A gem of a day in Santa Fe.

Its hard to describe how Santa Fe makes me feel. This is my third visit and I still find it hard to put into words why I'm so passionate about visiting.

Its like trying to describe the beauty of the stars, or the crispness of the air on a winter morning.

First of all I think it's the color, shape and sheer beauty of the adobe buildings against the blue sky. They blend intimately into one another, ignoring delineating lines and the color is soothing to the eye.

I love the square lines of adobe and the shadows like eyelashes flowing down the walls, ever changing in the sun light.

Of course, the Art Galleries capture my heart, there are over 200 of them and it's a year-round art experience.

We visited about 5 galleries in the first hour. I all becomes overwhelming after a while.

We met Umi, an artist from Korea with a Japanese accent. Lisa and I loved her work visit her site, there are some interesting pieces in her collection. Her gallery was just one of those little gems in the day. I just love visiting interesting people and to day we met many.

Take this young man for instance. He was sitting in a bar and when he saw my camera he did a fast trip out the door. As we left I found him sitting on a bar stool on the pavement surveying the traffic.

We chatted with good humor and he told me he had appeared in many movies, he also had a better camera than mine and it was a Canon. He agreed to let me take a photo of him because I told him he had a lovely face and indeed he does.

We walked the pavements, walking from one side of the road to the other to find interesting things.

My camera worked hard and I find myself in a bubble of creativity when I'm taking photos that lift the spirit. The image above has a serenity all of its own. The shape of her profile, the light on her brow and her pose with her eyes shut in meditation. Sigh!

I would dearly love one of these art pieces in my house. Maybe I need to work a little harder.

Last year I introduced Lisa to eating Bento Box, at my favorite Japanese Restaurant. A traditional bento holds rice, fish or meat, with pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container.

We both decided to have chicken. It comes with Miso soup and the Restaurant came with its own entertainment in the form of the most interesting characters who chatted to us as if we were old buddies.