Albuquerque/Santa Fe

I didn't eat there, but this organic/hippie type place called Cafe Oasis looked really colorful... [pulling out brochure from my road trip goodies bag) "Food cooked with Highest Love & Integrity in devotion to Body Temple". Yup, it's one of those type of places.

If you've never been to Santa Fe, it's truly a beautiful place to visit. The rustic/historic part of the city in the east end is just really neat, and not to be missed.

Or a subway conduc-tuh circa 1940. Where's my racing fawm?

nope. mapquest sez:

Total Est. Time: 1 hour, 6 minutes Total Est. Distance: 63.38 miles

I'm in Albuquerque for an industrial statistics course. What should I do that isn't stats?

If you're not acrophobic, the Sandia Peak Tramway!

Breakfast at the Frontier, more breakfast (specifically the green chile sausage) at the Flying Star Cafe.

If you have a car, go 90 miles south to San Antonio (NM) to the Buckhorn Tavern for the best Green Chile Cheeseburger on my travels last year. Better than the Bobcat Bite up near Santa Fe. If you go to San Antonio, you can have a GCC at Buckhorn and then another at the Owl Bar across the highway to compare. Stop at the convenience store between the two for a bottle of cherry cider.

I'm in Santa Fe today. I been before but never had a lot of time to check it out. I want to go to SITE, I want to eat some food, find some historic SF flavor. Where should I go? Happy to start with the basics. I love New Mexico so much!

• Guadalupe Cafe for all time. Sopaipillas w/honey ftw.
• Bum around the Plaza, check out the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi (awesome dude loved birds and poverty wkiw)
• Walk the galleries on Canyon Road
• Drink chocolate at Kakawa
• Drive up Bishop's Lodge Road to the ski basin and hike around the woods
• Soak your ass in the public tub at 10,000 waves
• and yeah, SITE

i'm going to albuquerque next week for about 5 days. i have a work conference most of that time but the first day and half is wide open and i might have some other free time throughout the trip. i'll be staying near downtown in the huning highland historic district. what do you all recommend? i'm looking for, particularly:
-cheap new mexican and mexican food, or other good bars or restaurants
-decent coffee
-art galleries
-markets, food crafts whatever
-cheap used clothing
-hiking, parks, etc., even if i have to rent a car for the first day or two, i don't mind driving.

is santa fe worth checking out while i'm there? taos? anywhere else that is worth driving to if i choose to rent a car for the first couple days?

also any cool neighborhoods that are worth seeing & wandering around in?

Meow Wolf!

https://meowwolf.com

And as for food, yeah, New Mexican is kind of its own thing. Get the enchiladas "Christmas style" (red and green salsa on the same plate)

oh hey, i just moved from abq to santa fe a couple months ago

- cheap new/mexican food: taqueria mexico, on lomas, is supposed to be good but it's been a long time since i've been; el cotorro (tacos) is also good, but ever so slightly upscale (i went there a lot because it was close to my apartment); all the new mexican places i've been are up here in santa, but i've heard really good things from native new mexican coworkers about cocina azul; marble brewery has good beer and a really excellent rooftop patio that takes in the sandias, v much recommend; a place i never made it to but have heard great things about is the albuquerque press club---"members only" bar in a historic building

- 3rd wave coffee or w/e hasn't really arrived in abq, which the exception of like one or two places. i used to buy beans at prismatic, which is in a newish mixed-use commercial/residential zone in the sawmill neighborhood (also right next door to a brewery). the only other place i went was humble coffee

- art galleries: i'm sure they exist, but i don't know much about em in abq. loads up here, tho

- there's a farmer's market down in the railyard on...saturdays? i went a couple times, but always too late in the day to get a sense of what it was really like

- used clothing: probably? i'd check out shops on/near central ave, near the university. there's a nice little record store around there, too. abq is probably a good place for "finds" (clothing and record) just because it is almost completely lacking in hipster pressure

- hiking: great hikes immediately east of the city in the sandia foothills. the premier trail is La Luz trail, and it's really exceptional. also pretty burly: ~9mi to the top of the sandia crest, with ~3800ft of vertical gain. really really beautiful, though, and you can take the tram down (but you'll still have to hike another couple miles back to your car)

not many nabes in abq that are easily wanderable on foot, except the old neighborhood downtown, definitely more of a driving city

thank you josh!

and thank you gbx! recalled you lived in nm, was hoping you'd post.

yea from what i've read or looked up on google streetview, definitely doesn't feel like a walking city but i wondered if there are pockets. how about on bike?

i know more about things to do in santa fe, mostly because i spent nearly every weekend up here when i was living in abq (all my friends live here)

the drive is a relatively painless 50min on I-25, and about 1.5hr if you take the scenic route through tijeras/cedar crest/madrid (which I highly recommend). if you do go the long way, skip stopping in madrid (which is a tourist trap), and go literally 2min off the beaten path to beautiful, sleepy little cerillos, and get a beer at the blackbird

def go to meow wolf if you can, it's really fun (and pays several friends' bills)

the country around taos is insanely pretty, and the town is...weird (in a good way), but from abq it's a solid 2.5hrs. santa is closer, has more/better food, and you are still up in the mountains

and la luz trail looks amazing xp

If you dig the terror of high places like I do, check out the Sandia Peak Tram (in ABQ) and the Rio Grande Gorge bridge (Hwy 64 near Taos). If you're in the Cult of the Green Chile Cheeseburger, the owners of the moderately famous Bobcat Bite now have a place called the Santa Fe Bite. My favorite GCC was down at the Buckhorn Tavern, 90 miles south of ABQ in San Antonio, NM. You just missed the NM State Fair, where I had a really good piece of green chile apple pie.

go literally 2min off the beaten path to beautiful, sleepy little cerillos, and get a beer at the blackbird

this sounds cool

because i am a corny stoner i was honestly thinking of taking a scenic drive up to southern CO to buy a little weed and make interesting stops on the way there & back, but it might be kind of a hike for such a short trip. i get in around 1pm on tuesday and then wednesday is my only full day free

uh wow the tram & rio grande bridge look terrifying! wow

thu-fri-sat all conference days but i might take an afternoon off

re: bike -- yes, with some caveats. burqueno motorists are, at best, indifferent to cyclists (and each other) and, at worst, actively hostile. i'd get a bike map from wherever you rent from. that said, there's a nice, flat, quiet trail down in the bosque that's a nice way to while away an afternoon, and it does connect to some other trails (eg the north branch) that can allow you to cover some serious amount of ground without ever getting on the road.

xp i actually just had the gcc at the santa fe bite for the first time a little while ago and it was....fine! locals tell me that blake's is actually better, but i haven't had one yet

xxp the drive to southern co would be totally pretty (esp if you went through chama) but you're looking at ~9-10hrs on the road. which might be totally fine!

I was surprised with the amount and quality of ABQ breweries. Tractor has more in-house brews than possibly any brewery I've been to. Didn't get a chance to go to Marble, sounds cool.

yea that is a lot of driving. chama NM or chama CO?

weed is expensive at CO rec shops!

what's really weird is that, breweries aside, there are basically zero bars in albuquerque. having spent most of my life in the midwest, where there's a neighborhood join on every other block, it was strange to see. the breweries seem to be picking up the slack, i guess (might be a govt thing, like you can't sell booze w/o food unless you're a brewery)

lots of lil breweries opening up here in santa fe, too

xp chama nm

man i'm just sitting at my desk at work doing google image searches of all these places and i really want to go to all of them

weed is expensive at CO rec shops!

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, September 18, 2018 12:22 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

true but i'm hesitant to fly out there w/ my own. obv i could skip the weed for a 5-6 day trip but these conference trips are mini-vacations for me

is the petroglyph nat'l monument worth making time to see?

ABQ for La Cumbre. Had some tasty beers there a few years ago, after landing in ABQ and stopping at LC on the way to Santa Fe.

SF, if you're into whiskey, Santa Fe Spirit's Colkegan is a nice souvenir for sipping. Tried a few breweries there, nothing extraordinary but all good. Was trying to remember one of them, a darkish interior off a courtyard or side alley, from Google, and see a few more have opened since. Have fun!

i liked tent rocks natl monument

marble brewery was really nice

best new mexican food i had in albuquerque was at the duran central pharmacy which has a very cool lunch counter. the giant frontier diner type place near the university was also a good scene.

got a cheap copy of camper van chadbourne on cd at mecca music.

forgot about duran central pharmacy!

places in santa fe, should you make the trip:
- tune-up cafe is probably my go to joint. really good food, always busy but service is astonishingly quick. owners are salvadoran, i believe, but food runs the gamut of central america --> new mexico
- la choza or the shed for new mexican (two locations, same menu). la choza is in my hood, local favorite. the shed is just a couple blocks from the plaza, and caters primarily to tourists.
- the red enchilada. simple, inexpensive new/mexican place, good food.
- el parasol (multiple locations). real good burritos and tacos (hard-shelled!!?!?). i've only been to the one in pojaque, as it's on the way to taos/mountains, but i'm sure they're all good
- el chile toreado. food truck a few blocks from my place, really great burritos
- paper dosa. also in my neighborhood (i chose well!). south indian food, no chicken tikka masala in sight, seriously delicious (lil pricey).
- paloma. pretty new (~1yo?), slightly upscale, def overpriced (but tasty) mexican interpretations with a nice patio out back and an insane collection of mezcal (and mez-cocktails). get the diablo.
- backroads pizza. platonic ideal of a local pizza place, complete with pool tables upstairs and pac-man. good pie. guy fieri likes it, too, apparently.

- a nice, but steep, lil hike is mount atalaya, which leaves from the campus of St John's and reaches a nice overlook of the city
- a very leisurely hike that'll get you good views and plenty of time amongst the turning aspens is the aptly named 'aspen vista' trail, which is actually just a forest service road. the whole thing is 12mi and will take you from 10k to 12k, but you can turn around anytime (i did this sunday!)

- plenty of museums: georgia o'keefe, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, SITE, plus all the galleries up canyon road (there's like 200+ in santa fe??)
- if you have the time, heading up to chimayo to check out the church is pretty cool (nice drive)
- if you really have time, check bandelier national monument. lots of old cave/cliff dwellings. def the kind of thing i might not have done had my family not recently visited, but i'm glad i did

- folks from the nearby pueblos selling jewelry and stuff under the eaves at the palace of the emperors. if you're gonna buy anything "southwestern" while you're here, i strongly encourage you to not buy anything from white people!!!
- if you make it up to taos, check out the pueblo -- oldest continuously inhabited structure in the US (possibly 1000yrs!)

Palace of the Governors you mean?
SF def the place to go if you wanna wander around on foot.
I was gonna go to el parasol but saw hard shell on menu and got turned off. Was surprised that there weren't a bazillion 4.5-5 star taco spots listed on Yelp, in SF nor ABQ. Is that cause it's all about NM food instead?

lol "emperors" idk why I never get that right

and yeah, there's not nearly as much real Mexican food as one might expect. the place I mentioned up thread, taqueria Mexico, is one of the few places I know of that does straight up street style tacos

ok damn i might have to skip a day of this conference to check out abq AND santa fe

thank you this is so great!

1 day of conference, 4 days of exploring imo

otm

aspens are turning there now right?

Just starting to yeah

JiC it’s chile not salsa u savage

La Choza is the gold standard now that Guadalupe is closed.

Plaza Cafe should be a tourist trap but is (not so) secretly good.

Grab a cuppa chocolate at Kakawa. I recommend “Marie Antoinette” if they’re pouring it that day.

Also no longer secret but for a milder hike than Atalaya and still gorgeous, drive up to the ski basin.

Railyard farmer’s market is pretty good.

Also just enjoy the sky and the light and all that. It’s everything they say it is.

Ha, just the color of the pepper you mean? I thought it was a chile sauce.

JiC it’s chile not salsa u savage

(I just googled the difference between salsa and chili sauce and now I'm even more confused.)

(I mean technically red and green are salsas in the strictest sense of the word)

sure but wait for the server's face when you ask for "green salsa" on your stuffed sopaipilla

oh and you wouldn't go there on a visit but Atrisco in DeVargas Center is also secretly good

red btw

gbx i love that you've gone native! small enough town we probably know people in common by now.

bandelier is def worth it if you have the time to spare. likewise santuario de chimayo.

wait are you in Santa??

A decent chunk of my pals are from here originally, the rest are transplants. I'd drop names but yknow, internet

the person you're most likely to know would probably be w3rw4th since he knows everyone

I'm in the other SF (bay area), but I have family in Santa Fe, visit often, and lived there for a spell in the 90s

and totally no names but I'll try to remember to drop a line next time i'm in town. max one degree of separation based on evidence lol

Not totally surprising tbh

now I gotta ask: ever been to the Mesa party?

had a great time, thanks everyone for your recs! new mexico is an amazing place, wow.

first day i just wandered around albuquerque near the bnb, by chance hit up that taqueria on lomas not even realizing it was the one you recommended gbx and damn it was really good. carnitas tacos were outta sight! went over to the unm area and explored a little

second day i rented a car and woke up super early and drove to taos, hit up the taos fall arts festival which is so good. went to the harwood museum of art, what a fabulous collection for such a small town. taos was rad. blown away by all the art everywhere there. drove to santa fe and went to the georgia okeefe museum. i wish i had more time in santa fe but had to get the car back to abq by 6pm to keep it cheap. it was a

conference was a couple days but i had some time to explore abq a bit more. walked around for a few hours on my last day, and hit up the downtown growers market - honestly one of the best farmers markets i've ever been to. amazing crafts there too, & one of the vendors was like "this is nothing, you need to go the railyard on sundays" but i had to fly back on sunday and couldn't make it. old town was a little touristy but still pretty cool. albuquerque museum was rad.

casa azul was soooooo good. i had a conference dinner there so it was nice to have it built into the trip.

it was a

didn't my sentence there but meant to say it was a lot of driving but worth it, just beautiful

abq in general has a weird undercurrent i thought. lots of dogs barking at me everywhere. strange folks wandering around. i was taking photos in one particular neighborhood w/ some cool historic houses and a woman came out of one of them and was really weirded out that i was taking photos, wanted me to delete them and just totally didn't trust me at all that i was just a visitor from out of town taking pictures

abq is definitely strange

sounds like good lil trip tho! packed in quite a bit

this thread inspired me to plan a trip! so i'm coming out west in early october. i'll be staying mostly in santa fe but also a little time in abq and taking drives out to other places like taos and bandelier national monument, i think? if you have any new food/travel tips not already mentioned in this thread (which i have already data mined) please let me know

i didn't plan this but i'm going to be in the area for the big hot air balloon festival and haven't decided if i want to try to see that at all

Bella’s Mexican Grill in Taos is worth a visit if you’re in town.

lets get a gcc

would have to be a gccvb for me but i plan to eat lots of gc

buddy youre in luck because...we've got a whole lot of it!!!!

if i want to go up to taos from santa fe, see the puebla and the earthships and some of the town, would that work as a day trip or should i try to stay there overnight?

pueblo, excuse me

i did it as a day trip from abq bc i didn't want to pay more than a 24-hr rental, it was a long day for sure but doable

santa fe would be easier though id think

easy day trip

great. i thought about renting the hobbit house earthship in taos for a night but it would be pretty $$ for just me.

had a great trip to NM:

day one - got into albuquerque, lunch at duran central pharmacy, quick tour of the plaza, drove out to sandia peak tramway but got impatient with the line and just ended up walking up the trail a bit instead, dinner at green jeans farmery
day two - breakfast at frontier, turquoise trail up to santa fe with stops at tinkertown, madrid, and cerrillos, detour up to tent rocks national monument, then into santa fe where i met up with gbx and other friends for dinner
day three - breakfast at tune-up cafe, meow wolf, kakawa chocolate house, and the railyard area, including SITE
day four - low road up to taos, taos plaza, art museum at fechin house, taos pueblo, then drove up to the rio grande gorge and the earthships
day five - bandelier national monument, then back into santa fe to hang out more
day six - back down to abq to fly home

lots of cool stuff but my favorite was just driving in the countryside and seeing amazing vistas and saying "oh wow" to myself in my rental car

well done! saying "oh wow" to yourself in your rental car is classic northern NM <3