explorin' abq

Today, Sam and I explored the city for a while.  We went to the aquarium and botanical gardens, both of which were not gigantic, but not small either, and VERY interesting.  The thing that was really awesome about the aquarium was that all of the wildlife there was more or less local- either from the Rio Grande or the coral reef area of the Gulf of Mexico.  We saw some pretty outrageously large fish, and a nice assortment of medium sized sharks and very large manta rays.  There were also some really disgusting looking puke green moray eels.  Their skin texture really creeps me out.

Thought it was cool to check out the cacti and such in the botanical gardens, since we don't exactly get cacti in CT, the best part of the gardens was the "children's fantasy garden", which one entered by way of a cave guarded by an enormous stone dragon.  There was also a giant pumpkin that one could go play inside, complete with the dregs of pumpkin guts and seeds that are always annoying to remove when preparing a pumpkin for carving.  Sam and I naturally went down the slide in the middle of a fake hollowed out tree.  A group of three siblings went before us- one of them being maybe a year and a half old baby who was more or less flung down the slide by her older sister.  Fortunately, she landed on her feet on the bottom (more or less anyway).

Then we went to Old Town, where we had attempted and failed to go last night after the show. At this point we were starving, so we went to a New Mexican restaurant in the Old Town center area, where a mariachi band was playing on  the lawn.  What kind of separates new mexican food from mexican is this: new mexican food is always served with green chile (or red- but everyone from New Mexico seems to prefer green) and sopapilla.  I had had sopapilla before coming to new mexico but had never been crazy for it.  Here, however, instead of being kind of crispy and served with all kinds of sugary syrups, they serve it plain, with your entree like they serve breadsticks or rolls at an italian restaurant.  And it's SOOO good.  I have also found all of the salsa in restaurants in New Mexico to be very VERY hot.  I'd really be out of luck if I didn't like spicy food!

Tomorrow I leave for Colorado.  Though I have enjoyed New Mexico, I am definitely looking forward to the cooler weather and crunchier lifestyle.

And as one final note, mostly to my co-workers: Yesterday we had a six year old freak out because his sandwich had mayo on it.  He was so upset that his dad had given him a messy sandwich and we wasn't going to be able to eat it in his costume.  Guess one of my boss's ideas to put non-messy snack in bold really did the trick! (note: we let him eat the sandwich, and he didn't get any mayo on his costume)