Albuquerque (Man that looks weird!)

Today, we left Santa Fe in no hurry. It takes a little over an hour to get to Albuquerque. We checked out around 10:15 from the Hotel Santa Fe, our favorite hotel of the trip. We racked up Holiday Inn Express points during the whole trip and stayed at one all but our two nights in Santa Fe. The room was well appointed, and the hotel staff was excellent. Tim got his first massage last night and thought it was pretty good. (Those are his words!)

So we left “our room” and headed to Café Pasqual's. Had we eaten here first, we would have come back here for every meal, trying everything we could on the menu. It’s a funky little spot with several tables for two and four, and a communal table in the middle of the place for ten to twelve. We chose to sit at the communal table and spoke with several different people. I had huevos motuleños—eggs over easy on a corn tortilla with black beans topped with sautéed banana, feta, green peas, roasted tomato-jalapeño salsa, green and red (Christmas—half green, half red) chile with a side corn tortilla. The corn tortilla was the best we’ve had. I know it sounds like an odd combination, but it totally worked for me. I also bought cookbooks from there! Tim had the chile-cheese bison burger. We had both been so focused on all the Mexican food that we almost forgot that we were supposed to get a green-chile cheeseburger. This bison burger with cheese and green chile was perfect.

After brunch, we headed to Albuquerque. When we got here, we headed to historic Albuquerque. We liked the Plaza in Santa Fe better. There were several cute shops and galleries but it was a little less refined than Santa Fe. It was also a whole lot warmer and a little more humid—that might have had something to do with it. After browsing the stores for a while, we went back to the hotel and hung out for a little while before going to dinner at Pueblo Harvest. This restaurant is located in the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. I went totally off the reservation and got prime rib, mashed potatoes and sautéed swiss chard. It was very good. Tim got an Indian taco the size of a hub cab—no really, it was that big.