So my general statement about Mexico is, “The place is a shit-hole and I am not going back!” Why all the chilies then? Because I’m not going to scary Old Mexico, I am going to New Mexico. Santa Fe to be exact.
I don’t know a lot about New Mexico. I remember during the Atlanta Olympics when some fool would not sell tickets to people in Albuquerque because she was only allowed to sell to Americans. Clearly someone who voted for W.
My friend Lisa used to be kind of obsessed with Santa Fe. She’s been there like 11 times. That seems so weird to me, going to the same place over and over.
“Why are you not going to Hawai’i, Troy?” I am sure you are asking right now. Well to be honest, I don’t have any vacation time and I don’t have any money. Mark and I both had miles on United Airlines that were going to expire soon and this is a long holiday weekend, so here I am at Sea-Tac again.
Do you know there is ample parking on the 6th floor of the parking garage at Sea-Tac? Who knew? I usually spend an hour driving around the 5th floor trying to find the one open spot.
Just like our last trip in March, Dr. Joyce Brothers waits on us at Anthony’s seafood restaurant at Sea-Tac. I have a crab omelet and a very big bloody Mary.
OK, time to fess up here. We are flying coach. I know, I know, the horror!
But like I said, I have no money. It’s just two hours to the Denver airport, so it shouldn’t be that bad...right?
Well, the Denver airport is actually in Omaha, but it still only takes two hours in coach to get there.
I hate the Denver airport. No wi-fi, no real restaurants, one clock.
We end up in some bar eating French Fries and reading travel magazines for a couple hours while we wait for our flight to Albuquerque.
Our plane to New Mexico is...smallish. There are thunderstorms so they reroute us through the Rockies and we actually have a shorter flight, maybe an hour. There is no Albuquerque Airport. It's the Albuquerque International Sunport (no kidding). It's nice and modern in an adobe-covered kind of way. I have a perfect Hertz #1 Gold Club experience -- meaning I do not have to talk the help. I just get in the car and drive away. I love that.
So we are now in Albuquerque.
There are big mountains on one side and mesas on the other. Albuquerque has a nice little downtown, nice freeways, seems all very modern and...nice. At least from the freeway. Lisa told us not to go into Albuquerque at all and to drive directly to Santa Fe without stopping. We do as we are told.The drive to Santa Fe is pretty. Kind of dramatic southwestern vistas. Little adobe houses peek out of the landscape like ant hills.
This is our hotel, Hotel Plaza Real. It’s all old exposed wood beams and adobe.
It’s almost 8pm so we have to head to dinner. It’s next door at the Inn Of The Anasazi. I saw Samantha Brown from the Travel Channel here on TV. This place is a scene. Lots of beautiful rich white people. We have champagne to start. The waiter comes back with two flutes and apologizes that we will have to settle for Veuve Clicquot instead of whatever they normally serve. We can work with that. Then we have these stupid deconstructed salads with White Bordeaux. For entrees I have this venison wrapped in prosciutto with a huckleberry port reduction, baby carrots, and one asparagus (asparagi?). Mark has this duck breast with little pillows of squash in won tons. Now don’t freak out, but we drink red wine! Stags Leap Petit Syrah. Gack! How long has it been since we drank red wine? After a few minutes our eyes start to itch and we sneeze and sneeze. The food is just OK. The service is not great, the timing is off. There is a loud wedding party behind us. Maybe I am just tired, but I am not into the Inn Of The Anasazi. There is nothing southwestern, New Mexican, or even old Mexican about this place. And it is outrageously expensive. I wish we had gone and had tacos somewhere. I sneeze again.
We head back to the hotel to crash. I try to sleep, but Mark keeps breathing. I hit him a few times to encourage him to stop breathing, but he is oblivious. I stumble out to the couch and lay there shivering all night.
The next day we head out to this famous place called Café Pasqual for breakfast. We are seated at a great table under the window next to old mo’s. They make eye contact and we smile, but we don’t engage them in conversation because, well, we are from Seattle and we don’t like people we don’t know.
Mark has regular American breakfast, but after last night I am having some goddamn authentic food if it kills me. I have black beans on tortillas with red and green chili (Christmas style!), peas, white cheese, and some fried eggs. Very good, but breakast costs $70.
Soon some young, cuter mo’s are seated on the other side of the older mo’s. This is now officially the Mo Row. The older mo’s start frantically talking to the younger mo’s about where they are from, how great Santa Fe is, what spa they should go to, etc. It’s like this 10 minute diatribe. Mark and I are like, “God if you needed to talk that bad we wouldn’t really have been mean to you.”
Finally the old mo’s leave. We are feeling all bad, like all mo’s hate us, but then the two young mo’s burst out laughing saying, “God what the hell was that!”
I call Lisa from the restaurant just to be mean. She is not amused, it's like 7am in Seattle.
We walk around Santa Fe for a while and end up at Canyon Road. This is a long road with a lot of galleries. A lot of galleries. Most seem to sell that kind of horrible bronze sculpture you see in downtown Kirkland or University Village except that instead of bronze bunnies or bronze children frolicking there are giant bronze bugs. It’s all really quite horrible.
There are also a lot of pinwheels...
and Flintstones furniture...
One of the guide books says Santa Fe is the third largest art center in the USA after New York and Los Angeles. I question this.
We discover this Buddha farm.
Leaving the Buddha farm we see the younger mo’s from breakfast. Are they following us?
I see that the local gangs like to tag buildings with turquoise spray paint. So authentic and aesthetic!
After a bit we head back to the hotel to get the car. We drive to this place called Jackalope. It’s like the Archie McFee of garden statues and fake turquoise jewelry. I see one of those little howling coyote statues like I saw in real Mexico.
And of course, more Buddhas.
We head back downtown for lunch. We are going to Santacafe. The guide book says this is the current it place. We have to sit at the bar since we don’t have reservations. The crowd is very white, very rich. There is this kind of East Coast country club feel to this place. We don’t fit in, but the white Sangria is good and our chairs are on top of a glass covered mine shaft that goes down about 30 feet. It’s kind of cool, I think there are bones at the bottom. With the White Sangria we have red chili onion rings with some kind of aioli and these free range chicken enchiladas with red chili. The chicken is really good, but the sauce is not very spicy. The place is fine, if a little snotty, but I am glad that we came for lunch and not for dinner. Too expensive. As we are leaving we see the young mo’s. They had reservations.
After lunch I buy some masks from Indonesia. Some old guy is selling off his collection.
I ask where I can buy some other masks and he sends us to this other gallery about a mile away. As we walk through the crowded streets I think I start to get this place. It is totally a tourist town, but it’s not evil like Orlando or Lahaina. It’s nice, like Savannah, but more sophisticated, more arty, much more liberal. I do not, however, have that special feeling that a lot of people get here – that they have to move here immediately. No, this is not my one true place. Lilo knows my one true place.
The other gallery is run by this woman from Seattle who can tell we are from Seattle before we even open our mouths. I assume it’s our pasty white skin, but I am not sure. I cannot buy masks here. They start at about $3000. She has a friend who is in charge of the African section of the new Seattle Art Museum. Mark and I rave on about the new SAM and especially about the African section (masks, man, lots of masks). As we walk around town some more we see some real galleries with real art. Real expensive art. Real expensive art with lots of Buddhas. I don’t know if you can see this, but this is a ghostly picture is of a $17,000 Buddha in the window of a gallery.
Tonight we are having dinner at the Coyote Café. This is a very famous restaurant. The guide books say it’s too touristy, but here we are anyway. The woman at the front desk with gigantic breasts wearing a yellow bath towel is quite rude, but then another woman swoops in and is actually nice. She takes us on a tour of the restaurant while we go to our table.
Our waiter is maybe 19 years old and has too many tables and too many pimples. I have a glass of Prosecco with some pomegranate liqueur in it. Mark has a black cherry martini. I win.
I start off with a quail tamale and Mark has beef carpaccio with radishes(?). They are fine, but nothing special. Then he gets squash soup and I have this salad that arrives with corn nuts in it. I want to say here that the whole room got quiet and crickets were heard, but actually I could not hear anything over the crunching of my stupid corn nuts. I think this is the most ridiculous salad I have ever had. I am against corn nuts in my food.
For an entree I have this duck tamale and a duck breast with mango salsa. Mark has this amazing pork chop in red chili that is really great. It’s kind of rare to actually have better entrees than appetizers, but that is the case here. For these prices the service should be good, but the bus boys do not do anything and the waiter is a goof. Giant breasted front desk woman walks through and flips her bath towel at us. Good entrees aside, I am so underwhelmed. This could be a chain restaurant in the suburbs anywhere. Boo!
The next morning we drive to a more working class part of Santa Fe and have breakfast at this place called Quetzalcoatl or something like. Normal people seem to eat here. I have the same thing as yesterday at half the price and Mark has this very hot red chili burrito with posole. This was very fun and it’s nice not to spend $70 on breakfast.
Now we are off to the spa. 10,000 Waves Spa. It's outside of town in the mountains.
Strangely, there are Buddhas in the entry way.
So we go in, get in these very nice beige kimonos, wait in the seating area for a little while drinking cucumber flavored water, and then we are supposed to go sit in this outdoor hot tub for an hour. The are three walls of bamboo and then the just the forest. The forest with wolves and bees and gigantic dragon flies.
This is suppose to be all very zen and natural, but I just can’t relax. I am sitting naked in the middle of the woods being dive bombed by dragon flies and I know there are wolves out there waiting to eat me. I am sure they are red and there are two of them.
After 45 minutes of rather stressful soaking the intercom comes on and a gentle bell is rung. Then a voice announces that a huge lighting storm is coming up fast and that we should get out of the tub immediately as electrocution is likely. God bless lightning. Stupid wolves.
We have some more cucumber water then it's time for a massage. You may recall from recent Hawai'i massages that I always seem to get some tiny Asian masseuse named named Lolly or something. No Lolly this time. I get this older hippy dude with leather-like tan skin. He does not talk, he just goes to work. This is deep, hard, meaningful. He pulls on things I did not know I had. Seriously, this was the best massage of my life.
I know this is hard to believe, but I am actually relaxed when I finally head downstairs for a facial. More than relaxed, kind of unconscious.
The facial person gets a giant magnifying glass and looks at my pores. “Yes, some congestion in your nose. We will extract.” Yes!
“Also some red veins on the side of your nose. From the sun perhaps?” Well, I have not had any gin in months so I guess so.
This is all the talking she does. I get scrubbed, and scraped, and squirted, and then my neck and scalp are massaged again. This is so much better an experience than the Salish Lodge in January when the woman would not shut up. She kept going on and on about how she makes homemade Frangelico and how her $200 shipment of organic hazelnuts from Oregon were stolen out of the trunk of her 1992 Honda Accord that was green and had a dent in the passenger side door and how nice the farmer in Eugene was to send her another shipment at half price because he felt bad for her. There is nothing like that going on here at all.
Finally we are done. I am so relaxed. My body feels like rubber. I stumble out into the lobby not realizing that the scalp massage has made my hair look funny. Children scream and run. I am so disoriented I actually walk right into the wall.
Tonight we finally have a good dining experience. We go to this place called Café San Estevan. The chef is a Catholic monk. He apparently gave up god for cooking. I understand. I cannot describe how great this experience was. We go into the adobe building with dark wood and religious icons on the walls. We sit at the old wooden table and then this beautiful Spanish waiter comes over. We order a White Bordeaux and this Chili Relleno to share to start off. The Relleno...holly shit! Now I won’t tell you that that was as a religious experience as crab dip in Maui, but I cannot think of any other food that I would even compare to the sacred crab dip. I can’t even tell you what the sauce was or what the chili was stuffed with. It was stuffed with heaven and covered in heaven sauce. The beautiful Spanish waiter comes back to fill our wine glasses and points out that the scar on my left wrist is gone. Mark checks and the scar from his shoulder surgery is gone too. It's a miracle! I rub some of the Relleno sauce on the fine lines and wrinkles under my eyes.
We both have chicken enchiladas with red and green sauce. Spicy and amazing. Even the beans that comes on the side are incredible. Oh, and did I mention that everything here is like $12? The only odd thing is that the waiters are fighting with the bus boys. Its' pretty funny. The bus boys are kind of pretty and creepy like altar boys. They don’t actually do anything. They just walk around and pose. The waiters ask them to refill water glasses or pick up plates but the bus boys just kind of shift their poses as if they were in a New York photo shoot. We end with Flan. The monk comes out and we kneel and kiss his ring.
This by far the best meal we had here – and the least expensive.
The next day it's time to go home. We get up, check out, drive down to Albuquerque for lunch. Albuquerque is...well...Tacoma. Lisa was right, stay on the freeway. Eventually we find this tourist zone called Old Town or something and have lunch. Lunch is nothing special and it’s hot out. Our flight out is not till 7pm. We decide to head to the airport around 3pm to see if we can get on an earlier flight.
Then the worst travel experience of my life begins. You cannot imagine what I went through. Oh my god. Oh my god.
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So this is how it goes:
It’s hot and icky in Albuquerque. Our flight to Denver does not leave until 7pm. We want to catch an earlier flight to Denver and then hopefully an earlier flight to Seattle.
We get to the airport at 3pm. There are two earlier flights to Denver on United. We get our names on standby for both flights and our bags head on to Denver.
We cannot get on either flight. They are sold out.
At 6:30 when we should be boarding our plane we learn it has had mechanical problems in Fargo. Some loud Republican fool near us is going on and on about how he is from Omaha and does not want to spend the night in Denver. I explain that he can just walk home from the Denver airport but he does not understand.
The plane arrives one hour late. The crew at the gate in Albuquerque assures everyone that has a connecting flight in Denver (meaning literally everyone) that they will hold the flights for us as they are pretty much the last flights of the night.
On the flight the evil mo flight attendant makes jokes about missing our flights over the intercom. “Good Luck!” he cackles. No one laughs. "Good luck with that receding hairline of yours," I think to myself.
We land in Denver. We are the first off the plane. We run and run and run down the deserted corridors of the Denver airport. I am old and fat. I fall behind.
Mark stops to save me but I tell him to go on without me and to give my love to my cats. My sacrifice is for naught. The plane is gone. 5 minutes ago. All the planes are gone. The airport is closed. The only people here are the passengers from our flight. We all try to find someone to help. We find this 80 year old cleaning lady and put her behind the United Airlines Customer Service Counter. This one old lady tries to help each passenger but there is only one of her and the line is long. While in line I call United Airlines on my cell phone. Ambalambapanishipa in Bangalore informs me that there are no flights out the next day. She can get us on a flight to San Francisco the next night at 7:30pm, then on a flight to Seattle at 11pm, getting us back to Seattle at 1am, two days from now. The only other option is to fly back to Albuquerque tomorrow at 5pm, then on to Las Vegas at 6pm, then on to Portland at 10pm, then home to Seattle the next day at 2am. To quote Cheryl Tryvk, I boo the choices.
Ambalambapanishipa assures me she has checked all the other airlines and all flights are full. Do you know that special effect from Alfred Hitchcock movies when the camera seems to be zooming in but the person seems to be moving backwards at the same time? I am doing that now. I have this recurring nightmare about being stuck on flights that take me farther and farther away from my destination. I appear to be living my nightmare right now.
Ambalambapanishipa also informs me that United Airlines will not get us a hotel room, because “they don’t do that.”
Finally, after she has been absolutely no help whatsoever, Ambalambapanishipa asks me if “She has met all me travel needs this evening?” I suggest, ever so strongly, that that may not be the case, and that I would never be treated like this by Hawaiian Airlines and politely hang up. United is so fired.
We find one of those direct telephone lines to nearby hotels in baggage claim and call the "closest hotel" to the airport. It’s a Marriot at Pena Blvd and I-70. They tell us they are brand new and have plenty of rooms available. Mark and I both relax a little. We find the nearest non-English speaking cabbie and ask him to take us there. $40 later we arrive at the "closest hotel" to the airport. United is so fired.
At the front desk this former used car salesman tells us the room will be $289. I picture him getting gang banged in prison after I turn him in for the felony of lying to desperate travelers about the cost of a room. Suddenly the man we spoke to on the phone comes out from the office, overhears what is going on and informs us that the room is a suite and it will only be $135 since we are the only people in the hotel. I tell the first clerk he should get a job for United Airlines. In the room we get online and immediately learn that Ambalambapanishipa lied to us. There is a flight on Alaska Airlines at 7am that connects through Los Angles and we will be back in Seattle in the early afternoon. United is so fired.
These are one way tickets and last minute so they are expensive. $450. That is the cost of a ticket to Maui. Whatever, I just want to go home. It’s only $50 more to upgrade to first class. Why not? United is so fired.
We try to go to sleep, but we have to get up at 4am. I can’t sleep. Mark is breathing again so I try to go sleep on the pull out sofa sleeper. There are no sheets on it but I find some in a plastic bag in the closet. They were put in the bag wet. They are still wet and a little moldy. I whimper all night long.
At 4:30am we catch a shuttle bus in front of the hotel to the airport. We stop at many other Marriotts. Apparently, all hotels at the Denver/Omaha International Airport are Marriotts. We pick up numerous United Airlines employees on their way in to work. I look for the evil flight attendant from the Albuquerque to Denver flight but he is not there. I am sure some other passenger took care of him.
Finally we are at the airport and go to the Alaska counter. They do not have our reservation. They do not know us. Finally the woman asks if perhaps we are on the LA flight. Yes? Turns out that is a code share flight with American Airlines and we have to go to the other side of the giant Denver/Omaha International Airport to check in there. I am worried we will be late and miss this flight too.
At the American counter they do know us. Since we are in first class we get to take cuts in front of all the poor people in line at security. We board the plane. Finally, maybe, all this is over.
No, not by a long shot…..
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Finally we are on a plane to get home, and in first class. I am listening to my iPod, drinking coffee, and eating an omelet. Outside my window is the Grand Canyon. On my iPod I am listening to an NPR podcast about the health risks caused by international travelers. The reporter says, “Someone could get bitten by a mosquito in the Congo today, get on an airplane, arrive in Seattle, Washington the next day and infect the whole city with Ebola!” Exactly right then, and I mean this, I look up and there is a mosquito on the window. You may recall from my adventures in Kaua’i and West Maui that I am not a big fan of mosquitoes. I squish it with my thumb.
Exactly 20 minutes later my stomach starts to rumble and then cramp up. I go to the bathroom. As I sit on the pot all cramped up in pain I look up and there is another mosquito in the bathroom. I squish this one too.
At the risk of being too graphic here let's just say that for the rest of the flight I spend most of the time in the bathroom. If fact, you could say I left a bit of a brown trail from the Grand Canyon to Los Angeles.
We land at LAX. I am having trouble breathing and I am very weak. We seem to be in some kind of American Airlines terminal that does not serve Alaska Airlines. While Mark goes to find out how we get to the Alaska Terminal I sit down. I find that taking many short breaths helps with the pain. I look up and see 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl furiously highlighting sentences in the New York Times.
Mark comes back and tells me we have to catch some kind of a shuttle bus to the Alaska Terminal. There are no signs for this bus and no one here speaks English. I really need to use the bathroom again. We find one, but it's full, every stall is in use. I start to cry.
Eventually we think we have found the entrance to the shuttle bus area but the guard will not let us in. He is telling is in Guatemalan or something that he needs to see our boarding passes, but we cannot understand each other. Finally we get on the bus. It’s old and bumpy. Like the Wiki Wiki buses in Honolulu but older and dirtier. We don’t know where we are going or when we should get off. After about 30 minutes and some false starts we get to the Alaska terminal. I make a bee line for the one bathroom in the terminal, but I throw up all over the wall before I can get to a toilet. No one even looks up or notices. I make it to a toilet and it's backed up with sewage. In fact every toilet in the one bathroom in the terminal is backed up with sewage and there is no toilet paper in any stall. There is no toilet paper anywhere. I throw up on the wall again.
It’s cloudy and cold in LA. Maybe 59 degrees. I am dressed for 80 degrees in Albuquerque. I sit in a little chair near the bathroom shivering. I send Mark to Starbucks to get paper napkins to use in lieu of toilet paper. This goes on for 3 hours while we wait for the flight home. This is the longest three hours of my life. All I want to do is die...and kill any one who works for United Airlines.
Finally we get on the plane to go home...the brown trail to home.
I am in first class. Mark has lunch and a glass wine. I try to have a small glass of ice water but I can’t keep it down. Now my temperature is going from hot to cold. I sweat, I shake, I sweat, I shake. The flight attendants look at me as if I have Ebola or something.
Finally we land. I try to walk to baggage claim but I have to stop every few steps and rest. Baggage claim? Oh God! Our bags were on the flight to Denver that we missed like 48 hours ago? Eventually we make it to United baggage claim….and there they are. All safe and secure. United is still so fired.
Mark drives me home. The cats take one look and me and run under the bed. I sit down on the floor in my nice clean bathroom with toilet paper and puke my guts out for 30 minutes. I am not able to go to work for the rest of the week.
I guess I should document some lessons learned here. This is the best I can do:
- Do not fly United Airlines.
- Avoid the Denver airport at all costs.
- Do not fly in aircraft with visible live insects as passengers.
- Only go to Hawaii.
In the weeks since this experience I keep having flashbacks. Every time I am in a public bathroom I throw up a little. Every time I think of flying my stomach cramps up.
I am supposed to go to Italy in three months. I am flying business class. I am still afraid.
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