Day 9: Balloon Fiesta! (pt v)

(or after the nap)

Since I had the rest of the day open I wanted to use that to see Old Town. I did not have any sense of Albuquerque as a city, so why not start there?

My GPS brought me to what it thought was Old Town but I did not see anything that I would have associated with being terribly old. I stopped the car, asked Google Maps where the old town parking was and parked myself accordingly. I followed other folks from the lot into an adobe area of stores which opened up into an area that yep, started to look old.

Then I started to get it. Old Town was not gonna be some prohibition-era set of buildings, or something like that. As I mulled that over in my head and what that was going mean, I found it pretty much staring me in the face:

Old meant like Mexican old and a proper Spanish town which had to have a church and a plaza. I had the church and the plaza was certainly there with a mariachi band., to boot!

this was old ABQ…a Spanish church and plaza along with supporting shops and restaurants in adobe. I was being too gringo for my own good. My pics of the terrific mariachi band were out of focus, so you will have to just take my word for it.

But nevertheless, I wanted to see some sort of 20th century old town and thought I could do that by looking up where the City Hall was located. When I found it, it was nothing to write home about (or take a picture of) and the current incarnation of the city center was not a unified urban vision but rather a collection of disparate modern buildings that had no souls individually, nor any collective purpose. They were just kind of built as their respective budgets would allow at the time.

There was a great old Kimo theatre which was very worthy of a picture but Central Avenue (old route 66), even this far into the city, was overtaken by drugged out folks who hung out in slumped lumps on the sidewalks. I drove by, whispered my appreciation, but kept on driving by. This was what was left of the “downtown” and now home to nodding off folks who were having a hard time living. I was sorry to not be able to walk around and explore more. Even the Kimo website offered virtual tours instead of the real thing.

So, what to do? I headed further west on route 40 and see if there was any ol’ magic left to route 66. There wasn’t and i turned around. Perhaps it would appear further west, but the afternoon was almost gone by this point and even my nap did fully restore me and i was still tired from the Fiesta morning.