A week in Albuquerque will leave you and your kids breathless, full, and smiling. The Duke City is family-focused and a virtual playground for all ages, from the Biopark to the amusement park to the ballpark. Basically, there are a lot of cool parks round here. Get to know them on a 5-day trip.

Day 1

Start your day at the Range Cafe; there are two locations in town and the food is kid (and adult) friendly. Then bring your children on the Sandia Peak Tramway for a scenic ride up and down the Sandia Mountains. You can also spend all day hiking it, but it’s a bit much for smaller children. Prices range from $25 for adults to free for kids under five. Have lunch at the unassuming-yet-James Beard-award-winning Mary & Tito’s for stuffed sopapillas.

In the afternoon take your kids to Explora, a fully-immersive hands-on children’s museum where they’ll learn about things like gravity and evolution and geology without realizing they’re doing something educational. Adult entry costs $8; children go for $4. Afterwards, have an authentic New Mexican dinner at Sadie’s and finish it with a sopapilla (see a theme here?) slathered in honey.

Day 2

Go to Cliff’s Amusement Park early in the week, because you won’t hear the end of it from the wee ones if you don’t. Have a robust breakfast at Weck’s diner, then spend the early part of the day on the rides (or anxiously watching your kids on the rides, if you like). Your retro-loving soul will appreciate that this theme park — located right in the center of town — has an old-fashioned wooden roller coaster. It’s been voted one of the top 25 wooden roller coasters in the world. And if it’s particularly hot outside, they have a water park, Watermania, on-site as well. An all-day ride pass will run you $24/person.

Once everyone is thoroughly tuckered out, go to the New York Pizza Department downtown for a crowd-pleasing dinner, then see a movie at the plush Century 14 Cinema.

Day 3

The Rio Grande Biopark is an all-day experience with lush botanical gardens, a full-stocked aquarium, and an A-to-Z big city-style zoo all grouped together into a one-stop “wonders of the natural world” location. Visit one part of the park and then take a break for lunch at the Shark Reef Cafe, where you can eat Jaws-style, surrounded by massive coral reef tanks stocked with fish. Take a breath, and then spend the afternoon at the other two attractions in the park.

When you’re done you’ll probably be ready for a nap by the hotel pool. After, take everyone for a very carnivorous dinner at Rudy’s Country Store and Barbecue to regain some of those lost calories.

Day 4

Start the day at the Flying Star Cafe, where the ‘50s diner-meets-Futurama atmosphere will please your children, as will the voluminous dessert case of cakes, pies, and cookies baked in-house. There are several locations, so you’re sure to be near one. You can have a coffee and a Chinese chicken salad, and the kids can have mac and cheese. Then, since you’re on Central, take them over to Masks y Mas for some Day of the Dead trinkets they (or you) can take home for show and tell.

The Albuquerque Isotopes Park is the ideal place to take kids in the afternoon. The team was formerly called the Dukes before being renamed after the minor league baseball team in The Simpsons. Tip: Get seats on the lawn so you can just sprawl out on a blanket; even if you don’t like baseball there are fun mascot races and contests between innings. Plus the park, scattered with fiberglass Simpsons statues, has one of the most complete concessions operations of any minor league park in the country, so everyone can stuff themselves (and mom and dad can get an Isotopes microbrew). Ticket prices range from $8 on the lawn to $24 in the club seats.

Day 5

Have breakfast at the 66 Diner, a ‘50s-themed old fashioned jukebox joint with all the retro neon you could ever want. Then hit up the Albuquerque Balloon Museum, dedicated to the art of the dirigible, and Albuquerque’s annual balloon fiesta event.

Take the kids down to Tinkertown, an immersive folk art museum consisting of the wooden rooms upon wooden rooms of a miniature Western town carved by one man (who says he was able to do it while everyone else was watching television). Adults can enter for $3.50, kids go for $1, and kids under 4 go free. Get lost in the minutiae, and when you come up for air go have one last authentic New Mexican dinner at family-owned La Salita Restaurant.

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Tantri Wija

Latest posts by Tantri Wija (see all)

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