Saturday, June 21, 2008

How much???????

We’ve decided to extend our stay in Santa Fe to 3 nights, our longest stay in one place since we left home. Not because it’s great, but because we arrived late, we want a fun night out, and then we want to leave early. So 3 nights it is. The bad part is that because as I said, we arrived late on a Friday, the only hotel we could find is a rubbish, dirty, concrete hole of a place called DeathLodge (that bits a lie).

The day started by us going back to Madrid to buy more arty stuff and also dumping the dog in an overnight pet hotel so that we can have that afore mentioned fun. The rest of our time is spent being underwhelmed by Santa Fe. It’s very nice but its all just a bit homogenized. Albuquerque feels more natural and less forced. I doubt we’ll be back.

Desperate for a beer, we follow our ears and end up in a New Orleans style jazz bar. Superb fun with 5 of the ugliest men you could dream up blasting some superb foot tappers. Now take a look at the photo. You’ve seen the framed picture before. That’s Angelo Klonis on the cover of Life magazine in 1944. That picture became the face of WWII in the US. Anyway, it turns out that his son now owns the bar and he’s dedicated it to his dad’s memory. He was nice enough to pose for this photo for me.

We move on. And the real fun begins.
Hi, table for 2 please.
Do you have a reservation?
Do I need one?
Sir, we’re the 10th best restaurant in America! We’re also a fragrance free business.
What does that mean?
It means we encourage our patrons to wear fragrance free lotions, deodorants etc. Skip cologne, perfume, scented soap. It helps promote the natural aromas of our culinary creations.
Oh.
Well, I guess we could seat you outside on the patio...
Actually at that point, whilst the pretentiousness didn’t go away it turned out to be a great restaurant and the staff were superb at their job. The food was stunning but there was just one small issue. We had assumed that our biggest expense on this trip would be fuel for the car. Staggeringly, 2 bottles of wine here costs more than all the gas we’ve purchased so far. Way, way, way more. And we were drinking the cheep stuff. Ouch.

As the dollars racked up, the waiter decided to be our best friend. He told us all about his time in LA, his time out of his head on LSD, his time in a nudist hot spring, his time, well, lets end the list here by just saying, he’s lived a little.