A few photos from Santa Fe

[No poker or bridge content.]

I spent last weekend in Santa Fe. I flew in Friday and worked Friday night and all day Saturday. Saturday evening I played poker. That gave me only Sunday morning to look around.

I was in Albuquerque in the Summer of 1997 to play in the national bridge tournament (NABC) with Kate, and had taken a day off to drive to Santa Fe. I was familiar with it, therefore, but I could see it had changed. The town (now with a population of about 72,000) was still charming, but had grown a lot.

Because I was rushed, I only took a few photos that you can see below. They are high resolution, so click for a closer look if you are interested.

The Fall leaves in the Santa Fe/Albuquerque area are almost all yellow. A local told me that most of them are cottonwoods.



These red leaves, outside the Journal Santa Fe, were among the few I saw that were not yellow.



The architecture has a distinctive Southwest American flavor. Even stores, fast food businesses and similar places have the adobe-building look. Here is a shot of an IHOP. Look carefully. See how blue and pure the sky appears.



The Santa Fe altitude is 7000 feet. There are mountains that surround the area as you can see in this photo of one of the main streets, Cerrillos Road (undergoing construction):



As I neared downtown, I saw this (crooked) sign for the famous Route 66:



Next stop was the old downtown. What I might call the city square, is called the town plaza. It's been there since 1706. This is one of the streets that feed into that plaza, and is a typical street scene. Notice the Pueblo-Spanish style architecture with flat-roofed buildings and soft contours of adobe.



On the plaza, I looked up to see this:



I noticed a guy with what looked like a camera bag. He was going somewhere with a purpose, so I followed to see if maybe I could get a good photo op. You know me -- have camera will travel. It turns out he was one of many vendors. They sold jewelry and lots of other stuff right there on the plaza. It varied from high quality to tschotsky level:



I looked down one of the streets from the plaza and saw this church. I asked a passerby and she told me it was being renovated, but she couldn't remember the church's name. It looks like it is covered in Saran Wrap.



Art has been a major attraction since Georgia O'Keefe came to Santa Fe back in the 1920s. Here is a photo of the inside of one of the 24 galleries that show and sell art, jewelry, pottery and carpets:



And another photo of an art gallery:


ALERT: This is supposedly the best time of Autumn to see the Fall colors in my area of the world. I am going tomorrow to see if my camera is up to the challenge. Stay tuned.