marfa: the art lover's tiny west texas town. i am smitten.
marfa held several goals and hopes as a destination on the trip: art, food and good sleep. we accomplished all of them and then some. i had at least three people ask if i was going when i was in the planning stages for the road trip and when a friend pointed out that it was a "motoring" destination for mini, i knew we had to drive the baby there. she liked it a lot.
see how happy?
marfa is a little tiny town and has the interesting fusion of very spare architecture, plain open-feeling streets, and minimal decoration we've seen in lots of texas towns. but if you look closer, there is a lot more to see. this place is loaded with galleries. loaded. and they are good. we visited both the highland gallery and the galleri urbane.
both of these were enjoyable, partly because we were able to enjoy them completely alone with the directors- both of whom were very friendly and answered lots of questions about the artists and the galleries in general.
check out marfa's scene here.
we were well rested for our short stay, thanks to a lovely room in the hotel paisano. die-hard james dean and elizbeth taylor fans will remember it from the movie giant. the hotel is beautiful and oriented around a central courtyard with a fountain and plnety of tables and places to sit and drink wine or coffee in the morning. and, for geeks like us, it has the added benefit of free wifi. yes! here bernard enjoys the view:
other nice features include: many picturesque places to sit and read throughout the lobby, a wonderful store with plenty of beautiful gifts and art to peruse and the most gorgeous pool i have seen in quite some time. i only wish we had stayed longer and had enough time to swim in it. we would certainly stay here again, as the paisano has only fueled our dangerous fancy hotel habit. but for what you get, $99 a night for a queen room with balcony, beautiful molding and bathroom with both fifties-style tiling and a shower head tall enough for my brother (he's 6'5 9/10") to use comfortably, i'd call it a steal. and as an art history major in college, i must note that it is the only hotel i have ever stayed in that provided a copy of "art news" in the room. excellent.
we managed to drag ourselves away from the paisano, mostly due to hunger. the concierge was kind enough to recomment the austin street cafe and i am seriously considering giving him my first-born as thanks. (sorry to all of you who have already been promised my first-born. i'll try to have triplets)
the austin street cafe is so good i need to give it it's own review. i'll just say for the moment that it receives the "we wanted to camp out outside and eat there for the rest of our lives" acclaim that we gave to steph's tea room in tennesee. yum yum! look for a review later this week.
our final stop in marfa was the book company, which was dangerous because my love of good bookstores, of which this was absolutely one, can keep me enthralled for hours and we needed to get on the road. we managed to get away with two shirts and some funny knock knock notepads. a funny marfa moment- i asked the employees if there were any women-sized t-shirts, since i liked the marfa shirts, and when i discovered there weren't, one of the employees told me he had just started a recording company that he had shirts for and he even ran home to get some for me to try on.
i made gory pose with my shirt before i bought it:
he moved to marfa from austin to start the recording company. bands looking to record in a cool town should absolutely check him out at www.marfarecording.com.
and then, sadly, it was time to go. we'll be back, we hope. we wanted to turn around a drive back when we got hungry for dinner. we did get one last taste of marfa on the way towards new mexico about thirty miles out of town in the form of an installation of a tiny fake prada store known as prada marfa:
and then it was onward and upward, since we had reached the southermost point of our journey. after a brief scare that big sur was a ridiculous route choice, we decided to press on anyway, since it was part of the original arrival plan.
am reporting now from tucson, az after a long day's drive. we now enter the real "on the road portion of the trip." i'll try to get at least one more post in before we get to big sur on tuesday where the only internet is at the henry miller library and involves the kind of sluggish dial-up that will make anyone feel their life is passing before their eyes. so look for "greatest hits of the all-day drives" and then i shall resume from l.a. thanks for reading, everyone. it's been great to have you along on the trip.
stats:
states crossed so far: 6 1/2. most states driven in in one day: 3 (tx, nm and az- yesterday) number of states i could name from memory before clamming up: 43. one that was hardest to remember: LA. number of rules broken: 1- budget constraints have forced us back into chain food occasionaly. damn those fancy hotels. number of bugs that have committed suicide on the windshield: enough to wipe out a race. here ian cleans up the carnage:
don't worry- he is only PRETENDING to lick them off. and aren't his new glasses fancy? they looked extra fancy in this el paso gas station, where strangely the handicapped spot is further away from the door than the regular one.
can anyone please explain this one? please?
songs of the day:
9-15: "one mission" -queen. iron eagle gets us through.
9-16:"you're the best" from karate kid. happy birthday genevieve and damian!
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