After wrapping up a very busy January, Kirios and I kicked off February fabulously – in New Mexico! Since most of our travel weekends over the summer were filled up with weddings, we had been discussing a winter getaway for several months. We brainstormed a lot of cities to visit, but hadn’t actually sat down and made any real plans – after all, we usually keep busy! But a couple of weeks ago Kirios learned that he needed to travel to Santa Fe for a Wednesday through Friday business trip, and I jumped on the opportunity. “Stay there. I’m coming out to join you,” I told him.

And that’s exactly what I did. Kirios flew into Albuquerque on Wednesday and headed to Santa Fe in his rental car via the scenic Turquoise Trail, where he grabbed a Southwestern burger at the Cowgirl BBQ before preparing for a day of meetings on Thursday. I went in to work on Thursday morning with my suitcase, and left the office at 1:30pm. One train, 2 planes, and two busses later, I made it to our hotel, Inn of the Governors, in downtown Santa Fe at midnight – Mountain Time.

Originally, Kirios was scheduled to work Friday morning, so I planned to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, walk over to the Georgia O’Keefe museum, and window shop before meeting him for lunch. Luckily for us, his coworker’s flight was moved to earlier in the morning, and he got the whole day off. There was fresh snow on the ground in the morning which quickly turned to slush in the desert sun, and we skipped over puddles all the way to the museum. The museum was small but beautiful, and had a fairly comprehensive collection.

After we finished up at the museum, we headed over to the Plaza, where we admired the artwork of the Native Americans sitting out in front of the Palace of the Governors and the art and gift shops filled with beautiful things. We meandered a couple more blocks to have lunch at Ristra, an elegant restaurant blending French and Southwest flavors. We started with the appetizer special, a delightful creamy mushroom soup with chipotle croutons. I had the portabello burger with rosemary eggplant caviar, manchego cheese, and a spinach salad. It was not a bad sandwich, but it didn’t seem particularly special when compared to Kirios’ Crispy Duck Leg Confit served with a salad including dried cranberry, pumpkin seeds, and a raspberry vinaigrette. Duck is one of my all-time favorite dishes, and it saddened me that this wasn’t kosher so I couldn’t try it. It looked, smelled, and sounded (the crunch of the crispy skin!) excellent. But don’t feel too bad for me, we still shared a strawberry-rhubarb crepe with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Mmmm. I need to make another strawberry rhubarb pie one of these days…

After lunch, we spent some more time admiring the turquoise and opal jewelry in shops on the Plaza, and taking pictures in the snow before retreating to our hotel for its daily “tea and sherry” hour. I’m not a fan of sherry, but if you are, apparently Santa Fe is a good place to get it! Kirios enjoyed sampling the sweet and the dry, and we both took advantage of the R&R.

Most of the museums in Santa Fe have extended hour and are free from 5-8pm on the first Friday of the month. Kirios and I took advantage of this by visiting the New Mexico History Museum and the Palace of the Governors. The New Mexico History Museum is very new, it opened in 2009. It had a lot of interesting information about the history of the land, and the Native Americans and Mexicans who lived there. I was a bit surprised that its message was so anti-US. I probably shouldn’t have been, considering the state history, but I guess my textbooks and museums back East have all have more patriotic philanthropists funding them… Unlike the museum, the Palace of the Governors was extremely old, having been used as a government building back in the 1600s under Spanish rule. We didn’t have too much time there before it closed, but it was interesting to see how the building was built and used.

Finally, we had dinner at La Plazuela at La Fonda before calling it a night (La Fonda is a big hotel right on the plaza with shops, a café, and a bar in addition to the restaurant). It was our most authentic Southwestern meal. Kirios had chicken and beef fajitas with an extra side of green chile, and I had a roasted red bell pepper, stuffed with sautéed winter greens, leeks, shiitake mushrooms and sweet corn, served with butternut squash puree, poblano chile-potato gratin, cauliflower flan, quinoa pilaf and roasted tomato-sweet onion sauce. It was a lot of different tastes of vegetables and spice flavors, extremely interesting and tasty. We both ordered New Mexico beers to go with our dinner, and sat by the fireplace for at La Fonda for a little bit before returning to the hotel and succumbing to a food coma.