This brief pictorial report is a celebration of the area my wife and I call home and also a tip on where to buy Flamenco music if you live in the US.

The Spanish colonizers combined their walled-garden Moorish sensibilities with the Adobe-Pueblo style of the Native Americans which they encountered when first discovering this area. Forward-looking city planners in America's oldest city Santa Fe have succeeded in large part to keep this historical style alive even in newer developments. The red chile ristras that adorn this entry are typical of the area while the super-imposed lizard fetish of serpentine and turquoise is a Zuni carving ruling the dream world. Just three blocks west off the famous central downtown square is Guadalupe Street and on it,
the flagship store of a three-store franchise with outlets also in Seattle and Berkeley - The Spanish Table. That's today's destination for Hiberian marzipan (with our favorite the egg-yolk variant called Turron Yema); olive oil tastings; books on bull-fighting (Ivette is writing a transpersonal novel for her Masters Degree which involves a lot of matador research); and, naturally, Flamenco records.


You're looking for 109 North Guadalupe or the San Francisco Plaza which also houses our favorite Thai restaurant, The Banana Cafe, making for a double-whammy cultural weekend destination to which we recommend adding a prior visit at the Tesuque Flea Market. Despite its humble designation, that is really a very upscale outdoors Arts & Crafts fair with a heavy emphasis on local arts, Native American jewelry, Turkish and Asian carpets and African, Peruvian and Tibetan artefacts.