The Severed Cortex

The pillow top mattresses are awesome. I do wake up every couple of hours or so, but that's due to the thinness of the walls. If I had one strike against the Eldorado Hotel it would be that, but that's a minor thing as long as the other patrons are reasonable. If we had the Sex Pistols next door it might be an issue. While the folks next door are a little loud, they aren't outrageously loud.

We get dressed and head out the door, finally deciding on Tia Sophia's for breakfast. I had the breakfast burrito stuffed with sausage, egg, and potatoes, covered in red chili sauce and cheese. Heart stopping good. I'm not used to eating spicy stuff for breakfast but I had no problem scarfing this thing down. It turns out that it lasts me all day long and I mean late in the day. The coffee here was sort of mediocre though. The rest of the day we spent shopping. We walked all around the plaza stores, and some more stores within blocks of the plaza. We did pick up a couple items, but for the most part everything was too expensive. Some Indian blankets we saw went for thousands of dollars, but they were beautiful. We ended our plaza shopping where Nancy had spied a beautiful roll top desk while walking around last night. Carpinteros (formerly Taos Furniture) was the name of the store and all the furniture was hand made ... and beautiful I might add. Nancy's dream desk turned out to be almost twelve thousand dollars so we quickly looked at other options instead. Apparently you can have Carpinteros build pretty much whatever you want; for a hefty price, but then again this is the type of furniture that gets handed down through generations. We talked to the sales rep who took my card. Nancy never thought about hand made furniture so maybe that's the next thing she'll be looking at for the redesign of her office.
After we looked at all the shops near the plaza by the end of the morning, we figured we'd just try to kill the afternoon finding little touristy things to do. We first stumbled upon the galleries along Canyon Road. We walked in and out of several of these dodging the intermittent thundershowers. At one point, while Nancy was sipping tea at a a cafe, it actually hailed. Just pea size hail though. The air turned immediately cooler and although some might call it unpleasant, the coolness after the rain felt fantastic to me. We continued along Canyon Road eventually passing Geronimo's restaurant. We wanted to eat here originally but due to the wine and chili festival, we were told it was impossible to get a reservation. We stopped in just to make sure and lo and behold they had two spots open. One was at 5:45 pm and the other one was at 9:00 pm. We chose 9:00

So, now we have four hours to kill before dinner. We go check out the New Mexico state capital; Santa Fe is the state capital in case you forgot. The capital building is quite different than most. The entire thing is round and despite the fact that the New Mexico became a state in 1912, the capital wasn't even built until 1966. No sign of Governor Bill Richardson anywhere. After this we slid a couple blocks over to the oldest house in the U.S., right next to the oldest church in the U.S. Both were anti-climactic, although it was kind of weird to see the straw still mixed in with the adobe mud. That straw would have to be hundreds of years old.
After picking up some Claritin-D, just in case, we head back to the hotel to get ready for dinner and to just relax a little. Just as we start to get ready, the power goes out in our room. Fortunately hotel engineering gets it back on fairly quickly. We get ready, head downstairs for a drink, then at 8:30 head for the restaurant.
We get a lousy table right by the front door, but the good news is we were seated immediately. We start with sparkling water and peruse the menu. It's very tough for us to decide, but eventually we settle on this:

Nancy

• Peppery Romaine Spears
• Peppered Elk Tenderloin
• Creme Brulee Trio - Brown Sugar/Grand Marnier/Chocolate

Me

• Pan Seared Scallops with Mushroom and Egg
• Mesquite Grilled Veal Chop with Roasted Root Vegetables
• Dessert Trio - Berry Bread Pudding/Raspberry Flan/Strawberry Sorbet

We both have a glass of '05 Van Duzer Pinot Noir (Willamette Valley) and with dessert some very fine coffee. If I liked scotch, I probably would have had one of those.

Yes, I know ... I'm not supposed to eat veal. Normally I wouldn't ever eat it and I haven't in at least a dozen years, but the mesquite grilled thing kept talking to me. Sue me. Call PETA on me. Do what you gotta do. The veal chop was about an inch an a half thick and outstanding. At least the the tender milk fed calfling didn't die completely in vain. Also outstanding was Nancy's elk tenderloin, my strawberry sorbet, and Nancy's brown sugar creme brulee. The whole thing was a shade over $200 for dinner (incl. tip) which seems about the norm for this type of thing. We head back to the hotel where we call room service for a bottle of champagne. It was part of the package deal for the room and although neither of us really like champagne all that much, it was a nice touch to the end of a very nice evening. You can guess the rest.