Trip Report

We are a family of 3 (with an 8-yr old daughter) from the Chicago suburbs. This was a spring break trip (end of March).

Day 1: Thursday. Arrived 9:30 pm. Lodging: Hyatt Place Uptown. Very nice room setup and décor. Beds good. Bathroom with tub/shower and toilet was very small; leaky shower curtain - not as nice as rest of room. HVAC was loud and drafty. Free continental breakfast was adequate. Again very nicely decorated lobby/breakfast area. Location was nice; convenient to restaurants and highway.

Day 2: Friday. Breakfast at hotel. Beautiful weather! Spent whole day at zoo and aquarium. Parked at zoo (surprised that it was hard to find a spot). Rode train to aquarium. Had a really fun lunch at the restaurant at the aquarium. Food ranged from very good to ok, but couldn’t beat the entertainment value. Watching the sharks, eels, turtles, puffer fish, and rays swimming by. Just like the restaurant at Epcot Center, but way better and way cheaper. Zoo was very nice, small-scale zoo. Aquarium was pretty small, but had a few great features, especially the eel tunnel. Had an excellent dinner at Slate Street Café (try the mashed potatoes with caramelized onion and blueberries!). Very large servings so took ';home'; doggy bags with enough for another meal (our hotel room had a small fridge).

Day 3: Saturday. Another beautiful day! Ate breakfast on the patio at Flying Star (several locations). Yummilicious! Then drove out to Acoma Pueblo. Tour was very good. Very nice visitors center with small museum and café with some Native American food (quite good). Also many residents offering their pottery and other crafts for sale. Fun walk down from the mesa (it was shorter then we expected). On the way back, stopped at Ladera golf course to hit some balls. They were very accommodating and lent us clubs (even a couple of child-sized ones for our daughter). Dinner at Standard Diner was very good.

Day 4: Sunday. Ate a quick breakfast at Satellite Coffee (sister to Flying Star) (an egg sandwich and a couple scones) because we got a late start due to being sucked into a movie on TV (Nim’s Island). First stop was the Balloon Museum. Pleasant surprise - free on Sunday from 9-1. Spent about 2 hours there and could have spent longer. Interesting for us and fun for our daughter. Then headed north on the Jemez Mountain Trail. Fun stop at Ponderosa Valley Winery. Daughter loved the dogs (5 of them, all sizes). We loved the personable winemaker and, of course, the wine. Bought a bottle of their dry reisling. A very late lunch (3:00) on the deck at Laughing Lizard Café (very good 3-cheeze pizza) in Jemez Springs. Another fun stop at the Soda Dam (climbed inside the cave and scrambled on top). Continued the very scenic drive through Los Alamos and on to our B%26amp;B in Chimayo (Casa Escondida). Since we had had such a late lunch, we decided to just heat up our leftovers from Slate Street for dinner.

Day 5: Monday. Pancakes and spicy sausage patties for breakfast. Spent the day at Bandelier National Monument. Hiked the Main trail with the interpretive guidebook. Also went on to Alcove House and climbed the 4 scary ladders to the top. It was fun to look for the petroglyphs. Our daughter completed the Jr. Ranger booklet and got a nice patch. This took most of the day. Searched for ice cream in town, but had no luck so ended up with ice cream novelties from the gas station. Ate another very good dinner at El Paragua in Espanola.

Day 6: Tuesday. Cactus eggs(?) and bacon for breakfast. Skiing at Sipapu (45 mins north on the High Road to Taos). Beautiful drive. Daughter and I both took 1 hour lessons. She had 2 other kids in her class; I ended up with a private lesson. Everything super inexpensive; everyone really nice. Snow just so-so (slushy in the sun; icy in the shade), but you can’t beat the mild temps and blazing sunshine. All-in-all a good day. Very tired!! Our first two attempts at dinner failed (Sugar Nymph Bistro and Embudo Station were both closed). Ended up at Angelina’s in Espanola. It was pretty good, but we are getting tired of New Mexican food. Too tired and sore to even hit the hot tub, but nice conversation in the living room of the B%26amp;B.

Day 7: Wednesday. French toast and spicy sausage for breakfast. Our daughter hits it off with a 7 year old girl there with her mom who had arrived at the B%26amp;B the night before. Too bad we are leaving today. Stop at Trujillo Weaving Shop (very nice man who explains all about the weaving and watched 2 women who were actually weaving). Stopped in at the Sanctuario de Chimayo, but they are having mass so don’t get to fully see the inside of the church. Begin the drive south to Santa Fe. Stopped at a very nice sculpture gallery %26amp; garden in Tesuque called Glenn Green. We were looking for the Shidoni Foundry, but stumbled on this place instead. Lunch next door at Tesuque Village Market (the brisket sandwich was very good). On to our B%26amp;B in Santa Fe (Dunshee’s) where we checked in and then walked to Canyon Rd to do a little browsing in the galleries. We asked at the B%26amp;B for an Italian restaurant for dinner and she recommended three. We decided on Osteria d’Assisi. It was very good and we cleaned our plates (lasagna and the grouper on special).

Day 8: Herbed scrambled eggs, toast, yummy muffins, and fresh squeezed OJ for breakfast. Unfortunately, the weather has continued to get cooler every day and today is decidedly not nice. Cloudy, windy, and cold. We lounge around at the B%26amp;B not sure what to do with ourselves. Finally, head down to the plaza and walk around a bit. Have an ok lunch at Second Street Brewery and then go to the International Folk Art Museum. Daughter loved making an Indonesian puppet and then playing with them and the musical instruments they had out. Two big rooms of the museum were closed for re-staging. The main room was overwhelming with the number of exhibits. We look out the window at one point and it was snowing! Decided to head back to the B%26amp;B and see if we could find a movie theatre. Well we did, but the kid movies were scarce. We had missed the 4:00 show and nothing else till 7:30. While we were deciding, we got a call from my dad informing that mom had an accident in the car and was in the hospital with 4 broken ribs and a broken ankle. Had to hustle to dinner then at Zia Diner where we had another excellent meal (especially the crab cake sliders). We had a meal of 4 appetizers with the last 2 unfortunately taking a very long time to arrive which set us back later then we wanted since we didn’t really know where the movie theatre was (they did comp. a very large ice cream sundae for our daughter). We ended up being about 10 minutes late for the movie (North 6 at the mall). We rushed into the theatre for “Hotel for Dogs,” but stopped short as we realized nothing was playing on the screen and nobody was in the theatre. We went back out to ask and they said, “oh, we’ll start it now that somebody is here.” That was kind of funny. We checked the news before going to bed. They were forecasting 1 or 2 inches overnight.

Day 9: We wake to 5-6 inches on snow! We are a little nervous about getting to the airport in Albuquerque on time so decide to leave as soon as possible. After a wonderful breakfast of very thin silver dollar pancakes, bacon cooked just right, and honeydew with herbs, we head out through the narrow, winding streets of the old town. It takes us about 2 hours to get to the airport. It was slow going out of Santa Fe, but about ? hour outside of Albuquerque the snow peters away to nothing.

All in all a great trip. Both B%26amp;Bs were good, but not great (lousy showers and coffee, good, but not great breakfasts, very good beds and good inn keepers). Almost all the restaurants we went to were recommended in Frommer’s 12th edition “Santa Fe, Taos, %26amp; Albuquerque” which we brought with us and they were right on. What we didn’t get to do that we wanted to: Horseback riding, Georgia O’Keefe museum (me only), Petroglyph National Monument. Probably could have squeezed it in if we had gotten up earlier and had better weather the last 2 days. I think we’ll be back some day.

Thanks for everyone%26#39;s help on this forum in planning for this trip!

Trip Report

Sounds like a great trip. Thanks for sharing.

Trip Report

Excellent report! Your writing skills are top notch too! You should be a Chicago Expert for T/A. ;-)

It sounds like your family had as good a trip overall as anyone could ever hope for. Please come again, and tell your friends!

We are especially thankful for your thanks.

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