Leaving (Albuquerque for...) Las Vegas

A clear head first thing in the morning. Great! Just what I needed after the Steel-Reserve-induced hangover from the day before. Not a drop had touched my lips the night before and James had been tasked with finishing off the last four cans of the super-strong lager in order to make sure we got full value for money. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on what camp you sit in, he only got through three and so the Hispanic leaner will be getting a bonus of one can of lager, plus one set of previously-worn flip-flops (the ones that my new Old Navy ones have replaced). We got our fair share of breakfast, as again we were the only ones there, and seemingly the only ones in the motel. Or at least, the only ones that weren't paying by the hour....

So after packing up the bags again and asking the (very) talkative Indian lady owner if we could leave our bags behind reception whist we waited for our bus, we wandered down to try and find some of the locations from the hit TV series Breaking Bad. Unwittingly, we had already passed a motel that had been used in a scene from the show, but we hadn’t realised, so we went back again to get a picture of us outside. The only other place we would be able to get to was about 20 minutes walk away – not too bad you would think, but James was beginning to feel the heat and needed some shade to cool off. Thing is, Albuquerque doesn’t really have any shade outside the CBD, and everything is low and spread out. But we made it without the need to cool him down with some 7Up. It was a small condo/duplex that was used in a number of scenes, and anyone who has seen the show will instantly recognise the location where Jesse’s girlfriend overdoses and Walter doesn’t help out (sorry if that has spoilt it for you, but it’s pretty obvious it’s gonna happen, and it’s in season 2, so carry on watching as there’s much more left to see). Our only option then was to wait in the bus station til 3pm, or head back to Milton’s Diner, buy a cup of coffee and use the wi-fi for another 3 hours. In a matter of minutes we were back in the same seats as we had been in a couple of days ago when we had first arrived. And then we were off back to the bus station to check in our bags and wait for the bus to Vegas!

The Breaking Bad motel

Or so we thought. For when we turned up, all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, our faces fell when the clerk behind the desk advised us that the 16:40 bus to Las Vegas was full. So we would not be getting away as easily as we thought. Giselle had advised us that she had only ever not got onto her desired bus once, and we both hoped that this would be our “one” too. So we quickly hatched a plan to try and get us to Vegas as quickly as possible. Basically, the original plan incorporated a stop-over in Flagstaff, so we booked the next available tickets to Flagstaff and then would look to get directly to Vegas from there. That next available bus was at 23:05, so the Gray boys settled in for a lengthy wait in the Albuquerque bus station and crossed their fingers that the bus to Flagstaff would not be at capacity...