Nice Place To Visit

Can you pick us up at the Denver airport?

They show up in the spring, when the golden sun begins setting a little later, and they finally taper off a bit in the fall. There are just a few at first, and then there are swarms of them. You can swat them, you can spray them, but they keep on coming.

Mosquitoes? Nah, I'm talking about houseguests.

Santa Fe is a magnet. You can't imagine how cool and exotic this place sounds to hundreds of millions of foreigners. And by foreigners I mean folks from Utah, or maybe even farther away.

It turns out 96.4 percent of people in the world have personal bucket lists that say, "Find somebody who lives in Santa Fe with a spare bedroom, and go there."

If you live here, you know what I'm talking about. Somebody who used to beat me up on the playground every day in second grade suddenly wants to come to Santa Fe and "catch up." Or at least that's what she says.

"We really should get to know each other better," some prospective visitors coo. Really? Then why didn't we do that when we lived next door to each other for five years in Albany?

I should stop right here and point out that many of our visitors are very dear old friends, and we're thrilled to see them. They are always welcome. Usually.

But the people I'm talking about right now are the "friends" who heard I moved to Santa Fe and hired a detective to find me. They are the ones who couldn't pick me out of a police lineup.

Once people say they're going to come for a visit, their first question is, "Can you pick us up at the Denver airport?

Eventually they figure out that we have our own airport, and they give me their flight number. I immediately say, "Ah, I think that flight lands at gate one," which dazzles them until they get here and see we've only got the one gate.

It's even more fun if they arrive by train, at Lamy. That look on their face, when they think they've hit a time warp, is priceless.

I'm generally wearing chaps and spurs and holding a yellowed newspaper from 1886. Generally, they get right back on the train and crawl under a seat. Anyway, here's my very favorite thing about out-of-town visitors: The List. Oh, they all have the list. Sometimes they're clutching it in their hand when they get off the plane.

They've talked to their haberdasher's chimney sweeper, who visited Santa Fe in 1992 and has given them a list of all the ultra-secret local spots the tourists don't know about.

A couple of visitors—I am not making this up—have arrived with sightseeing lists that include the Plaza.

Oh, really? Try to spend a few days in Santa Fe and not see the Plaza! I mean, it's just there!

Another visitor's list of out-of-the-way, little-known secret places to eat included The Shed. Wow! Never heard of that one. Can you spell it for me? Other folks have said stuff like, "There's supposed to be a grand old hotel near the Plaza, but I don't know the name. You think we can find it?" One houseguest said he had been told to be sure to see the "George O'Keeffe Museum."

I know, right?

Something that always shows up on these lists is a little spa I like to call Ten Thousand Waves. It's the one thing everybody knows about. If I sat in a hot tub with every houseguest who went to that place, well, I'd look like an escapee from a box of Raisin Bran.

I have plenty more to say about this subject, but I need to stop and get ready for our next houseguest. She's a woman from India whom we've never met, coming to us by way of Scotland.

Hey. You think I'm kidding? I'm not.

Robert Basler’s humor column runs twice monthly in SFR. Email the author: bluecorn@sfreporter.com

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