Santa Fe (9)

What a charming, exquisite and unique city!

I've finally (3 hours of frustration!) managed to change the slideshow from the Sierra pictures to some taken in Santa Fe, so I haven't posted any within this text.

Santa Fe, founded by the Spanish in 1610 is the capital of New Mexico, has a population of about 70,000 and is the oldest capital city in the USA. It's most popular nickname is "the City Different" and once you see it, you'll understand why.

Santa Fe's unique appearance honours the city's history as a mix of Spanish and Native American Culture and this is most obvious with the colour, shape and design of the Adobe Architecture. Adobe has been used for centuries and is a mix of sand, clay, water and hay - bricks are made from clay and water and once dried and set, a render mix is applied over the bricks and when complete, the outside is similar in appearance to rendered buildings in Australia.

To provide additional strength and support, large logs called "vigas" are used in the construction of their pueblos and to continue the city's unique appearance, a law has been passed that no new building shall be constructed higher than 37'.

The city centre is built around a Plaza and on one side of the Plaza, outside the Palace of the Governors, native American Indians sell their wares to passers by. All of these vendors are licenced (so we were told) and they sell jewelry, pottery and trinkets of all types.

We took a tour through Santa Fe and surrounds in an open vehicle, hence most of the detail above. Part of the trip took us through Canyon Street, a one mile long road absolutely lined with Art galleries. Indeed, for a population of only 70,000, it's interesting to learn they have over 200 galleries.

The locals love chillies, red and green and when you go to a restaurant, always request them "on the side". We learnt that if you request "Xmas on the side", you receive a mix of both red and green.

Loretto Chapel was built in 1873 and stands at the end of the Santa Fe Trail that was pioneered in 1822 as a trade route from Missouri. The Chapel is a must visit location as the have "The Miraculous Staircase", a spiral staircase that completes 2 x 360 degree turns, from the ground 20' up to the choir loft and has no centre support.

The Chapel is a quite small and beautiful Gothic structure, but the staircase, sometimes referred to as St Joseph's staircase has a fascinating story behind it.

Loretto Chapel was completed without a staircase to the choir loft so the choir had to scale a 20' ladder to gain access. The Sisters of Loretto had a dilema - as the Chapel was quite small, building a normal staircase would take up too much available seating area and to climb the 20' ladder in their habits would have been terrifying.

So, they decided to do the only logical thing they could and began 9 days of prayer to St Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the ninth and final day of prayer, an old, grey-haired, grey-bearded man arrived on a donkey carrying only a hammer, a saw and a carpenter's square. He offered to build the staircase and was immediately hired.

Construction took between 6-8 months and was completed without banisters or railings. He worked alone and used no nails, screws, glue nor centre support, but there are hundreds of precision built square pegs -amazingly, the timber he used was not to be found locally. Once completed, the carpenter disappeared into the night and neither received nor asked for payment.

We only spent two days in Santa Fe and could have spent at least twice that time again. I could write much more about the places and things we saw but this blog would end up far too long. We also wanted to visit so many other places like kids museums, Taos to the north etc etc, but time is our enemy at the moment and we must get to Denver to prepare for the flight to Seattle and cruise.

We did, however, manage to spend an afternoon visiting Bandeliers National Monument and this will be the next blog - timing of the posting is dependant on available internet access.

Next stop, Denver, Colorado.