Old Town New Mexico

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

My second day in Albuquerque, my host took the day off of work to show me around some places in the city.  The first place we went was "Old Town."  It is what used to be down town Albuquerque.  There were several beautiful older buildings, including some chapels.  I did some touristy type shopping for gifts and post cards and then we walked around for a bit.  One of the coolest parts was a row of Native American people selling their own hand tooled jewelry.  I could not get a picture of them because my host said they do not like people taking their pictures...however, I did buy some turquoise earrings!  Here are some pictures from Old Town: 

This is the statue/fountain that heads up Old Town in Albuquerque. 

Each different plaza in Old Town has a sign over it.  It is a very nice place to walk around and act like a tourist (re: buy things)!

This made me laugh..yes, sorry - I guess sometimes I still have a fifteen year old's sense of humor. =)

This next set of photos were taken of the church and the smaller chapel.  However, some of them are sideways (which I guess is a common problem between Canon cameras and the Blogger site...there is no easy way to fix it - so sorry...), you can always log on to my Picasa and see ALL of the pictures, too.

Plaque outside of the church of San Felipe de Neri.  There was actually a mass being held inside of this church when  we walked in - so I did not take any pictures of the inside...but it was stunning!

Lovely statue in the garden of the San Felipe de Neri church.

Luckily Alejandro knew where this hidden tree carving was.  I thought it was pretty cool.

Here is just the face of the carving inside of the tree.

This was taken from inside of the little chapel.  Clearly it is a popular place for people to come and pray.  Many candles were lit and there were beautiful flowers everywhere.

From inside the same tiny chapel.

Here are some more from just walking around:

I took this one for you Brittany - I know how funny you think skeletons are - and this one was no exception!  Wait until you see the next blog - I have an even better one for you!

This is the Candy Lady's sign.  Alejandro tells me she is pretty well known for making delicious candies - I would not know because we went inside and the candy was SO expensive.  For example, there were little caramels - like the kind you can buy in a bag at Wal Mart, for about $14.99/lb.  Whoa!  There were also a lot of sexual shaped candies.  Like a one pound piece of chocolate in the mold of a penis...bahaha.  I didn't bother asking how much THAT was. ;)

Speaking of delicious things to eat...my host and I had gone to a Korean BBQ the night before where we had a discussion about food.  While we were talking about some of our favorite things to eat, the subject of weird food came up.  He told me one of his favorite authentic Mexican dishes was a taco de lengua.  You know...a  TONGUE TACO.  Gross, I thought.  I like trying to new things but NOT that.  Well...the next morning I woke up and thought - if I am not going to try new things, then what am I doing on this trip?  So I told him I wanted him to find me a tongue taco for lunch.  After we worked up an appetite looking around Old Town we went in search of one.  And we did indeed find one:

If you will look above the red TACOS part of the sign, you will see Lengua.  So that was what I ordered (well, Alejandro ordered it for me)...

Here it is: tongue, onion, cilantro, lime juice and some salsa.  Verdict: most amazing thing I have eaten in a very long time (and I just had Kokoro sushi before leaving Indiana)!  I have tried to find another one ever since, but nowhere serves tongue!  One of the best things about it: it was ONE DOLLAR.  Cannot beat that! Yum!