Day 8 - Fri 23rd May

Santa Fe to Albuquerque

After breakfast we had a walk around the old town of Santa Fe.

Took some photos & went to church!

Set off at 12:30 in light rain and by 12:45 it was heavy rain.

Drove on The Turquoise Trail south through the mountains and stopped off at Cerillos & Madrid.

Cerillos is an almost deserted turquoise mining town and Madrid is now a new-age, hippy, funky little place. It is where they filmed Roads Hogs. If you've not seen the film, it's about a group of middle aged has-beens (John Travolta is in it) who decide to do a road-trip through the states and get into all sorts of trouble. Sounds familiar?

It also has claim to fame of the longest bar in New Mexico at the Mining Shaft Tavern.

The two "old-timers" sat behind me in the bar thought that Arnie was real.

To be continued.......................

.............................continuation 12 hours later.

Of course he IS real.

Couldn't finish Day 8 as we've been driving all day. Back to the blog.

So we left Madrid and completed the journey to Albuquerque by 7 pm.

Route 66 goes down the main thoroughfare which is Central Avenue. There are many 50's style motels on the way in. We were told to stay on Central Avenue between 1st & 12th Avenue. We found a reasonable hotel called The Blue Hotel on Central & 10th.

Albuquerque is the largest city in New Mexico even though Santa Fe is the state capital.

It is not like many of the other cities we have been through recently. Because it has an Old Town it has character (as did Santa Fe). The centre of Santa Fe is prettier but Albuquerque has a little more life.

We found a Brazilian restaurant which did an all you can eat buffet. In fact that was the only thing they did!

You helped yourself to the salad bar while the waiters came to you with skewers of various meats. We weren't too impressed as by the time the waiters got to our table, the meat was cold.

We told them this and they brought the next dish immediately to us but it was still cold. They knocked $10 off the check (bill) which stopped Boley from hitting them.

Next door was a micro-brewery bar. We had a few beers in there and were told about a couple of other bars a few blocks away that people thought we might like. We were also told that there is a free music festival in town the following afternoon.

While we were sat in the bar, a slow procession of customised cars went by.

It seems that on a Friday & Saturday night, the done thing for the "Hip-Hop Fraternity" is to cruise Central Avenue.

 

We went to one of the suggested bars, The Atomic Cafe. The doorman asked if I was with "the band". I said "Yes", so he let us in for free. We later found out that they let everyone in for free!

"The band" were a heavy metal outfit. We didn't listen to them much, but they sounded OK.

There were a lot of Mexicans in the place. Two spoke to us and thought that we were with "the band". I then went to see "the band" in the room next door and spilled my beer on this heavy looking rocker. I apologised and when I spoke he said "F*** me, your not English are you?"

It turns out that Bob (Hi) and about 12 others are the road-crew for Iron Maiden who are playing Albuquerque Sunday night. 

 

Bob is a die-hard Leicester City fan and had to rub it in about how they beat Forest this season even after giving us a goal......that's another story. He also had nothing complementary to say about Leeds and all things Yorkshire. So we had a laugh and a few beers with Bob and the others and compared US cities with UK cities. Some good, some not so good in both countries, returned to the micro-brewery bar for a final pint.

I got talking to Natasha from London who looks after the band. The last tour she had done before this was Take That.  She was there with her boyfriend who is also one of the road crew. 

When we arrived back at the hotel, after checking mileages etc, we decided that we would be able to stay in Albuquerque another night. The original plan was to drive the next day to Gallup, Nm and from there to Monument Valley, The Grand Canyon and Flagstaff for Monday night. But we had heard that there was nothing in Gallup and as it was only 120 miles from Albuquerque we should be able to do that quite easily by interstate.

So we stayed another night!

Mileage: 1634