Spring Break Trip - Part 2

After we left Colorado Springs, which you may have missed at the end of my last post, we drove to Taos, New Mexico. It is an artsy place with typical adobe structures throughout the whole town. We walked and shopped the square there for a few hours. My favorite sculpture below looks like a big face, but if you look closer, it is 3 people in robes, 2 looking forward and the middle one with his back turned.

You can see the adobe stores in the background.  The picture below is Doug standing next to a painting that is on the wall of the Chamber of Commerce building next to where we parked to go walk around. It was really fun.

From there we went to Santa Fe. Our hotel (more of an inn or motel) was an older one but it was right in the center of town.  Just across the street from it was the Loretto Chapel. This was by far my favorite place in Santa Fe.

Inside this chapel is a spiral staircase that has no center supports. It has 2 complete 360 degree turns in it. The legend is that when it was built, they used a ladder to get up to the choir loft. But it was used as a girls school and a ladder didn't work well for that, so they fasted and prayed that someone would come who could build a staircase to it because there was no room for a normal staircase in the church. After 9 days of praying, a man showed up who said he could do it.  He worked on it until it was finished and then disappeared, never to be seen again.
 

We looked at the Cathedral Basilica, which was just beautiful too. It was very ornate.

The above picture is the baptistry in the cathedral. We spent the rest of the day shopping in many different shops on the square. The Native American art forms are so interesting and I admit, I couldn't resist some of their things and spent way too much money. Some of my favorite purchases include:

 My storyteller. We couldn't find one anywhere with 6 children on it, so we settled on one with just 2 children, one to represent our boys and one to represent our girls.

I just love my duck. All of the color is inlaid clay, not paint. They had all sorts of animals but I just fell in love with the duck and its intricate design.