SWCAMBORNE

Santa Fe is one of the top art destinations in the USA and as a result there is lots of public art.

Bronze Bear

Brass lizard

Granite Shape

Massive Shapes

There are a few more pictures on Flickr

What a wonderful place Santa Fe is.

First a word about New Mexican wine.  We have tried a few on previous visits and have been underwhelmed.  But the Blachers took us to Casa Rondena Winery and we drank a lovely bottle of Meritage sitting on the winery patio.  It was the start of a beautiful evening.

The winery grounds were magical,

the wine was excellent

They had the sound of running water

and the company was great.

We saw the sun setting on the on the Sandia Mountains.

In Santa Fe we drank a bottle of Cabernet from Milagro Vineyards it was also excellent.  I think New Mexico Vintners are making progress.

We went to the to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque for the “glowdeo” on Thursday night but it was canceled because of high wind.  Click here to see some pictures from three years ago when I went with Gene B.  The next day we shopped and sent postcards and went to dinner with our friends the Blachers.  It looked like we weren’t going to see any balloons.

On Saturday morning I opened the curtains of our hotel room and there were about a hundred balloons drifting by.  I took a few pictures:

A floating urn

An air cat.

Our first look

It is a remarkable folk festival.  Like the Rose Parade in the air or the running of the bulls in Pamplona.  I’m looking forward to meeting some of the balloonist someday and trying to figure out why they chose this pursuit rather than cars or horses or hiking.

When you go to Santa Fe and you should.  Try to stay at the Inn of the Governors.

They have beautiful flower baskets.

and very nice rooms

The Inn of the Governors is only a block or two from the Plaza so it is easy to immerse yourself in the culture.  Central Santa Fe is one of the few cities in the USA that is different from everywhere other city in the USA.  Others are Savannah, GA and New Orleans.

Nurit likes the air and the art.  I like that you can walk everywhere.  We both like the food.

Is it a good idea to call a gymnasium in the west: “Buddha Fitness Club?”

To me and I think to many others in the west Buddha connotes mental but not physical health.

We saw the sign on a new business in the Santa Fe Railyard District.  They have a web site and seem to realize the irony of there name because their tag line is:

“Give your Buddha Belly a Six Pack.”

Buddha Fitness Club

As a marketing concept maybe it can work?  Remember in marketing:

“If you aren’t different you don’t exist.”

Good Luck to the Buddha Fitness Club.  We will follow your progress on the seven step path.

While posting the pictures from our trip last month to Santa Fe I discovered that I had never finished the pictures from our trip there in January cheating you out of a short vicarious vacation.

Here is my favorite picture of the set:

It was sunny in Santa Fe in January.  It is drizzling in Pasadena in June.

Click here to see the entire set of sun and snow pictures.

Some nice sunny pictures could cheer you up.

Nurit and I went to Santa Fe last week with our friends Gretchen and Randy.

We shopped, I wrote postcards, we looked at art and we ate great food.  Mostly what we did was soak in the atmosphere of a place that is different.

It was an excellent trip and a great relief from the elder management issues we are currently dealing with in Pasadena.  You can see all of our pictures from the trip here.

You can see more of our Santa Fe pictures Here.

The title is self explanatory.  Here is the first entry:

An unmatched set in Espanola

Mobile homes are an underrepresented group in the annual calendar sales catagory. This one reminds me of “The Roundabouts of Derby” calendar I received from my brother Tom B. in England a few years ago.  Unfortunately it and any reference to it on the web are still missing.

Our first week in Santa Fe Nurit and I drove up to Los Ojos with Missy the dog. We went up to see the weaving cooperative they have in Los Ojos and the countryside on the way. It was magnificent. We drove into town on the back road and had a beautiful view of the town from above and the local catholic shrine.

On the way up we stopped in an area that was having an art and crafts festival and saw a few of the vendors.

We also passed some spectacular scenery and took some great photos.

Before our trip to Santa Fe we heard an advertisement by the USPS (formerly the Post Office) about how you could go online and forward your mail. No muss no fuss. So we tried it and we have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that everybody at the post office was really helpful. All of the staff were friendly and genuinely cared about our mail.

The bad news is that the system for forwarding mail is archaic, slow and failed miserably.

On about September 25 we put in a forwarding notice at our local post office. It turns out that it couldn’t be done online. We asked that the mail be forwarded to our address in Santa Fe for all of October. On the first of October Pete our local mail carrier stopped delivering to our house. It was more than a week before any of the mail started arriving in Santa Fe and a week after that before we started to get any of it. The second weeks delay was a result of our not having the key to the USPS mail delivery box at our rental house. After that we got some first class mail but not all of it and none of our magazines.

About mid October we decided to cancel the forwarding order and have our house sitter vet the mail and forward the important stuff. Every attempt we made failed. We failed at the Santa Fe Post Office and at the Pasadena Post Office. We filled out three forms and even got an acknowledgement. But the mail kept going into postal purgatory.
A few days after we got home we talked to Pete, our carrier. Yes he had two tubs of mail for us and he would bring it tomorrow. And he did.

My conclusion is that the people at the post office are very good at their jobs and they care a lot about the mail but the systems aren’t very good. The postal workers know this so they build alternative back door solutions to get the mail delivered.

My recommendation is that you get to know your carrier and be sure to communicate directly with them and don’t believe the ads.