continue in pockets today.

Anyhow, this statue is odd and beautiful and has chickens and pigs, along with conquistadors, friars, and peasants.



click for big

I really like the chicken and pigs. More public monuments need to have chicken and pigs. And sheep!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And goats! Goats are really cool, and quite amusing, we need more statues of goats!