Travel and the First Day

Yesterday was more or less a travel day, and involved such boring activities as sitting around in an airport. Matt and I DID however manage to get $370.70 vouchers, one for each of us, by volunteering to be bumped to a later flight. Score! Now I can pay for another trip to actually look for an apartment.

First great meal in Albuquerque: 2000 Vietnamese, great food, good price. It's located on the corner of Zuni St. and San Matteo Blvd. I recommend the boba tea milkshakes.

Last night finished with some television, we caught the last part of Legally Blond and the first part of Mean Girls. It was cinematic magic, but I was too tired to watch any more.

Today was an early morning; we woke up at 6:45 to hurry out of our hotel to drive up to Sandia Crest and see rosy finches. We were really lucky and saw several up close, there was a bird banding project going on and the birds were being brought into the inn where we got a good look at them.




There were also these funny squirrels running around...




During the afternoon we drove around the city to try and scope out where the "good" and "bad" areas were. I decided that I liked Old Town and the area around Ridgecrest the best. My new strategy is to spend the rest of the week figuring out specifically the areas I want to live in, and plan accordingly for my apartment hunt later in the summer.

I had an opportunity to go to church in the city today. I think we went to "Immaculate Conception Church", which, given the name, is obviously a Catholic church. It was different from what I'm used to, I didn't think it was that great. Although, there were some neat shrines throughout the building that were worth the visit. It didn't even come close to being as good as the church I'm currently attending in PA, so I'll have to keep looking for a spiritual home.

Mouse and Dave also flew into ABQ this evening, and we met up for a late dinner. We went to the Route 66 Diner on Central Avenue, which is the historical Route 66. I got the meatloaf. The meatloaf and mashed potatoes were really quite good. The mixed veggies were over done. My recommendation is to just pass on them entirely, they went pretty much uneaten. Matt got a shake that was good too, so that's a good item as well.

Tomorrow we'll likely adventure outside of ABQ and head south to look for sandhill cranes, then I want to spend some more time checking out Old Town or Nob Hill, possibly.