Hey! Their Ravioli Speaks Spanish!

Well I made it back from New Mexico in one piece! A much bigger piece, but one piece none the less. I had no idea I could pack away 3 meals a day… and five in between each of those meals. I ate so much I actually considered going on some sort of diet. I don’t mean I was actually going to do it, but I definitely considered it and that’s saying a lot.

I had so much fun and have so many great stories but I just don’t know where to begin so I'm just going to make it into some sort of list. I’m totally a list making kind of girl.

Things I learned while traveling to New Mexico:

1. If you miss the turn for long-term parking, don’t worry. You can just reverse down the short-term parking ramp!
*I did it and it worked out rather nicely. The fancy airport police looking dudes got a little testy and hopped on their walkie-talkies. One dude even started to run after me but we got away so it was all good. And besides, the short-term parking attendant told me I could, so they should’ve been running after him, but whatever.

2. Delta has upgraded their barf bags from the old paper ones to some kind of fancy plastic ones.
*Due to the incredibly windy day, our take-off wasn’t exactly the smoothest, which therefore resulted in me horking on the plain. Good to know they still have those barf bags though!

3. New Mexico is much, much flatter than I thought it’d be.

*And they aren’t real big into billboards either. But boy, do they love their Baskin’ Robbins!

4. Mini-vans freaking rock!

*We rented a car while we were down there and this is what we ended up with. The amount of cupholders this baby had was awesome!

5. Rent a GPS system if you can!
*Just because you are going to a state to spend time with someone that lives in that state - and has for over 20 years- this does not mean that said person will know their way around...At All!

Erika, the friend we went to visit, kept telling me “oh um, take your next right, then right, then right again”. At first I was thinking maybe Albuquerque had some sort of weird laws about turning left or something but I finally caught on and realized she kept either, forgetting to tell me when to turn, or didn’t know we were supposed to turn until after we passed it. One time this resulted in me backing up on a highway to get on the freeway (there was no way I was gonna continue on the highway for who knew how long to get to a place that I could turn around ok!).

6. New Mexico has all kinds of sight seeing places to visit.

*None of them are anywhere near as exciting as they try to make them out to be but hey, we had a damn good time getting to these places.

7. Albuquerque has some AWESOME restaurants. (Can I just say, I absolutely hate how the word restaurant is spelled!)
*Ok, actually, we only ate at 4 places but they rocked. We ate at a place called Bravo 3 times (best ravioli EVER!!!), Mario's Pizza twice, and Dunkin Donuts pretty much every day (Utah really needs to work on getting a Dunkin Donuts here. Who do you think I would talk to about that?), and we ate at Julia’s Café when we went to Historic Old Town. They had the most freaking amazing Indian Taco and man, I could sure go for another one!

8. Kara turns into quite the hussy when she travels.

And she really has a thing for statues...

9. People in New Mexico are not big shoppers.

This is the outlet mall... during business hours. Pretty hopping place huh?

*I, however, am a big shopper and bought this fantastic purse

It cost me quite a pretty penny but I LOOOOVE it!! And it was worth every cent! (It looks much, much better in person)

10. Their ravioli speaks Spanish!
*Ok, I realize this probably isn't nearly as funny to all of you as it was to us but lets just go with it, alright? So we went to Mario's Pizza for the second time and this was on the menu board...

Notice where it says, "Fried Ravioli Espanol"? Does anyone else find the humor in it or were we just five sheets to the wind at this point? (even though we weren't actually drinking)

Last but not least I would like to share with you my favorite conversation I had with Kara while we were there:
Kara says to Suzanne: What are you looking for?
Suzanne: My Harry-David.
Kara: Oh! I didn't know you had one of those!