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.