..."The City Different"

Went to Santa Fe this weekend with some girlfriends. What an amazing city,known as "The City Different", which one of my girlfriends wanted me to explain to her why.I couldn't, but after we walked the streets for the weekend, she didn't need anyone to.
In the center of Santa Fe is the town plaza. On one side of it is the Palace of the Governors, where from 1600's the Spanish and the Native People have been playing a serious game of "King of the Hill", battling and retaking the compound, each in possession of it for a few decades.Why did they each want it so bad, for the Native People it was to maintain their way of life and existence, the Spainish, to benifit from the riches of the North they had to hold Santa Fe as a hub for their trade routes up from Mexico.
Trade is still here at the plaza, now the Native Americans fill the long porch of the Palace, sitting near blanket filled with silver and inlaid stone jewelry, as the crowds slowly pass by, crouching down to buy their wears.
The streets jut out from the plaza, with narrow sidewalks next to adobe walls that guard the hacindas behind them. But now, through the gates of the hacindas, lining their flower laidened courtyards are shops and galleries and days can be spent wandering the maze and getting lost, if only for awile, in the "City Different"