We break bad

Albuquerque has a rebate program to encourage the filming and production of movies and television shows there through which studios are reimbursed 25% (movies) or 30% (TV) of production costs spent in Albuquerque if they hire at least 40% local.  Thus movies such as No Country for Old Men, The Lone Ranger, and Natural Born Killers were filmed there.  But Albuquerque's greatest claims to fame were the television series Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul, which were set in Albuquerque.  Nancy and I were passionate, die-hard fans of Breaking Bad, so you can imagine our feverish excitement when we learned that there was a semi-official tour of the iconic sites displayed in the program at only $75 per person.

Here's Nancy posing with the motorhome (same make and model, at least) in which Walter White cooked his meth and once eliminated his tormentors by locking them inside and producing poison gas:

We joined fifteen or so other equally demented fans of the show for a drive from one exciting location to another - the motorhome graveyard, the laundry-fronted manufacturing lab, the carwash bought by the Whites, the Mexican restaurant at which Mike got Tuco arrested, and so on.

During our travels a TV set in front played some of our favorite moments from the program.  What excitement!

A high point of the tour was a visit to Los Pollos Hermanos, the fast food restaurant where Gus Fring money-laundered his ill-gotten gains from drug sales.  Today it is part of the Twister chain, and we were served almost edible meat-free burritos as part of the tour experience.

This is Walter and Skyler's house.

In one episode Walter had brought a pizza but Skyler (with good reason) wouldn't let him through the front door, and Walter flipped the pizza onto the roof of the garage.  Since then it's been a cult thing for fans to repeat the act, and when the actual owners of the house got tired of climbing ladders to remove pizzas, they installed the metal fence shown, and posted notices.  On the day we visited, a young couple were in the street, a pizza box under the arm of the guy.  They were still there when we drove away, so I can't tell you what mischief transpired later.

After four happy and slightly sappy hours on the tour, we were returned to Albuquerque's Old Town, filled with never-to-be-forgotten memories.

Harry from the Santa Cruz Dinner Club has told us that he always wanted to live in Santa Fe, and it's only 60 miles or so from Albuquerque, so we checked it out today.  It's at 7300 feet elevation, and most of the homes, public buildings, and shops are built in the adobe, pueblo style.  The downtown is indeed charming, and we found there one of the greatest sculpture galleries ever.  Here's an amazing leather sculpture by a Taiwanese artist:

We were charmed by Santa Fe and liked Albuquerque, but desert scenery isn't our favorite, and the weather there borders on brutal.  We need woodsy landscapes to stir our souls, so the search continues.