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Santa Fe in Spring

At 44 years old, I know two things for sure.

  1. Never say never, except to say that...
  2. Life is NEVER going to turn out like you think it will. 

So of course it was that in Santa Fe (a place that I quickly knocked off my list as somewhere I would want to live more permanently) that I met someone so incredible that we decided to commit to an actual relationship (not even something I was looking for) after just two weeks of dating. Of course it happened there, a month before I was planning on house shopping in northwest Arkansas.

I was in such a foul mood at the beginning of the year and spent a lot of time moping around the my Santa Fe AirBnB, not even really finding pleasure in the weekend hikes I took. But I knew I had to force myself out. It's not good to sit around and wallow. And dates for me are never a big deal. We meet up, have some beers, if he's cool and we jive, great, if not, I never see him again. Who cares.

And so, after a few witty and fun messages on Bumble on a Thursday night, I met up with Joe on Friday. And two weeks later, we were sitting in a restaurant 400 miles away in Sedona deleting our Bumble accounts before I drove away to Las Vegas. And four months later, there I was, back in Santa Fe, the place I was sure I'd never return to. 

This was our third in-person rendezvous since I left Santa Fe and we had a wonderful time. And that's 99 percent because of the company I was with. My feelings about the city haven't really changed, but there is quite a bit more going on in spring, which was nice.

Sky Railway

With a dozen different themed cars, the Sky Railway is a fun date night activity you can do over and over. We did the Sunset Serenade in an authentic Acoma car with good cocktails and a great live musician. It doesn't seat that many people, so you aren't crowded in, and while there's some history given, mostly you can simply relax and take in the scenery. 


Art

Between dinner and our Sky Railway trip, we had a little time to kill and so we wandered around downtown and found Site Santa Fe hosting a free opening night party for a new exhibition. There were drinks, food, dancing, and 3D glasses. For a free event, it was a good 15 minute diversion for us and while I didn't enjoy the art in this particular exhibition, some of the past exhibits on their website look interesting. 

But the extremely woo-woo crowd was a reminder how hard it would be to find my kind of people in Santa Fe. Weird visual art is what that city is all about. I felt very uncomfortable in the southwest surrounded by a bunch of people dressed like they were somewhere in Manhattan. It's not what I'm looking for, but unfortunately, Santa Fe's population isn't really big enough to host them and my kind of people. 

In the park next door, there was also a festival going on - Indigenous Ways Festival - but we didn't have time to check it out.

Restaurants

Santa Fe is a foodie's heaven! I am certainly not a foodie, but I do enjoy a good meal, and Joe and I had many of those. Here are all the places we went. 

Breakfast:
Lunch:
Dinner:
We also tried to hit up this cool-looking place in Lamy for lunch but the sign on the door on June 3 still said they planned to open some time in the summer.

10,000 Waves Japanese Spa

I've never done a full spa experience. I've had massages and one time a facial, but this was something else. We had the Ichiban suite all to ourselves for 90 minutes. Two hot tubs with different temperatures, a day bed, a cold outdoor shower, two hot indoor showers, and a sauna. This was really, really luxurious and for $78 per person, not really that expensive. We wanted to get massages too, but they were booked up. I will definitely go back here and do more next time I'm in Santa Fe. I imagine this would also be a lovely experience in winter with snow falling around, as would renting one of the charming cabins and staying overnight.


Trail Running 

I'm in training for some ultra marathons and Joe is an avid mountain biker (he actually does a lot of trail maintenance and advocacy work), so we went out to some great trail systems together. We also did a nice hike with his sweet dog, who also made my stay extra lovely. Niko is a bit of a devil, but he's also a very good boy.




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