What to do in Santa Fe? (Albuquerque, Los Alamos: motels, restaurant, price)

[Santa Fe]

Originally Posted by ash80753

My friend and I are coming to Santa Fe the last weekend of November from Pittsburgh. I would like to know what area to stay in (specific hotels would be helpful). We are both in our mid 20s and would like to be in a decent neighborhood within walking distance to bars and restaurants. Thanks!!

Are you coming for just the weekend? A three-day weekend? If you are, then some of the driving routes suggested are going to use a lot of your time. You could end up driving in the dark in the short late November days and you don't see much scenery once it gets dark.

Mortimer suggests eight hours for the I-25 route and I'd agree. Put a round trip to Albuquerque on the end of that and that's another two without doing anything doing anything in Albuquerque except turning around. Frankly the scenery between here and ABQ is not that great compared to what you will already have seen.

I personally love the route Mortimer suggests through Taos. But that is going to add serious time to the trip.

From Taos, you could come down the low road with nice scenery along the Rio Grande but you have two towns -- Espanola and Taos with many traffic lights and their own little traffic jams. Don't do that trip after 6 pm on a weekend night.

The high road avoids Espanola and it offers some great views of the Sangres, but it is slow.

Santa Fe has a great deal to do and see. If you are coming for only a few days, it will keep you occupied.

[BRMan]

Originally Posted by mortimer

From there, you cross the Taos
Gorge Bridge and go into Taos. From there, you can go to Santa Fe.

Once on a trip to northern NM, I had read about the Taos Bridge (it's one of the highest bridges around), so I specifically went out of my way to see it. TOTALLY out in the middle of nowhere, the scenery around it was awesome...and for you trivia buffs, the opening scene in Natural Born Killers (and apparently several other movies as well) was filmed there.

Some more info on that bridge: Rio Grande Gorge Bridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[SanfordR]

La posada de santa fe is nice too and centrally located. Del Charro is a good cheap place to eat downtown. And yes downtown is small and easily walkable. Is it a lot cheaper to fly into Denver VS ABQ? That's a long boring trip from Denver ( yes about 6 hours). Only an hour from ABQ and much less chance of bad weather. I really recommend seeing a pueblo or 2 while here- like Acoma or Taos. Very worth the drive.

[jaxart]

Originally Posted by SanfordR

That's a long boring trip from Denver ( yes about 6 hours).

Not only can it be exceedingly boring, but with a speed limit of 75mph, and relatively heavy traffic for open country, it takes undivided attention to one's driving since many of are exceeding even that liberal speed limit. I suspect passengers get as nervous as the drivers when going through the several metro areas along the route since the lowered speed limit signs mean nothing to most of the locals. And on top of that, there seems to be endless construction along that route - especially through the several metro areas. People used to driving in high-speed urban traffic may have different reactions than I do since I rarely drive in big-city traffic. But I drive from NM to Denver on a regular basis and am speaking from my own personal experiences.

In any case, even in the best of times the drive on IH-25 is similar to any other major freeway drive. It does NOT traverse the most scenic part of the country, and there is no chance to slow down and smell the roses on such routes. True that snow removal is better on freeways, but that doesn't mean the highway surface isn't still slick or icy at times.

In the summer months, when alternative routes are less likely to be affected by weather conditions, there are several alternate routes from Denver to Santa Fe that do indeed afford spectacular scenery. The ones I'm thinking of all traverse mountainous terrain to the west of IH-25, and being mostly 2-lane hiways, with not that much traffic in most cases, it's much easier to slow down and take in the scenery.

[ash80753]

I ended up getting a flight out of Youngstown, Ohio to Albuequerque for only $200! We are staying from Friday until Tuesday. I'm going to bid on a hotel on Priceline and hopefully get La Fonda or Inn of the Governors. I've had really good luck w/ that in the past. Thank you for all of your suggestions! Any other things we should do while in town?

[ash80753]

This is probably going to sound really stupid, but what is a pueblo? Is it like an reservation?

[lalahartma]

Originally Posted by jaxart

Not only can it be exceedingly boring, but with a speed limit of 75mph, and relatively heavy traffic for open country, it takes undivided attention to one's driving since many of are exceeding even that liberal speed limit. I suspect passengers get as nervous as the drivers when going through the several metro areas along the route since the lowered speed limit signs mean nothing to most of the locals. And on top of that, there seems to be endless construction along that route - especially through the several metro areas. People used to driving in high-speed urban traffic may have different reactions than I do since I rarely drive in big-city traffic. But I drive from NM to Denver on a regular basis and am speaking from my own personal experiences.

In any case, even in the best of times the drive on IH-25 is similar to any other major freeway drive. It does NOT traverse the most scenic part of the country, and there is no chance to slow down and smell the roses on such routes. True that snow removal is better on freeways, but that doesn't mean the highway surface isn't still slick or icy at times.

In the summer months, when alternative routes are less likely to be affected by weather conditions, there are several alternate routes from Denver to Santa Fe that do indeed afford spectacular scenery. The ones I'm thinking of all traverse mountainous terrain to the west of IH-25, and being mostly 2-lane hiways, with not that much traffic in most cases, it's much easier to slow down and take in the scenery.

I rather like the drive from CoS to ABQ.

[Poncho_NM]

Originally Posted by ash80753

This is probably going to sound really stupid, but what is a pueblo? Is it like an reservation?

In Spanish is basically means town. In the Spanish speaking parts of Europe, Caribbean Central and South America, pueblo normally refers to a small village or town.

It appears that in the Southwest United States, it generally refers to Native American towns, villages etc.

Here is a thread with the discussion: //www.city-data.com/forum/santa...ifference.html


Rich

[SanfordR]

//www.city-data.com/forum/new-m...ma-pueblo.html

This was posted this summer I think and we took some out of town visitors from the NE here a few weeks ago. It took about 1 1/2 to drive from SF. They were highly impressed and so were we. It's my favorite thing we've seen in NM so far.

An aside about the drive on 25 from Denver. Two week-ends ago coming back to SF we saw about 10 cars that had skidded off the road through Las Vegas- black ice. Getting close to Santa Fe on that route though- what a beautiful sight!

[chipped123]

There is a "pittsburgh" movie playing at the Santa Fe Film Festival, "My Tale of Two Cities" if you are there Dec. 4th. See the website [url=http://www.mytaleoftwocities.com]My Tale of Two Cities - The Pittsburgh Comeback Story![/url] for details. (or go to [url]www.thepittsburghmovie.com[/url])
It's a "funny and heartfelt comeback story" about people and cities reinventing themselves for a new age that features some folks you might recognize.
Have fun in Santa Fe.