Santa Fe on a Shoestring

SANTA FE, N.M. — Like Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard and the Co^te d’Azur, this lovely old town in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains has a ritzy reputation. After all, it’s a favorite movie-star haunt, and Santa Fe’s galleries are full of pricey fine art. Then, too, without a major airport, the city is a little hard to reach, and it’s a seller’s market when it comes to accommodations. About 1.2 million people visit Santa Fe a year, yet it has just 4,700 rooms. So hoteliers can charge whatever the market will bear, especially in high season.

But as far as I’m concerned, the really good places in the world can be enjoyed as fully on a budget as with a wad of cash. Despite its popularity, Santa Fe is one of those, as I found out on two trips to the city in the last year and a half. Neither of them broke the bank, largely because I avoided Santa Fe’s chief spending trap, the shops, and sought inexpensive ways to sample the town’s sophisticated delights. For example, you can wander through galleries (there are more than 200) and drink wine at Friday night openings for free, or buy a $10 pass providing unlimited access to five museums for four days, including two Santa Fe gems, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and the Museum of International Folk Art.

Round-trip tickets on Southwest, the only airline that flies directly from L.A. to Albuquerque, often cost as little as $198, or $128 for Internet specials. If you’re just interested in the walkable downtown area around the historic Plaza, you can take a van to Santa Fe from the Albuquerque airport for $25 one way and forget about renting a car. Or you can eschew air travel altogether by riding the train, which departs once a day from L.A. and takes 21 hours (generally $156 to $232 round trip in coach, depending on the season and promotional deals, including a shuttle transfer from the Amtrak stop in Lamy, 17 miles from Santa Fe, to your hotel). Otherwise, you’ll need a car, and if you rent one from a budget car rental company at the Albuquerque airport, you’ll find that the drive to Santa Fe on Interstate 25, across 60 miles of beautiful high desert, is fast and fun.

Finding well-located, reasonably priced accommodations is another matter because everybody wants to be in Santa Fe between mid-May and early October, when the weather is fairest. Budget travelers are wise to stay away in July and August in particular, when high season peaks and crowds jam the Plaza for Indian and Spanish markets, and the Santa Fe Opera performs. Though room rates drop substantially from November to March, winters can be snowy and cold, less conducive to a leisurely stroll down Canyon Road, where most of the town’s art galleries are.

Getting the timing right is the trick. Weekend rates tend to be high year-round, but most hotels offer inviting midweek bargains, with savings of 10% to 30%. It also makes sense to plan a visit during the shoulder season in early April and the last part of October, when some downtown hotels like the Hilton, the Inn of the Anasazi, La Posada and the Inn on the Alameda reduce their rates by 10% to 25%.

Because Santa Fe sits 7,000 feet above sea level, the weather in April and October can be unpredictable. But the crowds will be thin, sunny days sometimes warm to 60 degrees and, if you get lucky, you’ll be there when the mountains are blanketed in springtime lime green or when fall turns the cottonwoods gold.

Founded by Spanish conquistadors in 1610 (the same year Shakespeare wrote “A Winter’s Tale”), Santa Fe has a compact downtown around which many of the museums, galleries and historic sites, like the Plaza and Palace of the Governors, are centered. Consequently, the hotels in this area are among the city’s most expensive, which is why people in the market for budget accommodations often choose one of the chain motels on Cerrillos Road, an unlovely commercial strip that stretches about five miles southeast from the Plaza to Interstate 25. Most have swimming pools and touches like tiled roofs and ersatz adobe but little authentic Santa Fe character.

There’s one exception, however: El Rey Inn, a bona fide Cerrillos Road bargain. The family-run motel court--sadly part of a dying breed these days--opened shortly after World War II. The hacienda-style inn has covered arcades, a pool, two hot tubs, a playground, porch swings and 86 nicely decorated and well maintained rooms. The queen-bed double where I stayed for $95 per night in October had a huge, spotless bathroom, a kitchenette and Post-it notes on the desktop. Moreover, rates include a surprisingly substantial continental breakfast.

But most visitors will be happiest downtown, where there are a few relatively low-priced accommodations. The historic adobe-style La Fonda has a handful of small economy doubles priced at $129; “petite” doubles at the Victorian-style Hotel St. Francis, a block off the Plaza, cost $78 to $98; and there are B&Bs; in the old residential neighborhoods south and east of downtown.

I tried one of these, the Grant Corner Inn, in a capacious Victorian manse just up the street from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Its 11 pretty rooms ($70 to $155 in October but recently boosted to $100 to $170) are full of brass beds, quilts, dried flowers and wicker settees. The staff goes out of its way to be helpful. And breakfast, included in the room rate, is a feast. The more expensive rooms are spacious, though my single on the second floor, which went for $90 last fall, was minuscule, with a claustrophobic bath that reminded me of budget hotels of Italy and France.

My two-night October stay at Arius Compound, on Canyon Road just east of Palace Avenue, was a much better deal. A roomy one-bedroom casita with a kitchenette, living room, patio and classic Santa Fe-style corner fireplace (wood provided) cost $100 a night. The compound has three casitas to rent, two of which sleep four (for $90 to $135) and a third that sleeps six (for $145 to $200). There I got a real sense of how Santa Fe residents live, up rutted dirt roads in their walled, slightly shaggy adobe compounds.

In Santa Fe, you can’t do better than a Canyon Road address--something of a walk to the Plaza but as close as you could want to some of the city’s top restaurants, like Geronimo and El Farol (although these aren’t exactly bargain places), and galleries. But you’d better like dogs if you stay at Arius, because the owners, Len and Robbie Goodman, have three to guard the enclave: a shy little Bichon Frise, a Great Pyrenees and a gregarious Turkish Kangal the size of a pony.

It doesn’t take a Tony Hillerman to ferret out Santa Fe’s sightseeing bargains. Buy the $10 Museum of New Mexico Pass, and make sure you don’t miss the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, which has a biographical video and well-arranged artworks. “The meaning of a word is not as exact as the meaning of a color,” this idiosyncratic painter once said. And of the region around Santa Fe, she said: “I shouldn’t say too much about this because other people might get interested, and I don’t want them interested.”

Entrance to the Palace of the Governors, on the Plaza, and the Museum of Fine Arts adjacent to it is included in the pass. The adobe-walled Fine Arts museum offers free lectures and has an interior courtyard lined with paintings by Will Shuster, one of the painters who helped establish Santa Fe as an art colony at the beginning of the century. At the governors’ palace, a low-slung, arcaded Spanish Colonial compound built in 1610, for $10 you can join a walking tour that acquaints visitors with the town’s predominant architectural styles and stops at St. Francis Cathedral to see a Madonna statue considered to be the oldest in North America.

The Museum of International Folk Art is about a 20-minute drive south of downtown. But it is well worth the trip, because the museum is full of precious, quizzical objects from all over the world: Victorian valentines, Mexican Day of the Dead figurines, black rag dolls, Italian marionettes, a superb collection of New Mexican Madonnas.

I saw all three of these museums, hiked the four-mile Tesuque Creek Loop in Hyde Memorial State Park 20 minutes east of Santa Fe and, on my way back to town, visited Ten Thousand Waves, a beautiful Japanese day spa. You can spend a lot of money on an herbal wrap or massage there, but a stint in the women’s communal tub costs just $13. I also attended a magical evening chamber music concert at the Loretto Chapel downtown for $22 and wandered through the Farmer’s Market at the railroad station without buying a thing--though I did have the Mexican plate lunch for $5.45 at Tomasita’s nearby.

Dining on a budget in Santa Fe is no challenge because the city is full of modestly priced restaurants that serve hearty Southwestern fare: Dave’s Not Here on Hickox Street, the Shed downtown and Harry’s Roadhouse on the Old Las Vegas Highway are three. In the morning, I favor Downtown Subscription off Canyon Road, where locals gather to drink coffee and read the paper. For lunch, I love Cafe Pasqual’s just off the Plaza and Counter Culture, a hip little spot out on Cerrillos Road, where a delicious bowl of chicken Tom Yum soup seasoned with green chile and cilantro costs $2.95.

My last piece of advice to budget travelers may seem surprising. Though Santa Fe is delightful, prices are lower and the scenery is grand if you get out of town. Los Alamos, Bandelier National Monument and Taos are in easy driving distance, and those who haven’t rented a car can do so for a day or two right downtown.

I took an overnight trip to the Chama River Valley, 60 miles north, which cemented my affection for the surrounding area. In the hamlet of Abiquiu I toured Georgia O’Keeffe’s house (the visit must be booked in advance and costs $25) and spent the night at the Ghost Ranch Conference Center (about 10 miles farther north on Highway 84) for $45 (including three meals) in a room with a shared, dormitory-style bath. Accommodations and food at the center, which is owned by the Presbyterian church, aren’t fancy, and the place caters especially to retreat groups studying subjects like painting, playwriting and the spiritual life. But the setting is sublime, beneath red-rock mesas directly across the valley from flat-topped Cerro Pedernal, which O’Keeffe thought of as her private mountain. (“God told me if I painted it enough I could have it,” she once said.)

I spent the afternoon hiking up Kitchen Mesa and, after a cafeteria-style dinner, sank into a chair in the library to read. But pretty soon my book fell shut as I started thinking about the good things in life. They aren’t always free, of course. But even in Santa Fe, they don’t have to cost a fortune.

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GUIDEBOOK

Santa Fe on a Budget

Getting there: Southwest Airlines flies nonstop to Albuquerque, the nearest big airport; America West and United offer connecting service through Phoenix and Denver respectively. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $208. United Airlines flies into Santa Fe, connecting through Denver. Express Shuttle USA, telephone (800) 256-8991, runs a shuttle from Albuquerque airport to Santa Fe; $25 one way.

By train, Amtrak fares from Los Angeles to Lamy, N.M. (17 miles from Santa Fe), begin at $156 round trip, including the shuttle to and from Santa Fe; tel. (800) 872-7245.

Where to stay: Arius Compound has three casitas, $90 to $200; P.O. Box 1111, 1018 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87504, tel. (800) 735-8453 or (505) 982-2621, fax (505) 989-8280, Internet https://www.ariuscompound.com. El Rey Inn has 86 rooms, $60 to $185; 1862 Cerrillos Road, P.O. Box 4759, Santa Fe, NM 87502, tel. (800) 521- 1349 or (505) 982-1931, Internet https://www.elreyinnsantafe.com. Grant Corner Inn has 11 rooms, $100 to $170; 122 Grant Ave., Santa Fe, NM 87501, tel. (800) 964-9003 or (505) 983-6678, Internet https://www.grantcorner inn.com. Ghost Ranch Conference Center, $45 to $65 per person including meals; HC 77, Box 11, Abiquiu, NM 87510, tel. (505) 685-4333, fax (505) 685-4519, Internet https://www.newmexico-ghostranch.org.

Where to eat: Mexican: Tomasita’s, 500 S. Guadalupe St., local tel. 983-5721. Southwestern: Cafe Pasqual’s, 121 Don Gaspar, 983-9340. Dinner: Dave’s Not Here, 1115 Hickox St., 983-7060; Harry’s Roadhouse, Old Las Vegas Highway, 989-4629; the Shed, 113 1/2 E. Palace Ave., 982-9030. Cafes: Downtown Subscription, 376 Garcia St., 983-3085; Counter Culture (breakfast and lunch), 930 Baca St., 995-1105.

For more information: Santa Fe Convention & Visitors Bureau, 201 W. Marcy St., Santa Fe, NM 87504; tel. (800) 777-2489, (505) 984-6760, Internet https://www .santafe.org. For hiking information, New Mexico Public Lands Information Center, 1474 Rodeo Road, Santa Fe, NM 87505, tel. (505) 438-7542, Internet https:// www.publiclands.org. Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, P.O. Box 40, Abiquiu, NM 87510; tel. (505) 685-4539, fax (505) 685-4551.