2nd day in Albuquerque

Very original blog titles.  Oh well.
Today Mom and I were up by 6:45 and we went down to breakfast at 7:30.  Lots of people there already!  They have a good breakfast here in this hotel - we had waffles, sausage, "egg" (it was a round fake looking thing), yogurt, juice, tea and mom made a sandwich with bread and jam.  Stuffed, we went back to our room and got ready to go out a little while with a taxi to Starbucks.  Mom got her coffee and a scone, I got a chai and we sat back and relaxed - mom with her coffee and I on the laptop.  I enjoyed a nice long chat with Eva - she and Fernando just got back the night before from a vacation to Rara Avis.  Here's a link to the place they went - make sure you click also on the Journey link - it's quite an adventure to get to this lodge but they say it's well worth it!  http://www.rara-avis.com/about_the_lodge.htm
Mom also got into a nice conversation with a young girl in the chair next to us who was reading a book called "The Help".  They seemed to enjoy talking to each other.
From Starbucks, we walked across the parking lot, across the street and across another parking lot to the Super Walmart.  We bought a bunch of fruit to put in the fridge in our hotel room.  When we were done, we called a taxi, which picked us up right in front of Walmart and took us back to our hotel.
Now we're just hanging out in the room. Here we are eating some of the fruit we bought!

 Mom just got through watching the local news at noon and is now watching her show - The Bold and the Beautiful.  I'm doing what I always do, stuff on the computer.  We've got our lunch already in our room fridge- leftovers from Cracker Barrel yesterday.  Grilled trout, carrots, green beans, mashed potatoes and two biscuits.  Also, half of the scone from Starbucks this morning.  And all our fruit!  We're set.
In the evening, we took a taxi out to Coronado Mall, which was a LOT farther from the hotel than I thought, so the taxi fare was quite up there.  The mall was ok, we had dinner in the food court and then we walked back through the mall to Barnes and Noble, but when we got to the doors to go outside (to get to Barnes and Noble, you have to leave the mall and enter it from outside) we noticed that it was raining!  That was so exciting and it was exciting for the people of Albuquerque, too, since they hadn't had any rain since late last year.
Tomorrow I will pick up a rental car and we may try to visit the Rio Grande Botanic Gardens, we'll go by Jackie's apartments again, and hopefully not get TOO lost doing all of that.  I've been trying to observe while we're in taxis, and what I've observed is that the streets don't make much sense and go every which way and sometimes seem to just end abruptly.  Should be interesting........