HAPPY 400TH BIRTHDAY!!

Santa Fe, NM turns 400 years old in 2010, and it doesn't look a day over 300. It's a beautiful and romantic city, unlike it's urban neighbor to the south [Albu-turkey]. This city must look gorgeous at night...guess I'll just have to stay at the La Fonda on the plaza sometime to find out.




The minimum wage in Santa Fe is $9.50hr making it the highest in the nation.




The adobe architecture gives the city a very neutral, earthy feel. City codes have been implemented so that new and re-built structures must have a Spanish-Pueblo Revial look or the Territorial pre-statehood look. Ala the 'Santa Fe Style' craze.



According the the US census bureau, Santa Fe has the highest percentage of gay couples living together of any place in the country outside of San Francisco.







Santa Fe is the oldest state capitol in the US and the highest in altitude.



I MUST have this mirror!!!!! Serious. I LOVE this.





Santa Fe once had the Confederate Flag fly over the capitol until the Union troops regained control of the city.



This is the 'legendary' Loretto Chapel, who's story was dramatized back in the 90s in a movie called The Staircase in which Barbara Hershey played a terminally ill nun who organizes a nine day prayer for some one to help them build a staircase to the choir loft after the original architect dies before completing it.. The movie takes ALOT of dramatic license.




The story of the miracle continues as follows.

Needing a way to get up to the choir loft the nuns prayed for St. Joseph's intercession for nine straight days. On the day after their novena ended a shabby looking stranger appeared at their door. He told the nuns he would build them a staircase but that he needed total privacy and locked himself in the chapel for three months. He used a small number of primitive tools including a square, a saw and some warm water and constructed a spiral staircase entirely of non-native wood. The identity of the carpenter is not known for as soon as the staircase was finally finished he was gone. Many witnesses, upon seeing the staircase, feel it was a miraculous occurrence.




Sadly, the church is no longer active and is privately owed by the Inn next door. It will cost you $2.50 just to go into the church and look at the staircase.




I'm out.

postscript:

I would like to wish my good friend Dale a warm and happy BIRTHDAY!!!!! WOO HOO!!