Albuquerque and Back Part 1

It’s 7:28 am on Tuesday morning. The sun has already been up for a couple of hours. The temperature has already passed 70 degrees with a promise of 100 before the afternoon is over. I’m sitting on the balcony of the Heritage House Bed and Breakfast (albuquerquebandb.com) in Albuquerque NM. I have a view of the downtown area that is partially obscured by trees. There is one of those artificial pools trickling water through its mini architecture down on the ground below me to my left. I also hear chickens clucking and a sheep raising its voice in the near distance. The Heritage House is part of the downtown historic district and is registered as an historic landmark. The house is somewhere over 100 years old and retains much of its original architecture. It’s all very pleasant, peaceful, and relaxing.

A couple of months ago our children surprised my wife and I with an Amtrak trip to the bed and breakfast of our choice in Albuquerque. My wife has been to this city before and had occasionally expressed an interest in returning some day. Apparently my children were listening. I was somewhat apprehensive about the train ride. I don’t always travel well over long distances in confined spaces. It is no doubt a throwback to my childhood where every car ride had the potential to be a motion sickness adventure. As I got older I have mostly gotten past that, but still, looking forward to a 26 hour ride each way on a train was presenting some mental challenges.

As it turns out the train ride was a surprisingly pleasant experience. Sure, the restrooms don’t work right at higher elevations and learning to walk down the narrow hallways and between cars of a vehicle moving as fast as 90 mph as it jostles back and forth on the rails presented some challenges. Still those small drawbacks seemed minor in comparison to the benefits. We had a sleeper car so we had some privacy as well as a dark, relatively quiet place to lie down at night. The meals are first class (think fine dining restaurant, not airline food).

The best part though was the people we met. Amtrak practices community dining, primarily because of space restrictions. So for instance my wife and I being two people were always seated with one or two other people we didn’t know. It’s all pretty random, mostly first come first serve. So for instance on our first meal on the train we ate dinner with Irene and Helge(pronounced Elya) a 60ish couple from Oslo, Norway. They were on a three week holiday touring the United States. They flew into NY and were eventually taking the train all the way to Los Angeles and ultimately flying out of San Francisco. Along the way they were stopping at several places across our country that most of us will probably never see?

The next morning we had breakfast with Jack, a retired Michigan State University professor from East Lansing MI who retired to start his own company that develops health products for animals. He was taking the train to La Junta CO to oversee a photo shoot of a well known rodeo star who was endorsing one of his company’s products.
I’m sure there will be more stories like that on the way home.

When we arrived at the train station in Albuquerque on Monday afternoon at 4:30 we were about 40 minutes late. We had arranged to pick up a rental car from a place that closed at 5pm. Knowing our time was limited we immediately went to the desk and inquired about the location of the rental car company we were looking for. Nobody could tell us. As the clock ticked toward 5:00 I called my daughter back in MI to see if she could track down some directions for us. What she was able to come up with was sort of vague, but it seemed like our destination was about 3 miles away. At this point it was too close to 5:00 to even track down a taxi and take us there.

What happened next is my favorite part of the trip and one of the many reasons I love my wife. She is a much more experienced traveler than I am, but she also has the ability to not get frustrated in pressure situations. As I was entering my, “what are we going to do now”, near panic mode, she calmly took out her phone. She called the 800 number for the rental car service, found out they had another location at the Albuquerque Airport which is open 24/7, had them change our reservation to that location and had me call a taxi to take us there. Problem solved! 45 minutes later we were at the Bed and Breakfast being greeted by the owner Kara Grant and her nine year old daughter Abby.

We had a nice, but expensive dinner at a local restaurant, came back to our beautiful room and got some rest.