After spending the morning in Madrid, my uncle and I headed up the road to Santa Fe. We were both hungry, but didn’t know where we were going to go for lunch. Our rental car came equipped with a GPS unit, and we had a lot of fun playing with it. I have a GPS in my car, but each one is different and has their own personality. By the end of our trip, we had truly bonded with our GPS girl and were having a great time mimicking everything she said - even before she said it. She verbalized every command on the screen, so if the selection was “Yes” or “No”, she would say those words. You wouldn’t believe how many times she would say “Yes” or “No” at just the right moment in our conversations. I’m telling you, she just wanted to be a part of our crowd. I think she fit in well, too.

However, she wasn’t much help in finding a place to eat. My uncle didn’t want Mexican because he had it the day before and his stomach was still bothering him. Woopsie! I wanted to make sure we found a place that had everything I needed, so we couldn’t stop at just any old place. We finally came into an area with shopping malls and restaurants and decided on Furr’s Cafeteria. When we walked in, I glanced at the lineup of food to see if they had something for me and I thought it looked okay. It wasn’t until we were halfway through the line, though, did I realize there was no chicken or seafood that wasn’t fried or coated in some sort of sauce. I had to settle on a hamburger steak. It had been about 6 months since I ate any meat, so I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty afterwards, and I was right. Pepto Bismol tablets were my friend the rest of the day.

Anyway, after lunch, we headed into Santa Fe proper and found a parking lot to park for the day. And then we walked. And walked some more. After that, we walked. Did I mention we walked? So much walking. It probably wouldn’t have bothered me if I had on better shoes. I bought two pairs of shoes before the trip - both Skechers. One was a more traditional sneaker and the other was a sneaker, too, but the flat slip on ballet type. They were just a bit too narrow, and I had blisters on my toes by days’ end. It was also very apparent that I’m entirely too sedentary - my uncle is 13 years older than me and he was walking circles around me. My legs were sore at the end of every day on this trip. It’s convinced me that I absolutely need to get more active. I felt so good getting that exercise in every day while I was there. I want to continue doing it.

So yeah, Santa Fe. Santa Fe is adorable. It is such a pretty town filled with art and great architecture and picturesque scenery at every turn. I didn’t take enough pictures of Santa Fe, I’m realizing now. Our first stop was at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi where we encountered the bride and bridesmaids from a wedding party getting their pictures taken.

Afterwards we headed down one of the main roads in the center of town to visit some art stores and touristy shops. My stomach was really killing me at this point, so I was mostly nursing an Americano coffee and Pepto while my uncle browsed inside the stores. Once we headed towards the older section of town and stopped at the visitor’s center, I started feeling better. I was loving all the luminaries on the tops of buildings everywhere I looked, not to mention the shapes and colors of the adobe buildings themselves. We had some gorgeous weather for walking - clear skies, about 65-70 degrees with a light wind. I still would have preferred it to be warmer, but that’s just because I’m a heat ho.

Besides all the beautiful architecture and visible history of the town, one of the highlights of my visit was finding an artist in one of the high end galleries that I just fell in love with. I wanted to buy every single piece she had on display. Of course now I can’t remember her name, but I have a card of hers at home - I’ll try to remember to update this post with her information. She painted mostly landscapes - in a style similar to my uncle’s work.

Even though my feet and stomach were killing me, I still had an enjoyable visit to Santa Fe, but I was definitely ready to call it a day by 4 PM. We had been in at least 30 art galleries by that time, and it had all started to run together for me. My uncle was on a high, as he was getting really inspired by a lot of the artwork he was seeing, as well as being amongst the New Mexico landscape. I loved seeing him getting all worked up - and I’m really looking forward to seeing what he creates as a result of this trip.

We decided to eat in once we got back to our room that night, I think. I was so grateful we had a full kitchen to do so, since I definitely wanted to have my own safe food after the stomach ache from earlier that day. We stayed in and bought a movie On Demand - Vantage Point. I hadn’t ever heard of it, which is surprising because it was extremely good. We both enjoyed it and were ready for bed soon after it was over. My first full day in New Mexico had come to an end. I was satisfied, peaceful, and oh-so-tired.

Here’s a link to the rest of my Santa Fe pictures.