So it's day three, a Monday morning and we decide to go to Cafe Pasqual's for breakfast, and absolute must do when we go to Santa Fe. It requires a long wait outside the front door though, even if you agree to eat at the communal table (which we did agree to, but we got our own table). We waited about 45 minutes. Z. wanted a lemonade which came out as a lemon concentrate with extra concentrate and a carafe of water, you add your own sugar to it. She worked it out and got it the right sweetness for her and thought it was pretty great. She ordered a short stack of whole wheat pancakes, she wanted the regular stack but I insisted on the short stack since the pancakes are the size of a dinner plate (their plates are huge).
I ordered the Pasqual favorite, which is the same short stack with 2 eggs and applewood smoked bacon. They were very good, I love a really hearty whole grain kind of pancake and these were those. I ate only one pancake and half my eggs but A. helped out and ate the rest of mine in addition to his own meal.
A. ordered his "usual" the Huevos Motulenos which is this concoction of eggs, corn tortillas, chiles, feta cheese and sauteed bananas.
We left there happy and full and walked up to St. Francis of Assisi Church to walk the labyrinth they have outside the church. I've been talking to my support group facilitator about labyrinths and about this one in particular and was anxious to walk my first one. We walked it together and then Z. walked it again by herself.
We went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum for a while, back to the Plaza, and went to the Five and Dime for postcards and Tums (which we were going to need this trip!) We decided that instead of lunch we would drive to the Chocolate Maven and have a snack (aka dessert) since we had early dinner reservations. Why not, right? We're on vacation!
The Chocolate Maven is this wonderful little place in an industrial section of Santa Fe, down the street from the Cloud Cliff Bakery. Z. had a chocolate croissant, I had a chocolate cream cheese brownie and A. had a mini chocolate pecan tart. Z. didn't share her croissant, but A. did and his tart was very good. The brownie was rich and chocolate-y and the portion quite substantial.
Back at the hotel, A. and Z. decided to go swimming. The pool was not at the inn we stayed at but on the roof of the El Dorado hotel. I was tired and took some photos of the hotel room and then just hung out. When they got back from swimming A. went into the bathroom of our room and discovered that there was sewer water in the tub. We called the manager and found out that something had caused all the sub-level rooms to back up and that if they didn't have it fixed by 7pm they would move us to a new room. It was time for us to go to dinner so we just closed the door behind us and decided not to worry about it.
We had reservations for the early show and dinner at La Cantina, a sister restaurant of La Casa Sena. There is piano music during dinner and the waitstaff performs Broadway show tunes. A. and I had gone there the first night of our first trip to Santa Fe way back when before Z. was born. It was fun and we had the best dessert, an avocado lime cheesecake, which unfortunately they don't serve anymore (although I do have the recipe and made it for a party about 3 years ago). The prices are high and we weren't ravenous so we stuck to the lower priced entrees. First, for the table, we got tortilla chips with three salsas (fresh, tomatillo and another red one of some kind). Z. had an off menu "kid's cheese quesadilla" which she liked (this is her 2nd most favorite thing to eat for lunch after pb sandwiches). She was really tired though, so didn't enjoy the whole dinner or show as much as she might have. At one point, a bit too loudly, in between songs she asked if it was over yet. Our waiter made a joke out of it, but it was a wee bit embarrassing LOL.
I ordered the Grilled Chicken and Jack Cheese Quesadilla which had pesto grilled chicken, sauteed squash and bell peppers, guacamole, and tomatillo and habanero salsas. The tortillas were crispy and the filling was very good. I was kind of full from the tortilla chips so didn't eat too much of it and asked for a container to take it home (unfortunately, when we left, I forgot to take it, but it was just as well as we had so many other places to eat, we didn't neet it.) A. had the La Cantina Linguine, which had a basil pesto cream, fresh tomatoes, spinach, corn, mushrooms and achiote grilled chicken, which he thought was very good and ate a good amount of. He decided to order dessert, a lavender creme brulee with a habanero sugar crust. We were not impressed, it tasted like a normal creme brulee (we could not taste the lavender or the habanero) and not a great one at that.
We stopped at the El Dorado hotel to check on the status of our room and found that yes, we were to be moved to another one, so we went back and packed up and moved. The new room was even bigger and nicer than the first room, so we were not unhappy. The only negative was that Z. had made a wonderful Pokemon display on the mantel of the old room and the new room didn't have a mantel to recreate it. A couple of days later we found out that some restaurant near the inn had been throwing grease down the drain and the whole block had problems.
2 comments:
Mmm, those Huevos Motulenos sound pretty good - except, of course, that I don't actually like eggs.... :^)
[M gets Turkish eggs at a restaurant up the street from us - sauteed spinach, a chunk of mild feta, and oven-cooked eggs, with olives, tomatoes, and lettuce on the plate. That also sounds good to me, excepting the eggs...]
Your post makes me want to get back to Santa Fe to have time to actually *be* there.
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