Southwest Roadtrip - Day 3

After yesterday's long drive and today being Christmas day, we were pretty laid back. And this was the way most of Albuquerque was today, most things were closed and some neighborhoods seemed like the sets in Universal Studios. Apparently we missed a famous New Mexico tradition of lighting the Luminarias on christmas eve. The luminarias are like paper lanterns and they are lit up everywhere in the city after sunset and look beautiful.


We left our hotel around noon and went to the Old Town neighborhood. It has one of the oldest churches in US and is famous for its adobe style architecture, nice little boutiques and museums. There are museums of arts, culture, science and there are some more unique ones like the Turquoise museum and rattlesnake museum that has one of the largest collection of rattlesnakes. We walked around and took some photos.




There was a single souvenir shop open that had lot of things, even things from different places in Asia. I bought a dream catcher, an artifact the native americans believed gets rid of bad dreams. It is believed that the dream catcher when hung above the bed catches all the dreams. The bad dreams would stay in the net disappearing with the light of day, good dreams would pass through and slide down the feathers to the sleeper.


Our next destination was the Sandia mountains where we planned to take the famous aerial tramway. Before going up the mountains, we went to a Mediterranean place for lunch. It was a pretty small place attached to a middle eastern grocery shop, but the food was excellent. I even bought a small one gram box of spanish saffron there for $6, which seemed like a good deal to me.



The tram at Sandia peak takes you 10,378 feet above in a 2.7 mile ride. The tour guide told us that Sandia means "water melon" in Spanish and he also gave some facts about the tramway. There is a visitors center at the top with information about the mountains. There is also an observatory deck and a restaurant. We spent about an hour at the top and took the tram back during the time of sunset. The ride back was beautiful, the sun's golden rays falling on the mountains turn them into a subtle color of pink. The color is mainly attributed to the granite which makes up most of the rocks.

By the time we got back to our car, it was freezing cold and it didn't help that we didn't take enough cold weather accessories. Next we made a quick stop at the Old Town again to see if the shops and restaurants opened. We didn't find anything open, so we decided to try another neighborhood called Nob Hill which is supposed to be known for nightlife. But it was pretty much the same story there.. most places were closed. We got back our hotel and were happy to find some appetizers & drinks served for guests. Dinner was at a vegan Thai restaurant, one of the very few open today. Great food and service that deserves a review in Yelp, which probably I will write when I get back home. We are planning to get an early start tomorrow so that we can cover few places in Albuquerque before heading to Santa Fe which is our next destination.