Judy's Postcards: Albuquerque

Our next destination on our Route 66 by train adventure was from St Louis to Albuquerque. We had to change trains in Kansas City to the Southwest Chief. We had a sleeper compartment on this train for the long journey.

The train also has an observation car with big panoramic windows and chairs that face out towards the view.

We also had on board two ladies from the National Parks Service and they gave us a series of talks about the National Park, wildlife and history. They were on the train all day and provided a great deal of information that really enhanced the things we saw along the way.

We arrived in Albuquerque around 4pm that afternoon and took a taxi to our hotel. We noticed on the way that there was a tremendous amount of roadworks going on around town. Also it was obvious to us that there was no public transport system. We were too early. They are building a light rail and it will be complete sometime in 2018.

With that in mind we decided that we would need to hire a car, otherwise it was going to cost us a fortune in taxis to get around.

The hotel had a hire car company on the premises which made it very simple and we hired a Ford Focus and set off the following morning.

As part of our Amtrak train journey we had a voucher for a walking tour of the old town. The city was founded in 1706 and now has 5 museums, and over a 100 shops and restaurants mostly built in the Adobe style. The old town was created by a group of Spanish settlers not far from the Rio Grande organising their town in the traditional Spanish colonial way with a central plaza anchored by a church. Today this adobe church has walls that are 5 feet thick.

Most of the architecture of the old town is Adobe in the pueblo Spanish style. It is a lovely quiet town and strolling around looking at the buildings and browsing in the shops is very pleasant and the shady courtyards provide welcome relief from the scorching heat. It was around the 40 degree mark.

While we had the car we drove the length of Central Avenue which is Route 66 spotting iconic signs and memorabilia.

We found a fabulous diner that we just had to visit. Inside it was like the 60's with old fashioned milkshake machines. The waitresses looked like that were straight from the 60's in their uniforms and I kept thinking the Fonz and the gang from Happy Days, would walk through the door. We had the best ever milkshake, made just the way it should be and served in the old fashioned metal containers.

We went and looked at the Rio Grande, drove over the bridge and we visited the Nuclear Science Museum. None of these things would have been possible without a car.

On our last day there we found another diner where we had lunch and learned that the diner had been a car repair shop in the 1930's and was later taken over by 3 brothers and turned into a diner and has been in the same family since the 1950's.