Saturday, 3 September - Albuquerque - Turquoise Museum, Old Town and 'Breaking Bad'

Enjoyed our brekky downstairs this morning - up until the local junior baseball team and their parents starting arriving!

Had made a booking via tripadvisor / viator to do a tour of the 'Turquoise Museum' at 11am.  So we had to set off, again with GPS to find where we had to be.  It's on Route 66!!!  And -  the museum wasn't far from the Historic Old Town!

Started the tour at 11am.
The Turquoise Museum is viewable by guided tour, Monday-Saturday.  Enjoy a 90 minutes energetic and interactive guided museum tour featuring the largest collection of natural turquoise on display, the world history of turquoise, hands on exhibits and so much more!  Spy into a working lapidary shop and understand how this beautiful gemstone goes from the mountain to the jewellery.  We have tours available Monday-Saturday 11am and 1pm.  The Turquoise Museum was founded in 1993.  

The Lowry/Zachary family has been in the turquoise industry for FIVE generations.

Turquoise was one of the first gemstones descovered by man. Turquoise adornments on display in Cairo Museum, date back to 5500 B.C. Early Egyptian royalty used Turquoise as adornments and embelishments in their daily life and the gemstone has been highly southt after and treasured by many civilizations since. 

Turquoise has had great influence in the cultures of Egypt, Persia, Turkey, Tibet and China as well as in the New World, by the Aztecs, Incas and Native American Indians of the southwestern United States and Mexico.

We didn't realise how many different types of turquoise there are, where are they found and how to tell if you're being sold a natural stone or a fake!  The two largest mines currently are found in China and Japan.  The mines here in the USA are still producing amounts of turquoise but those amounts are beginning to dwindle.  

We really enjoyed the tour, looking and learning about the various aspects of turquoise.  There would be no way we could afford a top quality piece, however, it was a really good experience to learn more!


Route 66!

We went into the Historic Old Town area and found a restaurant called 'Little Anita's' to have lunch.  We continued on our tour of Albuquerque looking for a couple of places where the series, 'Breaking Bad' was filmed.  David got a real kick out of finding them!


'Mr & Mrs White's carwash' from the TV series 'Breaking Bad'.....

Had a thunderstorm this evening.  Not a bad one, fortunately but enough to cool the temps a little!  Called it a night after our big day!!!