Santa Fe, Part One

 On Sunday I flew from Phoenix to Albuquerque, where the resort had arranged ground transportation for the one hour to Santa Fe. In other words, some big intimidating-looking dude was holding a sign with my name on it and even though I was a little "hmmm... where did I pack that pepper spray..." about the whole thing, I got into the back of the huge black town car anyway.

About one hour later we pulled up to The Lodge, as the main building was called, and a lovely German man named Hans opened my door and greeted me by name. Then I was smoothly passed from check-in to a Mercedes-Benz that drove me the 90 seconds to my "Vista Casita," which was huge. (Pictures on the resort's site here.)

For a good 20 minutes or so, all I did was wander around my room and look out the window like a zombie, not really sure of where I was or how I got there. After I had snapped out of it, I hooked my iPod up to the in-room dock, unpacked all my clothes and took a few random photos of my room using my new "big girl" Canon that my boyfriend and my family got me for my birthday. (I am obsessed.)

One of my favorite aspects of the room was this cow underneath the window:

Other cool things about the room that I liked included the raw look of the wooden desk.

 The old-fashioned alarm clock next to my bed.

The bright wall art.

The wood-burning fireplace and cute pottery on the mantle. (I'm a detail person, can you tell? Hello, copy editor, remember?)

 And the view! 

I had a few hours of down time before the welcome dinner, so I used that to check e-mail and um, People.com, of course, because let's face it, that stuff is important to know ...

Dinner was at the Terra restaurant inside The Lodge, and my goodness, I can't even remember all of the plates they put down in front of us. There were scallops and roasted pork belly I think, white wine, red wine, tuna carpaccio, things I'd never even heard of before ... And I also got to meet the rest of the media folks who were along on the press trip. Five girls, one guy. One woman from New York who writes for a bridal magazine, one woman also from NY who writes for architectural digests and also a spa publication, one woman from Atlanta who is the editor in chief there of one women's interest publication and one affiliated men's interest publication, one woman from Los Angeles who writes for a certain entertainment news show, me of course, and then a man from LA who writes for a teeny tiny publication that I'm sure no one has ever heard of. ;)

All these individuals have been at this a lot longer than I have, so dinner was equal parts fascinating and rolling of my eyes and dropping of my jaw. Many of them have dozens of these trips under their belts, and some sound like they go on at least one every month. Nevertheless, everyone was very, very nice and totally willing to give me advice and such regarding the industry.

Monday morning we embarked on tours of both the property and of Santa Fe. The trip to downtown was a little "Disney," in that I felt like what we were able to see and not see was a little too controlled, which made for bad exploring, but probably helped keep a handle on time constraints. We drove by the Santa Fe Opera, toured the Georgia O'Keeffe museum, and then made our way to the downtown's plaza area, where locals bring jewelry and other wares to sell.

We also stopped by a really cool -- okay, SUPER cool -- candy shop called Todos Santos Chocolates & Confections. I highly recommend. I bought dark chocolate there to bring home to my boyfriend and my sister, and I got a tiny piece for myself, too.

After all the walking around, lunch was inhaled at The Shed, which is apparently a staple among the locals. I found it interesting that it serves all its New Mexican fare with "French garlic bread" and Zabaglione, an Italian dessert, to follow. Sorry, no photos of any of that, I was too busy devouring my enchiladas and chasing the ultra-spicy red and green sauces with iced tea.

Following lunch we walked part of Canyon Road, which is the definitive arts center in Santa Fe, not to mention the most prominent arts community in all the U.S., aside from New York. We were able to go into three galleries, which were all more like museums. There were Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt originals just hanging on the walls like it was no big deal, even though I remember seeing paintings by those artists in many of my grade school history textbooks. There were Native American blankets selling for upwards of $2,000 each, as well as antique New Mexican furniture, Inuit jackets made from whale intestine (or was it bladder? You get the picture), and even a Native American woman's beaded dress for $95,000. It was unreal the stuff these galleries had tracked down, believe me.

And then it started to rain on us, so that cut our stay on Canyon Road a bit short. We visited the Railyard District, which is the area for the more modern art and video installations, etc., despite the rain, but I didn't want to pull my camera out in the bad weather, so unfortunately I didn't bring home many photos of the art gallery adventures. Dinner was at another New Mexican food restaurant called called Gabriel's, where the view was awesome, but the food wasn't necessarily any better than the Mexican food I've found in Arizona.

Tuesday was my favorite day of the trip because it was supposed to be themed as the "health and wellness" day. We started at 8:30 a.m. and hiked a trail that begins next to the resort and leads upward and into the neighboring Santa Fe National Forest. This was our view:

 Immediately following our hour-long hike was a yoga class that felt amazing, and then lunch next to the pool. Once again, I felt like I had slipped into an alternate universe, the food was unreal.

After lunch, all the girls (the guy opted out, understandably) had our spa appointments at 2 p.m. We checked in at 1:30 as had been recommended to allow plenty of time for the hot whirlpool and steam room. And let me tell you, I am by no means an expert, but I've been in my share of saunas I suppose, and this one was the mother of all saunas, almost to a fault. I actually started to drown for a moment, that's how much moisture was in the air. My lungs took in too much water when I breathed in and I got the weird sensation that I was drowning without being submerged. It was odd. So after I went out and went back in and breathed a little more slowly, it actually felt amazing.

Closer to 2:00, we were ushered into the "warming room," where there were fireplaces and hot and cold tea and fluffy blankets and over-sized chairs and ottomans and just everything that can make a room soft and cozy. There are photos of the spa on the resort's website here. Then our massage therapists retrieved us for each of our respective treatments. The PR rep had signed me up for the "Mountain Spirit Purification" treatment, which is described in the resort's brochure as:

Native American reverence for the Earth inspires this purification ritual which begins with a smudging ceremony, followed by an adobe clay body mask. A warm restful wrap with a scalp and foot massage, connects your energies to Heaven and Earth. Awaken to a rain shower rinse and embrace your final gift: a juniper-sage massage using hot stones.
2 hours    300

It was ... ridiculous. As in, ridiculously decadent. Two of the best hours of my life. If I'm ever wealthy enough to not have to worry about bills, I am going straight back to Santa Fe and signing up for one of these because it was a-ma-zing. First the therapist scrubbed the living daylights out of me with a brush made from some kind of cactus fiber or something and then smeared me with a wonderfully scented clay. Then she wrapped me up in heated blankets and left just my feet and head uncovered so that she could first massage my feet, then cover them up too, and then massage my scalp. I definitely nodded off a few times. When it was time to un-mummy me, she disappeared for a bit and I was able to rinse myself off under an outdoor shower using a cloth woven from more of that cactus fiber. (She said it was mine to keep. lol. It's sitting next to my sink right now.) And then, back inside the treatment room, I experienced the most blissful hot stone massage ever. EVER. I was totally blissed out for the rest of the day, and my skin still feels really soft, thanks to the massage therapist's mad skills with that scrub brush ...

Unfortunately, the real world doesn't stop while you're spa-ing (although it should!), so I had to go straight back to my room and answer more e-mails and finish a blog post for one of my clients, yay, but it wasn't long before it was time for dinner in the Pinon Room (cool sidenote: Those X's on the bookshelves at the far end of the room are made of Spanish Bibles. The gold you see is the gold leaf on the edges of the pages, and they've all just been meticulously stacked.), where the view of the sunset was incredible. And then after dinner, we meandered out to the fire pit, where we got to enjoy some spiked Mexican hot chocolate and good, old-fashioned s'mores before wandering back up to our casitas to enjoy a very good night's sleep.

~ The End ~

Santa Fe: Part Two will include photos from the solo hike I made Wednesday morning before flying out of New Mexico.