We decided to spend the Memorial Day weekend in Santa Fe. I visited Santa Fe as a kid when we lived in Colorado, but Mac had never been. It’s a unique state capital that has loads of interesting places to see. As normal, our trip prioritized visiting the National Park Service sites in the area, and we had a great time exploring northern New Mexico.
Where we stayed in Santa Fe
We splurged a bit and stayed at the Inn and Spa at Loretto. The hotel was fantastic, and the location was great. It was close enough to the downtown area that we could walk everywhere but far enough away to not be in the middle of all the things. We also enjoyed the restaurant and the lounge. My main quibble was that that the area around the hotel was really loud. We could hear cars at all hours of the day and night revving their engines.
Where we ate in Santa Fe
For dinner on Friday, we headed to Upper Crust Pizza. It’s a counter service pizza place across the road from the Inn and Spa at Loretto. We both ordered calzones. The food was quite good, but the calzones do take longer than pizza. We then grabbed dessert (Colombian chocolate cake) and cocktails at the lounge in the hotel. Since we headed out early on Saturday, we ate breakfast at the Luminaria Restaurant on property. Mac had a breakfast burrito with red and green chile, and I had amazing green chile potato latkes. Very yummy. We grabbed dinner on the rooftop at Coyote Cantina. We enjoyed sangria, nachos, green chile chicken enchiladas, and vegetarian tacos. For our final meal, we had a quick breakfast at The French Pastry Shop. Mac tried the mushroom and green chile quiche, while I tried the egg, bacon, and cheese crepe. We also accidentally spent $30 on macarons. How do accidentally spend $30 on macarons? We decided to order them to go and thought we saw two flavors in the case, so we ordered two of each flavor (thinking we would get four). They actually have five flavors, so we were surprised with ten macarons.
What we did in Santa Fe
We had a long drive to our first stop at Fort Union National Historic Park. After a short hailstorm, we headed over to Pecos National Historic Park and the Glorieta Pass battlefield, the site of the westernmost battle in the Civil War. We then drove down to Santa Fe, checked in, and grabbed dinner. From there, we walked around the downtown plaza area to explore. We discovered that most businesses are open from 10 am to 5 pm, so that’s definitely something to keep in mind if you want to spend time in Santa Fe.
We got an early start on Saturday and drove out to Valles Caldera National Monument after breakfast. Our GPS took us down NM-4, so we had to drive through a checkpoint at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Next, we drove back down to Los Alamos to get gas and to explore the Los Alamos sites in the Manhattan Project National Historic Site. Most of the sites are easily walkable. Then back up the mountain for our final NPS site at Bandelier National Monument. Back in Santa Fe, we stopped in the Loretto Chapel to see the miraculous staircase built by a stranger without any nails. This was actually connected to our hotel. Our final stop of the day was at the New Mexico Museum of Art. It had some interesting exhibits from artists with local connections to Santa Fe or New Mexico.
On Sunday morning, we grabbed breakfast and then strolled around the Plaza. We headed into the New Mexico History Museum at the Palace of the Governors. This museum explores the history of the state through the Paleo-Indian settlements several thousand years ago up to the current time. I enjoyed it and learned a lot of interesting information. We wrapped up our weekend in Santa Fe at a few stores, bought a Talavera pottery cat and a print of prickly pear cactus, and then hopped on the interstate to drive home to El Paso.
Have you ever spent a weekend in Santa Fe?
Wow, this is so interesting. I have never been anywhere near New Mexico! Looks like a really great trip.
It’s a cool city! New Mexico is also an interesting place to visit.