Road trip Day #1 from Albuquerque! The theme was Pueblos. First stop the Pueblo Culural Center in Albuquerque, a pleasant southwest adobe building with interesting exhibits on the history, art and culture of the Pueblos, primarily in New Mexico. Good gift shop and nice looking restaurant too. Then we drove about an hour west through flat range country with giant buttes. mesas and other-worldly rock formations rising from the ground like strange abstract sculptures. Tumbleweeds blew, rather than tumbled, across Interstate 40. Unfortunately, Acoma Pueblo was not open to visitors when we arrived. Winter hours. But we could see a few adobe houses atop the Mesa where about 15 families still live. Off season was not a bad time to see it (from a distance, if not up close and personal) because you could get a sense of the isolation. It’s way out and up there. We drove on a two Lane highway up to an overlook atop a rock outcropping where a few native Americans were selling pottery from their car.
Then on to the small dusty town of Bibo and an old adobe building that has been a bar since 1913. As promised by a friend of Leah’s, the 1/2 pound burgers with cheese and green chilis were fantastic, served hot off the grill behind the bar where the woman who took our order also fried them up.
Back in Albuquerque, we met Wellington at the Bow &Arrow brewery, started recently by a Native American woman, we are told. Cool brew space and good beer, my husband reports.
I stopped at the Chili Addict, a small shopped packed with any kind of chili product imaginable (even x-rated chili, with racey illustrations on its labels, hidden behind a towel covering the shelf with an adults only sign. (I was an adult so I peeked in).I bought some packages of frozen green Chile’s to take home. (I brought an insulated lunch bag for transport.)
With subzero temps and icy snow on the ground, Christmas 2017 in Chicago was not conductive to outdoor activity, which is a big change from last Christmas when it was so pleasant we took our dog for a romp on the beach near my stepdaughter’s condo in Edgewater. But this year, we walked as much as we could tolerate, with help from two pairs of socks, down jackets, thick scarves covering our face from the nose downward.
We enjoyed well-deserved hot chocolate at The Wormhole, a bohemian coffee house in Wicker Park and made it about a block in the bitter cold to a little boutique for some post-Xmas sale shopping. At Night, we met my old friend Polly and her husband Jamie (who drove down and around from their home in Traverse City) for dinner at a favorite restaurant, Andy’s Thai Kitchen (the one in Edgewater, which is not only more convenient to where we stay but takes credit cards).
On Wednesday we talked ourselves into thinking it was slightly warmer (it wasn’t but the sky was brilliantly blue over the icy pale blue lake) and walked from my aunt’s apartment on Astor Street to Uniqlo on Michigan Avenue for some sale-priced winter gear and then to chaotic Eataly, the Italian food madhouse for some fresh prosciutto, mozzarella and fungi pizza, sitting at a high top table in the middle of a rush of shoppers. Our only other purchase was rustic bread with cranberries and apples, which made a delicious breakfast today. We kept walking, over the river to Revival Hall, a new food court/Hall in an old building. I’m told the poke place, the bbq place (smoke) and the Thai noodle place are good to try but we only had coffee and some too-sweet bakery goods. I was Intrigued by the”Detroit-style pizza” place, something this native Detroiter never heard of before. Dinner was with my dear aunt at one of her favorite places, Shaw’s for fresh fish, creamed spinach, hash browns and peppermint ice cream with hot fudge.
Today was cold and grey. We wandered a few blocks in Andersonville, shopping at Foursided and the bookstore, Women and Children First, and ending up eating at the nearby Middle East Bakery & Grocery after we learned that Edzo’s was closed (we drove all the way to Evanston, only to discover this). Now driving in the dark across Illinois. Fortunately it stopped snowing after the city of Peru. Our best meal was Emma’s fabulous homemade Korean brisket, roasted rosemary potatoes, collard greens and chocolate cake (with ground coffee but no flour)…not available to the public, sorry.
TakeBetsywithyou 