Reading Freely

From here  I moved to the attached Gardens, one of the most beautiful, romantic, and sometimes weirdest spots in New Mexico.  Beauty first:  Moorish gardens open the area,  ending in a tree-lined walkway that is utterly  peaceful

This goes around a park with a lagoon, and following the arbor-laden path took me to several greenhouses. The greenhouses are massive, multiple-story places.

  Another area of the gardens is done up in Japanese style, including round stones buried in the water used as a stepping bridge. The strangest part of the gardens, though, is the multi-acre farm in the middle.

“Farm”? Yes, farm. In the middle of Albuquerque,  there are apple orchards, vineyards, and rows of other crops.  Despite the abundance of rusting old farm equipment and the penned-in steer and horses, this isn’t a museum. There’s a barn on the premise that actually makes cider.  The irrigation used, at least in part, is traditional, as the farm is maintained here to remember how agriculture on the Rio Grande used to be.

Downtown Albuquerque, everyone!

One exceptional and enclosed area houses butterflies, who flit by constantly. I made it my mission to take a picture of one of the blue ones in flight, although the young woman on station warned me it was impossible.

A nearby building housed bugs, which were far less photogenic. I deleted several pictures of leaves before I remembered those were shots of LEAF INSECTS. D’oh.

The gardens took an enormous amount of time to enjoy, and that cypress walk was just as lovely going back. If I lived in ABQ, it would be an obvious place to go on a date.

After this, I headed for the zoo. Not that I hadn’t seen enough animals this week, but it was two miles away; how could I resist?  I didn’t realize how late in the day it was, and in fact I very nearly got kicked out of the zoo at closing.   There were three kinds of exhibits: the ones where the animals were not there for explained reasons, the ones where the animals were not there for unexplained reasons, and the ones with actual animals.  The polar bears were no-shows, and I arrived just in time to see the chimpanzees disappearing into a wall like hairy Oompa-Loompas.   Bear in mind this wasn’t at closing, but starting around 4 a lot of the animals were being wheeled in,  so I wound up doing a lot of trekking and not seeing much at all.   After an hour and a half of wandering, booming voices warned me the zoo was closing in fifteen minutes, at which point I started scurrying.

In total, waste of energy, time, and $8.  I did see a few things, though:

Emerging from the natural history hours later, and returning to old town, I discovered that everyone else had woken up and joined me.  Cars poured in and filled the once-empty plaza, but with them came pleasant music and even pleasanter sounds. Those bronze figures shared earlier were planted outside a museum of history and art, but from what I could tell the art was modern.  My attempt in Las Cruces to find a southwestern art museum had resulted only in a large Japanese pottery exhibit, so I wasn’t  excited about the prospect of paying $12 and being dismayed again.  I could see all the art I wanted on the streets!

Entering the outdoors ‘mall’, I drifted until I spotted a restaurant.  This was the first and only time anyone asked me “Red or green”. I’d been waiting all week to be asked, and I knew the answer.  “May I have it Christmas?”  I’d like to report on the experience of having red-green chile sauce, but the dish I had it on (a chimichanga) was so large that I didn’t taste much of it.   The only unqualified dining sucess I had all week was on Friday, since after a long day of driving I tended to either look for fast food I didn’t recognize, or better  yet grabbed a chicken and Hatch green chile burrito from Allsups gas stations.  Those were quais-regional AND cheap.

As much as I enjoyed the sights and sounds of the plaza,  one place downtown I wanted to visit was the Aquarium, Zoo, and Biopark.  It turns out that the entrances of the Aquarium-Biopark and the Zoo are two miles apart, although on my map they were parked in a continuous blob of green.  The aquarium-biopark was amazing, the zoo was an amazing disappointment.  But first, the amazing.

The ‘underwater tunnel’ won me over immediately to the Aquarium, as I’ve been longing to see the one in Atlanta, but that place is an interstate spaghetti bowl. After a few minutes enjoying the sight of fish over my head,  I next encountered a large tube of jellyfish, and a shallow pool of manta rays. One of the rays would ‘surf’ the side of the tank, flashing his underbelly, but they’re so fast I never caught him in the act.  The big attraction, of course, is a floor-to-ceiling tank that features hundreds of fish, including several sharks.

The basement of the aquarium included several model ships, and I spied an actual boat in the back of the place. It may have access to the nearby Rio Grande.

On to the Gardens!

Ever since I arrived in Albuequerque, I’d be haunted by the constant din of traffic. I entered town in the middle of it, and remained surrounded by it. It never ceased — even at three am in the morning, I’d awake and hear the steady roar of the interstate and Coors Boulevard.   Here in Old Town, though, long before tourists and shopkeepers had arrived, I was free from the storm of steel.

I beelined for the church, of course, it being the largest and most attractive building. Called San Felipes, it was closed for the moment, but early visitors like myself could still wander the courtyard.  After getting my bearings, I noticed the doors being opened and entered.

San Felipes was the only church I visited whose aura hadn’t been trampled under by throngs of fellow tourists, and I enjoyed five minutes of peaceful silence before anyone else came in. They came armed, with cameras, so I took my own shots and departed.  From here I would wander in and out of streets admiring the architecture.  I decided to see if I could find the science museum, but on the way encountered art.