Wednesday, December 16, 2015

New Mexico (The Two Year Anniversary Trip): Part Two - Stuff We Did

I planned to share another post about my New Mexico trip last week, but time just got away from me. This last weekend was also insanely busy with in-law family stuff, but I managed to find a little time on Sunday night to answer emails I'd let pile up for too long, take care of some laundry that I'd also allowed to pile up for too long, and work on a couple of blog posts for this week. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get this post finished in time to publish it on Monday. Oh well. Wednesday's just as good.
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As the title indicates, my post today is all about the stuff we did while we were away ... With one exception. I'm going to save our hot air balloon ride for another post (mostly because we took a bunch of pictures that I want to share, and I didn't want to put that many pictures in one post).

One of our first stops on the trip was a local winery. There are actually quite a few wineries in the Corrales/Albuquerque area, and, even though we did a little research before we left, we weren't sure which one we should visit.

The owners of The Chocolate Turtle (I talk about how awesome our stay was here, if you missed my first recap) told us about Casa Rodeña, and after checking out some pictures, we were sold. (And, to make it even more appealing, they gave us a voucher for a free wine tasting for two!)
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We'd never visited a winery before, and I'm so glad this was our first experience! The bartender was very knowledgeable and very nice. We like drinking wine, but we're definitely not wine connoisseurs. We asked our bartender a lot of questions, and he was really great about answering them. 

We were able to try all of the wines that Casa Rodeña offers during our tasting. I generally prefer white wine, but the reds were actually pretty good as well (for the most part, anyway). 
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After our tasting, Eric and I decided to order a glass of wine each and enjoy the beautiful scenery in the back of the tasting room. 
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We also left with 4 bottles of wine. (Though, to be fair, two were for us and two were gifts.) I was really glad we decided to drive ... It definitely made it much easier to cart them home!

Old Town Albuquerque was another stop during our first day in town. It's a cute little area mostly filled with unique shops. I definitely wished we'd budgeted more money for this trip when I visited some of the shops because they had some fantastic jewelry and home decor for sale!
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There was also an adorable little church in the center of Old Town, so of course we had to get a few pictures:
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Our last stop in Old Town (and the first of several museums we visited) was the American International Rattlesnake Museum. Unlike my friend's husband who actually breeds snakes, I'm not a huge snake lover. I don't hate them (though I definitely wouldn't want to find a wild snake hanging out in my apartment!), but I'm not obsessed with them. However, since Eric and I are pretty nerdy, we thought it would be an interesting place to check out. And it was only $5 per person to get in, so it was cheap entertainment.

If you hate snakes, you might want to skip over the next few pictures.
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I loved this last guy. His face reminds me of a crotchety old man.

We took a lot more, but I know most people reading this probably don't want to look at a bunch of snakes.

Before we left for our trip, we weren't sure if we were going to drive to Santa Fe and/or Roswell while we were in the area. Roswell was about 3 hours or so away, and Santa Fe was only about an hour. 

On the drive down, we decided we didn't want to spend a huge chunk of our time away in the car, so we opted not to go to Roswell. We still weren't sure about Santa Fe, but everyone we spoke to at the B&B and in the shops (everyone was incredibly friendly and wanted to know all about us and where we were from) asked if we were going to Santa Fe during our time in New Mexico. After probably the third or fourth person asked, Eric said, "Well, I guess we're going to have to go to Santa Fe since everyone keeps talking about it!
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I'm so glad we took the time to drive there. As you can see from the picture above, it was absolutely beautiful. 

Santa Fe also had a ton of art galleries and museums, so we spent a lot of time checking those out. I couldn't tell you the names of the art galleries ... We just walked into the ones that caught our eye. As for the museums, we visited the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and the New Mexico History Museum. We didn't take many pictures in any of these places (mostly because many of them didn't allow pictures), but here are a couple:
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Above is the exterior of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
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I wish we could have taken pictures in the special pinhole photography exhibit at the New Mexico History Museum because it was my favorite thing. The photos were surreal and haunting and disturbing, and it was amazing to think that these images were created from something so low tech. 

We did, however, take some random pictures of the scenery (and ourselves), so I'll share a few of those:
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Santa Fe was a really cool place. Like I said, it was definitely worth the extra drive time!

The last thing I want to talk about in this post is our visit to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Eric and I both felt like we didn't spend enough time there because there was just so much to read and see. 
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I'm not a huge history buff, but this museum was really interesting and I felt like I learned a lot. There was a ton of information about the Manhattan Project, the Cold War, nuclear medicine ... The list could go on and on. And, I'm not going to lie, I teared up while I was reading about and looking at pictures from the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Horrifying stuff.

Anyway, I don't want to end on such a sad note, so instead I'll share a couple more pictures and then call it a day.
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I know this was a really long recap, so if you made it to the end, I think you're awesome (and thanks for reading!)! If not ... That's okay too. I know I can ramble on and on sometimes!

2 comments:

  1. Not a long recap at all!

    I totally want to go to Roswell but it's farther from a lot of other things I want to do out there.

    Did you get to or drive through Taos?

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  2. this is not long at all :-| did you see my disney one? hahahaha.
    I am not a huge history buff either, but i have always loved museums and such. i would tear up about those things as well, i always do, it never gets any less heartbreaking.
    y'all are so cute. i love the idea of driving somewhere so you can bring back as much as you want.. and sure those 4 bottles were all for you! haha.

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