Description: Given the hours we lost to snow in Oklahoma, we didn’t spend much time at this hotel. That’s too bad, because it’s hardly a typical chain hotel: the furnishings and general design show a great deal of local character. It’s conveniently located just south of exit 159 on I-40, which gives a separation from Old Town Albuquerque that’s larger psychologically than it is physically.
We arrived at the hotel at 11:15, after 16 hours of travel from Missouri, and then faced another 30-minute delay while we wrestled with the credit card fraud department by phone before getting our out-of-town purchases approved. The gracious hotel clerk was patient with us while we convinced Bank of America that we were legit, although his sympathetic comment about having all our freedoms taken away fell on deaf ears.
Nine hours later, we were back on the road. In between, I enjoyed the extensive use of wood in my standard but spacious two-queen room: it formed the headboards and the desk, framed the mirror, and constituted the wardrobe/TV stand. It even lined the walls of the elevator. Other nice touches included the hand-hammered and painted brass signs in the hall, and the southwestern fabrics on the furniture in the rooms and the lobby.
My room had a bathroom right inside the door, with the sink on a triangular counter in the corner. That served me just fine, but might have been a touch tight if I’d been traveling with family. The room was quiet and the beds were comfy, and I reluctantly left at 6:30 a.m. to start a pot of coffee and then squeeze in a few miles in the exercise room before breakfast and packing up. The small exercise facility had a treadmill, an elliptical and a small set of weights (and, thankfully, no competition for the treadmill).
I quickly breakfasted in the restaurant just off the lobby. Unfortunately, there was no free breakfast, and all of us found the menu little overpriced: my yogurt parfait and muffin was $7.50, and a glass of OJ ran $3, thus unexpectedly taxing student food budgets at the start of our trip.
But that’s largely niggling. If we’d known better, we would have made different breakfast plans. At $88, I thought our rooms were a bargain at a central, very comfortable hotel. Whether coming back to Albuquerque for business (we shared the place with a large academic conference contingent) or pleasure, I’d look here first.
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