La Posada de Santa Fe. - Review - hotel review

Travel America, Nov, 2000 by Susan Bayer Ward

A $12-million expansion and renovation has brought back the glory days of this legendary New Mexico resort hotel--and then some

RESORT OF THE MONTH

It was over 20 years ago when I first chanced upon La Posada. I found it enchanting that this chummy six-acre walled compound, with its dun-brown adobe casitas and central greensward, existed just three blocks from Santa Fe's main plaza. It was like living in your own little northern New Mexico village until you stepped outside to encounter the busy byways of one of the Southwest's most visited cities.

In 1978, my room--with kiva fireplace, beamed ceilings, handpainted tiles, and traditional turquoise-painted window trim--was $30 a night. The popular breakfast choice was a succulent huevos rancheros de la Posada, and the piquant aroma from the pinon-wood fires that kept off the evening's high-desert chill toppled you into a delicious swoon it was so enticing.

A return eight years later was no less poignant, and I made a much longer stay. Margaritas were (and still are) so in demand that barmen mixed up buckets of them behind the bar. Along with your saltrimmed glass, you would scoop up a free basket of hot spicy cheese sauce and toasty nacho chips and wander out into the landscaped gardens beyond patio and pool to mingle with other guests. Sage scented the air as you swapped the day's events with La Posada's current inmates--no longer strangers--while seated on intricately-fashioned white wrought-iron seats scattered about the property.

That was the year Robert Redford could be seen around Santa Fe. He was filming The Milagro Beanfield War north of town and often dined at the long-acclaimed Pink Adobe restaurant, where I practically walked into him one night and made a complete fool of myself.

During a visit in 1997, I learned the beloved La Posada had been sold and the new owners were shutting it down for some 10 months while a complete renovation, expansion, and revitalization effort--costing a tidy $12 million--took place.

Truth be told, many of the 119 casitas were showing their age; the resort's centerpiece, the Staab House (circa 1882), which contains the lobby, lounge, restaurants, and bar, needed refurbishing; and, in fact, the whole delightful complex badly required a major spruce-up.

What the new owners did exceeded all expectations. Happily, wisdom also prevailed, and the old charm, traditions, and ambience were retained. Hallelujah.

Reopened in August, 1999, La Posada de Santa Fe Resort & Spa not only sports a longer moniker, but 159 refurbished suites and casitas (40 new rooms have been added), a nifty new gourmet restaurant, conference center with attendant facilities, a beautifully renovated Staab House, and--wholly new--a 5,000-square-foot, full-service spa, the only such resort hotel offering in Santa Fe.

The original adobe wall still surrounds La Posada. (The property's lineage can be traced back to one of Santa Fe's founding families, the Bacas, who possessed the land as early as 1800.)

The resort's mix of Old World and Spanish Colonial influences were tempered and enhanced in the 1930s when newcomer R. H. Nason bought the place, built Pueblo-style casitas, and turned it into an inn, naming it La Posada--"resting place" in Spanish.

Indeed, in the 1930s and '40s, folks came to stay for long periods of time. The hotel was particularly attractive to artists and art students; some even attended an art school on the grounds.

Today's visitors tuck into some of those same cottages replete with kiva fireplaces, woodbeamed ceilings, colorful stucco walls, wrought-iron beds, tiled patios and some handsome Southwest-inspired antique furniture and art accents.

Six years after German immigrant Abraham Staab acquired the property in 1876, he began work on a formal, showcase brick residence to house his bride, Julia. Though you wouldn't think a French Second Empire-styled manse would suit the resort compound, the Staab House adds a pleasantly eccentric touch to La Posada. Its Victorian-era elegance has been fully and authentically restored--its five guest rooms adorned with period art and furniture painstakingly reacquired by the architects. (The ghost of Julia, who met an untimely death, has been rattling around her old chambers for years and still causes a small to-do now and then. So, if you like ghostly doings, sign on for a luxurious guest room here.)

The sophisticated yet Southwestern-casual Fuego restaurant takes pride of place on the ground floor where chef Gary Palm works his magic. Tasty signature dishes include wood-roasted lamb with curried onions, cinnamon-marinated spitfire quail, and, for breakfast, macadamia nut pancakes with shredded coconut.

But the new wow factor at La Posada is its full-service Avanyu Spa. Taking full advantage of the indigenous Native American culture and lifeways, Avanya (a Tewa Pueblo Indian name meaning "plumed water serpent") combines modern spa science with age-old therapies and treatments born out of the wisdom of the surrounding Southwestern peoples.