Since I love planning trips, I did the planning and booking of hotels, along with suggestions of what to do so we were all set when Joleen arrived on a Friday afternoon and we headed out on Saturday morning!
The drive to Alb. was 6 hours - we stopped in Pueblo and got coffee at a cute place which I will remember for the future since the coffee was great!! After a stop in Las Vegas, NM for gas and lunch, we made it into Alb.!!
Since the Sandia Tramway was on the north side of Alb., we stopped there first! I LOVE my navigation in my new car - just plug in that address and go! We got our tickets and then raced back to the car to get our jackets as the sign said it was over 20 degrees cooler up on the mountain - yikes!
The tram was fun and since we were almost first in line, we got to stand right in front as it went up! It was a nice smooth ride that took about 15 minutes!
The wind was blowing like crazy on top!! Since we were at 10,378 elevation, it WAS much cooler than down below!! The views were just amazing!
Just slightly wind blown - ha!
We walked around at the top for a while and then caught the tram down. They had beautiful gardens and places to sit!
Next we plugged in the address to the Casa Rondena Winery which was the only place I could find that did wine tasting!!!! The wines didn't look like anything I would really enjoy tasting as they were pretty much all red ones and not sweet ones like I enjoy but it sounded like a neat place and wasn't far away so we headed there!!
The place was almost out of the city limits and as soon as we pulled in, a lady was there at the iron gates telling us where to park! And the grape vines were RIGHT THERE - you drove right past them up to the small parking lot (which had no spaces) so we came back to where we started and that parking lot was jam packed too!! I finally pulled into a spot which was touch and go because it barely left room for this huge pickup to get out!
We walked through the grape vines up to this neat building and were glad we had come! The place was great!!
Although I really didn't care for any of the wines, it was still fun to taste them!! Apparently this building is an event center!
We then headed to our hotel which was only about a 1/4 mile from Old Town and we wanted to be able to walk there so it worked out perfectly! Our room was very nice (loved that they had bamboo wooden floors instead of carpet!) and we were very pleased with it!
I had researched places to eat so we walked over to Old Town and immediately found the restaurant we were looking for, The Church Street Cafe! There was a little eating area outside which was full and as we walked into the tiny place, I thought we would have to wait!! But inside the gal led us through 2 or 3 larger rooms and then to the back (as we wanted to eat outside) and there was a huge courtyard!! It was all decorated with Spanish items and lots of hanging lights in the trees and was just as cute as could be!!
Dinner was great - we ended up splitting items during our trip which sure worked out good and enjoyed the place immensely! I highly recommend it if you ever find yourself in Alb.!!
After walking around a bit and scouting out a coffee place, we headed back to the hotel to relax!
To be con'td.............
1 comment:
Way to pack stuff in on the 1st day! Sounds like a great start to your trip!
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