BEST Day 1 EVER

Work has taken me to Albuquerque, NM. Having never been to NM, I decided that I would fly out on Saturday morning and spend a day and a half touring the city before the work started. As it is a secret ambition to be a travel writer (what's cooler than going places and writing about it), I'm going to give my day and a half review of Albuquerque….

Day 1:
Old Town - This is an old timely shopping district that everyone raves as a "must see". While it is cute and charming, it's not terribly exciting - it’s the same sort of old timey quaintness you find anywhere -one may even go as far as to say, it's the Marietta, OH of the southwest. The stores are brimming with southwest tourist crap - hand made pottery, hand made blankets, hand made figurines, hand made jewels, hand made turquoise, hand made pots, hand made pans, hand made baskets all hand made by Indians (and yes it's New Mexico - you are allowed to say "Indian") The highlight was my purchase of a pomegranate blueberry smoothie (handmade by a surly 16 year old at a coffee shop), which in addition to being chock full of antioxidants, was delicious accompaniment to looking at all of the handmade items piled on top of handmade items marked "handmade by Indians" crammed into each store.

The Atomic Bomb Museum - Ever wanted to spend an afternoon with deactivated nuclear warheads? The atomic bomb museum is the place for you! Features include a full size replicas of "Little Brother" and "Fat Man" the two nuclear bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of World War II and several other nuclear warheads which were made, but never used. I have to warn you however, the museum is a little bit less that professional the museums of DC (one display was made entirely of legos). However, the information and background from the discovery of radium to the formulation of the nuclear bomb was really interesting, considering what a scary time the 1940's through the Cold War was as all of this technology was developed in complete secrecy and nations were engaging in arms races. It also made me think about how much leftover radiation I was exposing myself to, as the first nuclear bomb ever (it was a test) occurred in Los Alamos, which was about an hour and a half away.

Drive down Route 66 - Maybe I read too much Stienbeck as a kid, or maybe the romance of the idea of packing everything into your car and hitting the open road enchants me, so I said a little prayer of forgiveness to Al Gore and Mother Nature, and I took a long drive down Route 66 as night was falling. Parts of Route 66 have been completely gentrified, but in main other areas it remains a bevy of neon lights and roadside attractions that must of enchanted travellers as they pulled into town - landmarks that greeted the easterners such as the Kimo Theatre, Lindy's Coffee House, and the Standard Diner still remain with their neon lights burning brightly into the night. I got that old timey feeling, but in a good way, rather than a handmade souvenirs piled everywhere way.

So as day one drew to a close, I couldn't help think about what day 2 would hold in store for me…