Tourist Season Begins

May is the start of tourism season in Santa Fe. From now through the Fall, artists markets, the Santa Fe Opera season, numerous festivals, and cultural events bring tens of thousands of tourists to town.  The biggest event is the third week in August when 150,000 people come to the Santa Fe Indian Art Market, the largest Native arts market in the world.  Wow! That's a lot of people for a town of approx. 68,000 residents.  I am looking at that with some trepidation let me tell you.  Being new residents to Santa Fe, we are having fun exploring all there is to see and do in town.

Our own little tourist season at Casa Stella Bella Quilts has started this month too.  This past week, E. (Mr. SBQ's son) arrived from Georgia and spent a week site-seeing around town and sampling a lot of wonderful New Mexican food.  I joked that I was going to have E. eat his weight in green chile before he left LOL!  We had breakfast burritos at the Santa Fe Farmer's Market, huevos rancheros at the Burrito Company, fajitas on the Plaza, and green chile cheeseburgers just to name a few examples.  (Good thing we did a lot of walking to and from downtown to wear off all that food LOL!)

My favorite dish is Salvadoran-- steak pupusa and chicken tamale in a banana leaf

We also went to Tune Up Cafe, one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants a short walk from our house. YUM!

Tres leches cake which we started devouring before I remembered to take a photo

Santa Fe is home to about 10 wonderful museums right in town.   We are slowing making our way through them.  On a gorgeous Friday afternoon, we took E. to visit the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. A short distance from downtown is Museum Hill, where several museums and the botanical garden are grouped together.  This makes a great way to see lots in a day or a few exhibits here and there. The Indian arts museum has an amazing permanent collection of Pueblo Indian pottery and we saw two special exhibits--Native American Portraits (historic photographs including some by Edward Curtis) and Turquoise, Water, Sky (an amazing exhibit of turquoise jewelry). No photographs allowed inside but here's some photos of the sculptures and gardens outside.

Museum of Indian Arts & Culture

I just love these yellow flowering shrubs. They smell wonderful.  It's called Spanish broom and is grown a lot around town.

View from Museum Hill.
















We were sad to see E. go back to Georgia after a fun-filled week.  Hope he can visit again soon.

Time to prepare for our next guests.  This Friday, my parents are coming from Michigan for a two week visit with their travel trailer and their dog Shiloh.  I can't wait!  During their visit, we'll be celebrating my mom's retirement and her birthday weekend too.  I'll post photos of our adventures and hopefully some quilt shop visits (wink!)