Mi Casita

Hola amigas y amgos. I'm sitting on a bench in the plaza, writing my first blogpost from Santa Fe. Finding free wifi has been a bit of a challenge, as is writing on my Nokia internet tablet, so ignore any misspellings or other weirdness.

My casita is just as I imagined it would be -- it's funky and wonky, and although it has all the necessary conveniences, they aren't exactly what you'd call mod cons. The only disappointment is the lack of wifi -- it just doesn't travel from the router at the main b&b house, through the adobe and into my casita.

Travel here was uneventful for the most part. My shuttle from Albuquerque took longer than expected due to a detour to a retreat called Sunrise Springs to drop off four people going there to attend a week-long "intensive" run by Wisdom University. I'd somehow forgotten that this area attracts even more new age nutters than Northampton does.

It's now the morning of my first full day here, and I'm meeting my mates in a few minutes to do some museums. Hasta luego.

Sunday's stats:
12000 steps (5.07 miles)
Expenses:
$7.43 crappy food at Minneapolis airport

$25 shuttle from airport to Santa Fe
$4.15 rolls and bev

Heading for Santa Fe

My mates Jeanne and Tim are leaving for Santa Fe this week, and I'll be following them out there a couple days later. We got together last week over bevvies and nibbles to plan some of our activities (click on the spreadsheet above). The plan is to take in several museums on Monday, as a number of them will have free admission in conjunction with the grand opening of the New Mexico History Museum. We'll take a day trip up to Taos one other day, stopping at Santuario de Chimayo to get some of the sacred healing dirt (we're all heathens, so it probably won't work) and possibly going to Taos Pueblo. The rest of the time will be filled with wandering around, taking lots of photos, drinking margaritas and eating good food. I'll try to do a bit of blogging while I'm there. Since my four faithful readers seemed to like hearing about my expenses and pedometer readings from my most recent London trip, I'll include that stuff again. Check back here next week, and watch for photos on Flickr when I return.

Walking Historical Florence

Steve Strimer has been leading history walks around Florence for a while, and I finally went on one of them recently. I've lived in and around Florence (a village of Northampton) for years, driving through at least twice a day, and often neglecting to take the time to consider the rich history beneath the pavement and behind the clapboard facades. The village was the site of a utopian community, a hotbed of abolitionism, a stop on the underground railroad, and home to many escaped slaves and free blacks including Sojourner Truth and David Ruggles. Steve has done much research on all of this, pouring through old documents and poking around in people's attics, and he periodically takes groups on walks to share his knowledge.


David Ruggles was born a free black in Connecticut in 1810 and moved to New York where he opened a grocery store, became a publisher of abolitionist pamphlets and was the first African American to own a bookstore. In 1842 he moved to Florence, where he joined the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian community. He remained active in the abolitionist movement here and also opened a water cure facility (Northampton had several water cure and spa facilities in the mid-1800s). Near blind and in poor health, he died here in 1849.


This little clapboard cottage will one day be the David Ruggles Center for Early Florence History and Underground Railroad Studies. It's not a house he lived in, but was contemporary with his time in Florence.

This just in from London

Image by ☞ John McNab via Flickr

Spooner sent me a most excellent postcard of the Obamas and the Queen. It's this photo, but they've wisely cropped the Duke out of the postcard because he looks sneaky and too much like Klaus von Bulow.

I've booked my next trip to the UK (in September, so that I can do Open House Weekend again). Apparently, Spooner will be moving before then. I'll miss Primrose Gardens -- I'll either have to learn to like his new patch (wherever that turns out to be) or I'll have to stay with the nuns at the women's hostel in Belsize Park. Hmmmmmm....

Santa Fe on a Budget

Image via Wikipedia

It's rare that I travel anyplace where I have to pay for both transportation and accommodations. I've had some great vacations on the cheap. Mostly, I mooch a guestroom or a futon from a friend, while I pay for my airfare plus entrance fees to museums and some of my meals. Other times, when I traveled for my old job, I used to add a day at the beginning or end of trips, and my workmate ST and I would split the cost of an extra night in the hotel, while our airfare was covered by the org we worked for.

This upcoming trip to Santa Fe is a bit out of my usual mode as the mooching opportunities are minimal, which means I have to scope out how to do this on a budget. My mates ScribeGirl and her husband will be in Santa Fe with another couple at their time share, and I'll be in town for part of the week that they're there. So I'm arranging my own digs for five nights.

I'm not really keen on either hotels (all those identical, characterless rooms) or B&Bs (sharing close quarters with strangers). When Rosenbeans and I went to London for a week in 2004, we had accommodations that worked out really well. We stayed at the Langorf Hotel, which is actually three Edwardian terrace houses in Frognal near the Finchley Road, two of which have B&B rooms and one -- where we stayed -- that is divided into studios and small apartments. We had a little apartment with a bedroom, full bathroom, kitchenette, and lounge with a sofa bed that I slept on, a table with four chairs and a TV with four channels. We even had one of those European washer/dryers, but sadly it leaked all over the floor of the kitchenette due to a torn gasket and we had to finish washing and rinsing our underwear and socks in the tub and hang them all over the apartment to dry.

But I digress. When I started to look for a place to stay in Santa Fe, I typed things like "weekly rental Santa Fe" and "vacation apartment Santa Fe" into Google, and a few clicks kept leading me to the same place: Chapelle Street Casitas. Run in conjunction with Casa del Toro B&B, this place is made up of several properties within a couple blocks just north of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. All the reviews that I saw were glowing. I checked availability online and watched videos of several of the available spaces. I liked the sound of this unit from the description on the website:

This one has 100 year old plank wood floors and is an old old adobe that has settled a bit here and there. Bottom line is there is not a level spot in the whole room. There is a full bath with acid stained concrete walls. Best thing is gas burning stove in the Living Room that keeps everything nice and cozy.

There's also a full kitchen that looks frozen in time, circa 1965, as well as satellite TV and wifi. When I called and spoke to Paul on the phone, he told me that this unit is funky and old fashioned. I asked if it's clean, safe and quiet, and he assured me that it is. Sounds a lot like me: vintage, funky, clean and quiet. So I booked it. Here's the best part: $68/night plus tax. That comes to a bit under $400 for five nights.

Paul told me that I'd receive an e-mail confirmation in a few minutes (I did) and that it would contain several pages of detailed info about the accommodations (indeed, it did). He encouraged me to contact them with any questions, but cautioned that there would be severe consequences if I was to ask anything that's explained in the e-mail. I'm sure they get their share of needy, whiny yuppies as guests, so the peremptory strike is fair and understandable.

Now that I've got my reservations for flights and accommodations sorted, I'll move on to start my research of what to do while I'm in Santa Fe. More on that later, mates.

Adventures, old and new

Image via Wikipedia

I'm such a geek, and so taken with Apture, that I've just gone back through my (old) September dispatches from London and added all kinds of rich content goodness to them -- links, photos, maps and a video or two. Some of my loyal readers are just as geeky as I am and like this sort of thing, so I encourage you to go back and re-read the posts while clicking on the Apture links for all the extras. If you have questions about any of the places I saw, or want more info about anything, leave me a comment and I'll search out some more content for you.

And now for the new: I've just purchased a ticket to Santa Fe, New Mexico for five days in May for the unbeatable price of $196 round trip (airfare Hartford/Albuquerque; the shuttle up to Santa Fe will be another $25). Now, I'm doing online research on cheap places to stay, reading reviews and watching some clunky homemade videos of various B&B offerings. It's been ten or twelve years since my one and only previous trip to Santa Fe, and that was for a conference so I really didn't have an opportunity to explore much back then. This visit may have a daytrip up to Taos and will definitely involve lots of photo-taking. More info to follow as I make a spreadsheet of the things I want to do and see. Meanwhile, winter drags on like an indeterminant sentence. It's good to have something to look forward to -- especially something involving sunshine and warm weather.

I'm Captured by Apture

I know I say this whenever I find some new gadget or gizmo, but this one really is the best thing for blogs since sliced bread. It's called Apture, and like Zemanta, it helps you to add links to your blog posts. But Apture takes things beyond where Zemanta goes -- with Apture, you can link to media files and point to more than one place with your link. It creates pop-up boxes -- yes, we all hate pop-up boxes, but stay with me here -- that show you a Wikipedia article, map, video, photo, or all of those things for one target.

I'm not very good at explaining this, so you'll have to see it in action. Go to one of my posts below. You'll notice that some of the links have a wee icon (book, camera, movie film, etc.) to the left of the link. Those are Apture links. Mouse over the link, but don't click. A box will open up and you'll see the linked item without ever leaving my blog. In most instances, I've got only one item for each link, but I've added maps and photos to some of them and will add more in due time.

If you like what you see, click on Get Apture at the bottom of one of my boxes. All you have to do is create a free account and follow the steps to put a gadget box on your blog. There's no software to download, so you can use it on any computer once you've made your account. Be sure to watch the tutorial video. You'll be Aptured before you know it.

Blogging on the Fly

Image via Wikipedia

I'm a bad blogger. I admit it. The problem isn't the content of my blog -- generally, I think I write pretty informative and entertaining posts. But all the gurus say that, to develop a loyal readership, you have to present new content on a regular basis, and that is my downfall. A quick look at my archives will reveal the infrequency of my blogging.

But that, dear readers, is about to change. I have bought me some new gear. (Have I mentioned how much I love gadgets?) I've been looking at and reading about the Nokia N810 internet tablet for well over a year, and the price just dropped on my birthday, so I ordered one for my birthday prezzie to self. Here are just some of the features of this pint-sized powerhouse:

• Wifi, with Mozilla browser
• QWERTY keyboard that retracts
  
• Internet radio (with BBC installed!)
  
• Skype installed
• Media player
• Photo viewer
  
• GPS (fee for service)
• Games (including Mahjong solitaire, my fave)
• Slot for memory card for photos and music

I'm thinking this will be great to take along when I travel. No longer will I have to beg or borrow computer use and/or wifi from my host. I'll have access to all my travel research that I keep in Google docs spreadsheets, and I'll be able to blog from anywhere. Now all I need is a new trip or a more exciting life to blog about.

Foto Finish

Finally, I can say that I've finished uploading my photos from London. 287 of them, to be exact. It's been a chore, but I've enjoyed revisiting all these spots as I edited, uploaded, tagged, and geotagged everything. And it's been lovely to receive comments from my mates on many of them. I'm particularly chuffed when a Londoner tells me that I've captured something in a new way, or introduced them to a place they haven't been. By the end of this trip, I no longer felt like a tourist. I'm not sure if I'm an honorary Londoner yet, but I'm closer to that than to tourist, that's for certain.

There might be a few more photos that I'll upload and post to Guess Where London, but my Flickr set is essentially complete. If you haven't looked at it for a while, give it another look and let me know what you think.

Update on the Uploads

I imagine that my four loyal readers must be wondering what's up with the promised pix. Well, I never got around to adding any to the posts I wrote from London, but I can report that as of this morning there are 167 photos in my London, Sept 2008 set on Flickr. (You can see them flash by in the wee slideshow on the right side of my blog.) I've been trying to upload in chronological order, more or less, and I'm now up to mid-day on Friday. You'll see tons of graffiti, several boot scrapers, and lots of things from my walks east and west along the Thames. The shots from Friday afternoon will be more street art, and then it will be All Things Architecture from London Open House Weekend. This is taking me for-fucking-ever because I'm meticulously -- ok, compulsively -- tagging and geotagging everything. The cool thing about that is that you can see where I've been on the map of London. That link takes you to a yahoo map, which is good for the overview but pretty much rubbish on the detail. Underneath each individual photo I've given a link to Google maps, which let you really see down to the street level. I was actually able to locate the two trailers (caravans) I photographed near Surrey Water.

So, check out the pix, leave me some comments, and be patient as I finish this monumental task. I should be done in another week or so. Cheers!