Michael French

For those of us who eat breakfast out, especially (like mom said) if we consider it the most important meal of the day, we are picky about our restaurants. For both locals and visitors, the criteria can be the fresh, organic ingredients, the inventiveness or depth of the menu, the atmosphere, the price, or just a place that’s so unassuming and convenient that it feels like home.

No one seems sure of the origins of the humble margarita. Both Juarez and Tijuana lay claim to what has become the most popular mixed cocktail in the United States. One version alleges that in 1942 a Juarez bartender mixed a French Cointreau with Mexican tequila, worm and all, in celebration of a customer’s birthday. Another story insists margaritas were invented during World War II as a cheap alternative to hard whiskey, which was expensive and hard to get. According to Texas Monthly magazine, a Dallas restaurateur named Mariano Martinez created the first frozen margarita sometime in the Fifties.

Maybe we’re not Colorado, but Santa Fe offers no shortage of rewarding day hikes, from easy to challenging, depending on terrain, altitude, and one’s wilderness experience and level of fitness. For a comprehensive description of 60 terrific hikes (including maps), check out the sixth edition of Day Hikes in the Santa Fe Area, authored by the Northern New Mexico Group of the Sierra Club.

One of Santa Fe’s most prestigious addresses, Brownell Howland Road, is a series of narrow, meandering streets of distinguished homes separated by stands of evergreens and shapely bluffs. Its history revolves around two women philanthropists who helped shape Santa Fe’s cultural and real estate legacy.

In the summer of 1929, Eleanor Brownell and Alice Howland arrived in Santa Fe in a black Model T Ford. Intrigued by stories of the southwest, the two women, who often summered at Cape Cod, wanted to try something different. They were co-head mistresses of the famous Shipley Girls School, a revered Quaker preparatory school in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Alice had inherited the school...

The metaphor of Santa Fe’s real estate market as a credit-stressed, gut-wrenching roller coaster ride (with more plunges than ascents) masks the relative calm stretch of tracks known as the upper end. Home sales above $2 million have never been a stampede in Santa Fe, yet buyers in 2008 plunked down significant coin on 27 different occasions, including buying six residential properties over $3 million each (the highest was Saddleback Ranch in Galisteo for $16.5 million, and La Mesita in Pojoaque was listed at $10.5 million). In 2007, a total of 23 sales occurred above $2 million, including four above $3 million.

According to Ray Rush and Tim Van Camp of Sotheby’s Internation...