The alarm went off EARLY. Like in the 3:00 hour. We got up, got ready, and got out the door reasonably close to on time.
The drive down to the Manchester airport was easy, and we got there about 30 minutes after we left the house…so about 4:30, I think. At some point since I last parked a car there, MHT had upgraded to the Disney Springs style parking space lights in their parking garage, so finding a parking space was easier than I had expected, and soon enough I was texting my sister, who had inherited car pickup duty with grampa’s hospitalization, the location of my car, and Nick and I were headed inside the airport, me grinning at that wonderful sound of suitcase wheels spinning across the moving walkway of the pedestrian bridge from the garage.
Check in was quick, and within minutes, our bags were tagged and headed backstage to be seen again in Albuquerque and we were headed for security.
Security in Manchester is always tighter than seemingly any other US airport I’ve flown out of, but today…yikes. It seemed every single party had at least one bag being pulled for extra screening. They had gotten new machines that appeared more sensitive. Nick’s bag was the one that got pulled for us, but thankfully after a bunch of standing around and a relatively cursory check and a knowing “oh” from the TSA dude when he finally got around to the bag, we were on our way.
The gate area was a full house, and I quickly discovered one of the second grade teachers I work with was on our flight and looked just as perfectly (disgustingly) put together at 4 am as she does at 10 am. I avoided eye contact and we settled in to wait for boarding.
Boarding began and, you know, half the plane was family boarding. Nick and I were WAY in the B group, so we had to wait awhile, but eventually we were onboard, and Nick found us two seats together in the VERY LAST ROW. But, we have a 4 hour layover in Baltimore, so there’s no need to rush off the plane. And yes, you read that right.
It was a quick flight down to Baltimore…like less than an hour. So the 25 minutes it took for deplaning was almost as long as the flight. But hey…that’s less time that we’re spending in the airport?
We emerged into terminal C which has a nice patch of barely used gates, so we parked ourselves at one of those for awhile. I tracked our bags journey around the airport via our airtags and did some research for both this trip and future trips. And then we went to breakfast.
At the time of the trip, my Priority Pass through my Chase Sapphire Reserve still had restaurant privileges, and the Harbor Grille was a participant in the program. So we went there, knowing we could get breakfast for just the cost of the tip. We had time to kill, so why not?
We both got the chicken biscuit, and well…this was why not. Flavor was good. Biscuit was good. Chicken was so dry that it was basically like extra crunchy cardboard. We were glad this breakfast was free. Our service was great. But even if the dining perk stuck around (which it didn’t), we would not eat here again.
A bit of time killed, we wandered the airport, scoping out options for food to take onto the plane for our 4 hour flight to ABQ, and finding our gate to make sure it exists. We had a nice conversation with the older couple and their daughter who were on our flight. And then we headed off to get some food to take onto the plane. Two Chick-Fil-A chicken biscuits please!
We returned to the gate area, where we discovered that the bathrooms had electronic signs to let people know stall availability. Is this REALLY necessary?! BWI has MASSIVE bathrooms.
Boarding began eventually. We were A14 and A15 for this one because I’d taken advantage of the upgrade reimbursement perk on my Southwest card to get us good boarding positions for the long flight. Know your card perk folks! Between breakfast and upgrades, we’re at over $100 in perks for this morning…
We went with seats close to the front of the plane and settled in for our LONG flight. And it was a LONG flight. We had a massive head wind, so we actually landed a solid half hour late in Albuquerque. I paid for the internet (which I saved 25% on because #cardperks) so that I could do some trip planning, but still….it was a long flight. We did have some good views as we made our descent into Albuquerque though.
Deplaning was quick enough and pretty soon we were in the most uniquely decorated airport I’ve been in. Seriously…this was southwest (USA, not the airline) to a T.
We worked our way down to baggage claim, and our bags emerged pretty soon after. Then we headed outside and joined the lengthy line for the bus to the rental car center. Miraculously we made it on the first bus. We were the last ones allowed on, so we stood, but it was a relatively short ride. Once there we hopped off the bus and headed out back to the Alamo parking lot. Despite the crazy week leading up to the trip, I’d made sure to make time to do online check in for the rental car, so that we could skip the line and go straight to the car. We wandered around and found…nothing in the midsize lane. We found an employee and they quickly directed us to “anything in these two rows”. We debated the pros and cons and, knowing this trip had a LOT of driving, quickly chose…a new Prius.
We loaded up the car with our luggage, programmed the GPS, and we were on our way. It was a fairly quick and easy enough drive to the Hotel Albuquerque. We parked out back and headed inside, where thankfully our room was ready. Room 1014 was, no surprise given photos I’d seen online, a pretty sterile room, but it was clean and comfortable, and as promised by the check in desk guy, had a great view of the mountains.
We made ourselves comfortable and then headed out to play tourist. There was no time to waste on this trip! It was a relatively short walk (albeit slightly complicated by Nick, who was not carrying Google Maps in his hand) to the Albuquerque Museum.
This museum was bigger than it looked. It also was heavier on the art than the website had suggested. But it was very well done. We left at closing, so we were there about an hour and a half and we had to rush through the last several rooms because it was closing.
Museum exploring completed we took a couple pictures in the sculpture “garden” and then headed for dinner.
Dinner tonight was at a place recommended by one of my colleagues. Yazzie is Navajo and so he flies into Albuquerque whenever he visits his family in Eastern Arizona. He was very excited that we would be exploring New Mexico and had sat himself down in my office to give all kinds of recommendations a couple days before break. Knowing Nick can’t really handle spice, he’d recommended, among others, Little Anita’s for dinner.
Dinner was alright. I think we both had some sort of burrito or enchilada, with the chile sauce on the side. The margaritas were definitely the best part of dinner, and the server was fun, if not totally scatterbrained. The food was good enough.
After dinner we walked around Old Town for a few minutes to say we’d seen it and then headed back to the hotel where we enjoyed the view and crashed hard.
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