{"id":19162,"date":"2022-11-28T00:01:28","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T08:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=19162"},"modified":"2022-11-27T15:04:59","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T23:04:59","slug":"old-town-albuquerque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/11\/28\/old-town-albuquerque\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Town Albuquerque"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our destination on this trip was the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta (the 50th Anniversary Balloon Fiesta, at that!), and we stayed in Albuquerque for the event.\u00a0 One of the stops on this adventure was old town Albuquerque<\/a>.\u00a0 Touristy?\u00a0 You bet.\u00a0 But it was still fun.\u00a0 I had my Nikon and a 24-120 lens (a real boat anchor camera and lens, to be sure), but I enjoyed myself wandering around and taking pictures.<\/p>\n

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A plaque below the statue shown in this blog’s featured photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That fellow in the statue up above?\u00a0 That’s Don Francisco Cuervo y Vald\u00e9s, Spanish governor of New Mexico, who founded La Villa Real de San Francisco de Alburquerque (what we know as Albuquerque) in April 23, 1706.<\/p>\n

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Albuquerque is one of the oldest towns in New Mexico.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Albuquerque, population 550,000, is New Mexico’s biggest city.\u00a0 We were there for four days.\u00a0 We hit old town Albuquerque<\/a> on Day 1.\u00a0 Kitschy, corny, but cool.\u00a0 We enjoyed it, and there were plenty of photo ops.\u00a0 There’s a lot to see and do in Gresh’s home state.<\/p>\n

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A ristra<\/a> is a cluster of dried red chiles you see hanging in many places in New Mexico. They can be decorative, ot they can be used for cooking. This one was hanging in a doorway in old town Albuquerque<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another ristra<\/a> hanging in old town Albuquerque<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A salsa store. There’s lots of it in old town Albuquerque<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On this topic of chiles and authentic New Mexico salsas<\/a>: In New Mexico Mexican restaurants the question that every waiter asks is:\u00a0 Green or red?\u00a0 That’s for the kind of salsa<\/a> you want with your meal.\u00a0 Red salsa is made of crushed red chiles that are reconstituted into a red liquid salsa.\u00a0 \u00a0Green is a bit chunkier with larger pepper pieces included in the mix.\u00a0 They told us that green is the spicier of the two, but I think it depends on the restaurant.\u00a0 The New Mexicans advised us that a good answer for the red or green question is “Christmas, on the side.”\u00a0 You know, red and green.\u00a0 That will get you a dish of each salsa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A doorway to one of the many shops in old town Albuquerque<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A shop window in old town Albuquerque<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A cool bench in Old Town.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our tour guide advised us to avoid the restaurants in old town Albuquerque<\/a>, so we ate at a Mexican place just outside of Old Town.\u00a0 I love New Mexico, but I’m convinced any restaurant in or close to a tourist destination is going to be mediocre.\u00a0 Our lunch didn’t change my mind.<\/p>\n

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One of the restaurants in Old Town.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The San Felipe de Neri Church is one of the oldest buildings in Albuquerque.\u00a0 It dominates old town Albuquerque<\/a>.\u00a0 This church was originally used by Franciscan missionaries.\u00a0 It’s still in use.\u00a0 All of the tourists (and there were a lot of them) congregated outside the church.\u00a0 I checked the door and it was unlocked.\u00a0 I ducked inside and grabbed a quick available light photo.<\/p>\n

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Inside the San Felipe de Neri Church. I have more than a few photos that look like this from visits to churches elsewhere, including some dynamite photos from the missions in Baja. I use the last pew as a camera rest.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So there you have it…one guy’s photo interpretation of an afternoon walk through old town Albuquerque<\/a>.\u00a0 The Balloon Fiesta is coming up in a near term future blog.\u00a0 \u00a0Stay tuned.<\/p>\n

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Check out a few of our epic rides here<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our destination on this trip was the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta (the 50th Anniversary Balloon Fiesta, at that!), and we stayed in Albuquerque for the event.\u00a0 One of the stops on this adventure was old town Albuquerque.\u00a0 Touristy?\u00a0 You bet.\u00a0 But it was still fun.\u00a0 I had my Nikon and a 24-120 lens (a real boat … Continue reading “Old Town Albuquerque”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[89],"tags":[3057,3071,3058,3070],"class_list":["post-19162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-albuquerque","tag-chile-peppers","tag-old-town-albuquerque","tag-ristra"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/20221008_0002-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19162"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19897,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19162\/revisions\/19897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}