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| Route 66 in Santa Fe |
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| Downtown Santa Fe |
We got to sleep in for once on this Saturday. Chris and Jeff’s flight from Albuquerque back
to Philadelphia would leave at 7:30 AM on Sunday. We planned to see Santa Fe, New Mexico’s capital
and of course, Albuquerque.
I have a hard time calling Santa Fe a capital “city”. It’s a very nice town (like West Chester or
Nyack) with adobe buildings. We had our
first taste of New Mexican cuisine in Santa Fe.
With most food down here, which is often enchiladas or burritos, you
have the option of getting it smothered with either red or green chili, or both
(Christmas style as they call it). You
can order anything from burgers to breakfast with green chili. If you’re unfamiliar with green chili, it has
less of a tomato base and more of a green pepper and avocado base. It’s quite good, and typically not as spicy
as red chili. We walked around Santa Fe for a bit, and visited the Cathedral
Basilica of St Francis of Assisi.
Apparently we just missed the ordination of Santa Fe’s newest
priests. We also tried to visit the
Loreto Chapel, site of the miraculous staircase (more on this in a later post,
when I actually see it), but there was an event there.
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Enchilada smothered with
"Christmas" chili
(yes, there is an enchilada under that) |
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| Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi |
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| Downtown Albuquerque |
We went on to Albuquerque, which is more of a city than
Santa Fe, but in my opinion that’s all it’s got going for it, besides being the
filming location for the TV show Breaking Bad (which is a fantastic show
incidentally, I highly recommend watching it).
It was the first city we visited where we had several people ask us for
money, which at a rate of 5 times in 2 hours, is more than I typically
experienced in Cape Town, where the national unemployment rate was 25%. The streets of Albuquerque were otherwise
more or less deserted, and the sun beat down incessantly. We stopped at a small diner to cool off with
ice cream and watch the Belmont Stakes.
Then it was back to the heat of the city for our exploration. For a mere $65 we
could have gone on the official Breaking Bad tour, which would have killed 3
hours showing us around various film locations. Instead, after dinner, we did
our own unofficial Breaking Bad tour using addresses provided by a helpful
blog. Jeff navigated, sparing Chris and
me from spoilers (I’m only on season 3, Chris hasn’t seen it yet but
should). Being avid fans, we geeked out
over seeing Twisters, the inspiration for Los Pollos Restaurants, the car wash
Walt worked at, Saul’s office (now actually a nightclub), and Walter and
Skyler’s house. The blog we followed
said that the people who live there now are understanding of people creepily
taking pictures of their house, and just ask that stalkers like use respect
their privacy. After casing out the
house like Tuco’s cousins, we went to the nearest KOA where we slept for a few
hours before Jeff and Chris got on a plane and I drove the 1.5 hours back to
Los Alamos.
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| Inspiration for "Los Pollos" |
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| Car Wash Walt worked at |
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Better Call Saul! Walt & Skyler's house
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