Land of Enchantment, indeed

We traveled to New Mexico over 25 years ago, just to see Carlsbad Caverns.  Truly one of the toughest-to-reach National Parks in the lower 48.  It really is in the middle of nowhere.  Our kids were too young to remember the caves

or the northern end of the Guadalupe Mountains that we visited around Christmas time.

Fast forward a quarter century and now our son and his wife are living in Santa Fe.  Since he was graduating as a UNM Lobo with an MBA we figured springtime would be a fine time to revisit the Land of Enchantment.  Now I get it.  The northern part of the state is really special.

Hard to go wrong if you decide to stay in downtown Santa Fe.  The view outside our room (and in every other balcony for miles) was decorated with red chiles

and the hotel was around the corner from the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi

Fun fact: that hard-to-see white statue to the left is Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the first (and I'm guessing only) Algonquin–Mohawk canonised by the Roman Catholic Church.  She only reached the age of 24 when she died in 1680.

I knew before our trip that one of the best Triassic fossil beds in existence was about one hour West of Santa Fe, in Ghost Ranch.  The site that Georgia O'Keeffe fell in love with so many years ago.

Can you blame her?  Five stars.  It's a must see.  We booked their Paleontology hiking tour and one of the O'Keeffe bus tours and they were both well worth the time and money.

There is a small museum there and it is quite a treasure if you're into dinosaur bones.  Ghost Ranch is where over one hundred well-preserved specimens were found of the official state fossil, the small early raptor Coelophysis.

They are still discovering specimens in one of the newer Ghost Ranch quarries.  The best example is Tawa hallae, a man-sized theropod, shown below, drawn with Charcoal at the site where it was recently excavated.

The best part of the O'Keeffe tour was when the bus would stop at one of the points-of-interest that inspired the artist to paint some of her later works.

It did rain on us during both tours, but it's impossible to mind when (a) the locals are giddy that they're getting any precipitation at all and (b) your shirt dries almost instantly after the cloud passes and the New Mexico sun resumes beating on you.  At the beginning of this year we spent a week in Amsterdam and felt nary a rain drop.  During our 5 days in the 47th State it rained and/or snowed every day.  Go figure.  During the one day the snow canceled our plans to go to the mountains we instead explored an old bowling alley kindly purchased by George R R Martin and transformed by Santa Fe artists into Meow Wolf. Wow!  Interactive Art meets The Twilight Zone.  We all enjoyed it.

At this point we will remind you of the main reason for our trip: our son's graduation.  The University of New Mexico is quite the beautiful campus and it even has a decent duck pond.

Back to downtown Santa Fe.  Strolling out of our hotel they are having a festival.  Like they do every weekend.  Take in some Low Rider culture:

Look for cheap (as well as super-costly) turquoise jewelry.  Go to a street vendor and order a tremendous $5 Fajita (or even deadlier to the arteries, a Chicharrón Burrito).  When they ask if you want red or green chiles make sure to answer "Christmas" for both!  Check out the San Miguel Mission, oldest church in the country, built around 1610.

Walk into one of the many portals around downtown and find historical plaques, such as the one commemorating the secret "shuttling of scientists" to Los Alamos.

Visit the Loretto Chapel, where the sisters had their prayers answered and an architecture marvel was mysteriously created: a spiral staircase was added, by one person, after the chapel had been completed.  It's quite the story, so much so that a movie was made about it.  Fellow tourists said it's a decent movie and IMDB agrees that you should see The Staircase (1998).

There's also dozens of art galleries to see around Santa Fe, from the very expensive to the obscenely expensive.

We end this post with our last day visiting New Mexico, when our daughter-in-law and the rest of the Santa Fe Concert Band gave a free Mother's Day concert two blocks from our hotel.  Here she is on flute as the band plays Weather Report's classic "Birdland":

Land of Enchantment, indeed.  We look forward to a return trip so we can go hike their mountains .

I amsterdam

Having taken a few business trips to Amsterdam at the end of the nineties, I have been patiently waiting to take Mary to the Netherlands for almost two decades.  The timing was finally perfect during the 2018 holidays.  So we flew directly from Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson to Schipol Airport and walked out of Amsterdam Centraal on Christmas day.

Yep, those are shadows on the ground.  And this is the sun shining on the train station:

We were lucky, we stayed for one week and it barely rained on us.  But we didn't see the sun too often after hiking to our hotel.  We chose the Grand Hotel Amrâth Amsterdam since it is only a couple of blocks from Amsterdam Centraal and it is perfectly located for exploring the city.  Plus it came with a nice bonus: the mini-bar was restocked every night -- gratis.

The Science Museum is a short walk from our hotel.  When it's open you can walk up a steep incline to the top, where you get this panoramic view of the city (hotel is a bit right of center):

In the opposite direction, behind the hotel and towards the center of town, is the Red Light District.  You are not supposed to take photos there at night (unless you want to chance getting your phone thrown into a canal), so here's a shot during the day.  Imagine a mass of humanity on either side of the canal and ladies of night pressing against the glass doors and windows at the lower left in the picture:

It's cheesy and touristy, but if you visit Amsterdam you have to take a canal tour.  Heck, they give them away with the 1/2/3-day mass transit passes.  Ours was free with the windmill tour we had booked.  Now, it's a "plug in earbuds and choose your language" audio tour.  The personalized boat tours (sometimes with dinner) and the nighttime "lights tours" cost extra.

The canal tours only take an hour.  Amsterdam is not a large metropolis.  Which means it's the perfect city for walking around and enjoying the canal homes and the watery homes where you might have to mow the roof:

As folks walk around the city they inevitably arrive at Dam Square, where the Royal Palace resides.

Amsterdam has some fantastic museums.  We hit all of the famous places:  that Royal Palace, the Anne Frank House (no pictures, can't even take your cell phone out), the Van Gogh Museum, and the Rijksmuseum (which is most famous for Rembrandt's "Night Watch"):

There's now a "3-D version" of the "Night Watch" on the nearby Rembrandtplein square,

which is close to the Flower Market.

I mentioned the windmill tour, but it's much more than that.  It was a bus tour of "Netherlands Greatest Hits": Cheese Factory in Voledam, Wooden Shoe Factory in Marken, and working windmills in Zaandam.  Highly recommended.  The knick knacks at each inevitable gift shop are a rip-off, but their actual products, such as the cheese wheels, are much more reasonably-priced on the tour than inside the city. We learned that Dutch cheese goes great with spicy pepper mustard.

 

Quick video break since windmills need to be moving in order to get the true experience:

Dutch cuisine ... is ... special.  Are you fond of herring?  Are you OK with swallowing small spines throughout the meal?  Pass.  They're also big into pancakes.  Already mentioned the cheese, which is terrific.  If you have  a sweet tooth then stroopwafels are for you.  Mary brought some back to have with her coffee.  But the best meals I remembered from my business trips last century was rijsttafel, which is not from the Netherlands.  It is an Indonesian rice table.  This is one time where we believe it's fine to take a picture of your food since it truly is worth a 1K words:

Num!  However, on this trip, the best food we had was at two different Italian restaurants.  So after going 2-for-2 we say "mangiare" when in Amsterdam.  

Lastly, when in Amsterdam, try to make the time to sit outside a cafe and take in the city.  It's a superb people-watching place.  Or go to a "coffee shop" if that thing is more to your liking.  Just be careful when you go inside, because not everyone enjoys the same ambience.

P.S. Everyone we dealt with spoke English.  And sometimes Spanish as well.

Zion: our favorite National Park

Zion National Park, hidden in the Southwest corner of Utah, has to be our favorite National Park.  Although we have not visited in 18 years, there's something magical about this canyon.  It's the perfect park to enjoy over a couple of days.  The Grand Canyon or Banff are immense, nearby Bryce Canyon and Iceland's Þingvellir are too small.  Goldilocks would say Zion is "just right".

The tunnel entrance to the park, if you're coming from the east (for example, from Bryce Canyon National Park) is spectacular.  Although the southwestern entrance via St. George (for folks arriving from Las Vegas) is not bad either.  To quote from a National Geographic article "Unlike the Grand Canyon where you stand on the rim and look out, Zion Canyon is usually viewed from the bottom looking up."  The views looking up are unforgettable, particularly if you hike The Narrows, the one must-do hike in Zion.  Here are a couple shots of us hiking the Virgin River in The Narrows from our 1989 visit:

We have camped in Zion, in tents and inside an RV.  We have also slept in the park's lodge (don't expect anything more than 2-star service).  Whatever you choose you must make reservations way ahead of your visit because Zion is no longer a secret destination and the sparse accommodation options fill up every night.  It wasn't the greenest option (sorry planet) but we really enjoyed our little RV that we rented in Salt Lake City in 1989:

If you go to Zion, make sure to visit Kolob Canyons in the northwest section of the park.  There's nobody there (probably because there are no campgrounds or facilities) so you can enjoy a 5 mile scenic drive in relative solitude.  As you can see below from our last visit in 2000, the vistas are every bit as good as in the main park:

As you drive or hike throughout the main park you will be surrounded by "geology gone wild".  You can call the formations by their formal names like mesas or arches or use the local monikers of temples and thrones.

We do have to give a shout-out to Bryce Canyon National Park, since it is so close to Zion and you can experience its little splendor in less than one day.  So we certainly encourage you to visit the park.  Here we are hiking down into the main amphitheater in Bryce in 1989:

In summary, whenever anyone asks us what is our favorite National Park, we grudgingly whisper "Zion, but don't tell anyone".  The first rule of Zion National Park is you do not talk about Zion!  

If you visit you must hike *in* the Virgin River.  Try to be one of the first ones to arrive at The Narrows in the morning.  Make sure you don't mind if your footwear gets soaked and go in shorts or waterproof pants.  Otherwise you will be doing this while making dinner over a campfire afterwards: