Transamerica 2007: Green chillies

We found the nice bit of Albuquerque today! It’s called Old Town, and while being a sort of Native American themed outdoor mall it’s actually quite interesting. Sadly the sun cream wasn’t needed as the clouds rolled in.

We started by venturing Downtown again to where the Tourist Information was marked on the map. It was closed, so we walked up Route 66 until we found Old Town. The style is adobe buildings, although it’s all coloured concrete these days. Shops abound trading in Native American carvings and weavings, mostly made in Taiwan.

Lunch was taken at Julia’s, voted the best Mexican food in New Mexico by a local radio station. After that we wandered over to the Rattlesnake Museum. Like all the best places we’ve been to it was set up by one guy who just happens to love something, and in this case it was rattlers. Displays and videos showed why we should love them too while carrying advice such as “never try to stroke a live rattlesnake”.

Having brushed so closely with danger we decided to wind the afternoon down at the National Atomic Museum. Here the history of radioactivity is brought to life with fantastic items such as a 1930s children’s shoe fitting machine that allowed you to see an X-ray image of your own feet. It was banned in the 1960s when it was found to be dosing kids with 100 times their yearly radiation exposure in just a few minutes. Other fascinating facts learned included brazil nuts being the most radioactive food. Unfortunately what started as a balanced look at the science of radioactivity quickly descended into a pro-atomic military propaganda machine. You could buy flags in the shop stating “Vietnam – Our Cause Was Just”. It was time to run away.

We got back to our hotel in time for the afternoon wine and nibbles and chatted politics with some people from Kansas. Then it was time for food. New York is the city that never sleeps and Albuquerque is the town that never wakes up. The first restaurant we walked to had shut at 3pm. The next was due to shut 20 minutes after we arrived. A third had only one couple in so we thought it best avoided and ended up back in our hotel rooms with a large deep pan supreme from Pizza Hut. We munched in front of Deal of No Deal (US version, no Noel) and a cheerleader competition, so a pretty good evening!

Tonight the US goes on to Daylight Saving Time a month earlier than normal. Usually it done on the same day both sides of the Atlantic, and no one knows what’s going to happen when flights from Europe start turning up an hour early. Our next stop is in Arizona, a state that refuses to recognise Daylight Saving even when it happens on the usual date. Goodness knows when our train will get there...