Santa Fe Opera

The fabulous outdoor ( yet semi-covered) Santa Fe Opera House. What the photo doesn't show you is the incredible view of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, behind the open air stage, that serve as a backdrop for every opera. 

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Every couple of years or so, I get to visit Santa Fe during the opera festival held there, generally during August. One of the best destination opera festivals in the USA, not just bc of the quality of the stars / shows held there, but bc Santa Fe is such a beautiful place, with many interesting things to do. See art museums and galleries, tour historic sites, shop and eat gourmet food all day long, and see a breath-takingly beautiful opera, a different one each night! 

opera picnic before the show

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This year, I visited when my childhood friend Bill was there, working as a journalist. Bill and I have been attending operas together since we were 13 years old, and he has educated and shared his passion with me, as well as his opera tickets, ever since. Together we have seen Beverly Sills and countless others,  all the way to today's opera stars. 

I stayed at this marvelous little B&B just 5 minutes from the square in Santa Fe, called Ravens Ridge. It was a lovely, serene place to stay, peaceful and restorative from the social la ronde of opera going. Ravens Ridge B & B has a beautiful garden, full of hummingbirds, and serves breakfast each day out of doors in the garden. Beautiful rooms, delicious food. I highly recommend it and will stay there again next time I visit. As an added bonus, the owner of RR B&B is also an oil painter, and we spent many a happy hour discussing her work, as well as my own.


http://www.ravensridgecasita.com/

While in Santa Fe this time, I visited "Meow Wolf" , a sort of modern pop art installation meets indoor playground, full of tiny rooms with wacky themes, escape hatches, colorful lights, campy decor, and general creative fun. Here I am entering a refrigerator, about to slide down a chute into another room. There is always something fun to do in Santa Fe - I've been coming since I was a little girl, when my parents took our family, as many Texans do, to escape the summer heat. (Yeah, SF is a dessert, but at nearly 8,000 ft elevation, it's significantly cooler than Texas.) I've spent years visiting Ghost Ranch, Abiqueu, Taos, Ojai, museums and  art galleries, the Cathedral w the spiral staircase, shopping, sampling restaurants, etc. All the things one does in SF. It's good to know that there  is always something new to experience.