Mammoth Goes to Colorado Day 3

 Wednesday September 8

The plan was to eat a lot of good Mexican food in Santa Fe, but I was having trouble finding it. Breakfast should have been easy--there were tons of highly-rated restaurants offering breakfast. I couldn't go wrong....

But I did. I chose The Pantry Dos, an offshoot from the original The Pantry, but conveniently located near to us in the southern suburbs. It was highly disappointing. They'd run out of cinnamon rolls with the next pan still rising, 25 minutes to go. Considering how little money in ingredients go into a pan of cinnamon rolls, there was no excuse for them to ever run out. Poor management.

The people were pleasant and did their job well, but there weren't all that many customers and we felt hovered over. My avocado toast, two eggs and fried potatoes were perfectly done, but somewhat carelessly assembled. If I were running the place, instead of the forlorn and droopy sprig of parsley I would have put a slice of orange and a strawberry on each plate.  The potatoes were supposed to be spicy, but they were bland and boring. Bah!

After that the plan was to go downtown and see some art. But on the spur of the moment I tried to take us to a little park on the Santa Fe river, up in the mountains, toward the lake they used for holding water for the city's supply. We missed the park, but instead arrived at a Nature Conservancy site which apparently had some very popular birding hikes. Trying to park, we found ourselves trapped in a teeny tiny parking lot so jammed with cars and people lined up to get in that it was doubtful we'd ever get our Jeep doors open. Needless to say, we turned around and squeezed the Jeep out. With great difficulty.

Then we took our dogs back to the RV, and headed out again to downtown. I wanted to go to the history museum and then walk along the historic district that a guidebook had suggested as a good way to see the city.  But for reasons unknown, after we paid $15 to park our Jeep for the day, we decided not to spring the additional bucks for the museum. Which was stupid of us. We simply took the walk and were underwhelmed with the results. It was hot, for one thing, and there just weren't all that many historic buildings, for another. Bad planning on my part.

Our big supper was a bust. The place that everyone raved about turned out to be a dump in a small strip shopping center with no mroe than one or two cars outside. A dump in a strip shopping center with lots of cars outside would have been okay; but only a couple? I don't think so.  It looked too unappetizing to even consider. Choice #2 was closed on Wednesdays, so we ended up at Posa's El Merendero Tamale Factory & Restaurant, which I liked a great deal but Ed was disappointed by. He refused to ask for butter, not noticing the "butter" patties right there on our table, so he didn't touch the tortillas he was given. I don't remember the reason he gave for not getting sopapaillas instead, but I think it was something about not noticing the bottle of honey on the table.

Next time I have to find a restaurant in a tourist trap location and have no good recommendations other than TripAdvisor and the various online sources, I think I'll go with more expensive rather than less. I suppose one can assume that if a $$ restaurant gets 4.5 stars then that means more than if a $ one does.