Tlaquepaque time, anyone?

One of my favorite shopping areas in Sedona is Tlaquepaque (pronounced T-lockey-pockey). It is located on Oak Creek in a Spanish mission-style estate. We ended up going there to walk around, window shop, and even buy a few things almost every day we were in Sedona. It's just a nice place to be outside and enjoy the day. Below is a picture down one of the many sidewalks lined with shops.

In addition to the sidewalks between some buildings, there are larger "streets" between others. This is a pretty massive complex of buildings surrounded by a tall stucco fence. You really feel like you are in a old mission akin to the Alamo. Each "street" is named and the building corners have the street signs embedded in the facade as shown below.


Many of the merchants leave their doors open and some place their goods outside (as shown below) so that people can admire the offerings. Many of the shops are very small and only 4-8 people can be in the store at one time, so this is a good way to allow more people to shop at the same time.


And a lot of the shops feature artsy kind of goods, from real art to artistic crafts like these colorful, hand-painted, wooden boxes. The stores included photographic prints, wood crafts, home decor, Christmas ornaments, restaurants, and many others.


There is even a small chapel in the middle of the complex. It was closed up the first day, but open on Saturday when I was able to snap this picture. The following day, we went back to walk off our dinner and saw that someone had just gotten married in the chapel and were getting ready to start their reception in one of the many courtyards on the property.