14 days tailor made from £5,000 pp
From £5,000 pp
At a glance
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Don't forget that all of our itineraries are totally customized and so this is just an idea of what we can build for you.
New Mexico doesn’t look like anywhere else in America, and it doesn’t feel like it either. The light is different, the landscape is different, and the culture, shaped by centuries of Native American, Spanish colonial, and Anglo-American layering, sits apart from anything on the coasts.
This itinerary runs three threads simultaneously. Santa Fe anchors the trip: a small city with a disproportionate concentration of serious art galleries, exceptional Southwestern cuisine, and hotel properties that understand how to use adobe architecture properly.
Los Alamos and the Trinity Site carry the weight of the Manhattan Project, where the most consequential scientific endeavor in human history was conducted in near-total secrecy in the New Mexico desert.
Albuquerque delivers the Breaking Bad pilgrimage in full, from filming locations to the actual supplier of blue rock candy used as prop methamphetamine on set.
The three threads connect more naturally than you’d expect. New Mexico’s high desert landscape appears in all of them: as the backdrop to O’Keeffe’s paintings, as the terrain that made Los Alamos both secret and accessible, and as the visual language of one of television’s greatest dramas.
In detail
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Don't forget that most of our itineraries can be totally customized. Our expert team will be able to talk you through all the options.
Day 1: Arrival, Santa Fe
Fly into Albuquerque and take the Sandia Shuttle or a private transfer the 60 miles north to Santa Fe, a journey that introduces the high desert landscape immediately: red earth, scrub juniper, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rising above the city. Check in to the Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi, a 58-room property on the Plaza built in the style of ancient Anasazi dwellings, with fireplaces in every room and one of the better dining rooms in the city. The first evening is for the Plaza, a margarita at The Shed, and no agenda.
Day 2: Santa Fe: Art & the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Santa Fe has more art galleries per capita than any other American city, and Canyon Road is the place to understand why. A morning walk along this half-mile stretch takes in over 100 galleries, ranging from serious contemporary work to Southwestern landscape painting to Native American jewelry.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum downtown is the essential stop: her paintings of the New Mexico landscape are inseparable from the place itself, and the museum contextualizes both the work and the landscape you’ve been driving through since yesterday. Lunch at Cafe Pasqual’s, dinner at Sazon, currently one of the most talked-about restaurants in the Southwest.
Day 3: A Slow Day in Santa Fe
After two days exploring Santa Fe’s galleries and cultural landmarks, today is intentionally unstructured. Santa Fe is a city best enjoyed at an unhurried pace, and the setting of the high desert lends itself naturally to slowing down.
Spend the morning at leisure, perhaps with breakfast on the terrace before heading to the spa. Both the Rosewood Inn of the Anasazi and the Inn of the Five Graces offer excellent treatments inspired by local traditions and botanicals. Alternatively, a short drive into the mountains brings you to Ten Thousand Waves, Santa Fe’s renowned Japanese-inspired spa set high above the city, where private outdoor soaking tubs overlook the forested slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
The afternoon is free for wandering the Plaza, returning to favourite galleries on Canyon Road, or simply enjoying the hotel. Santa Fe’s pace rewards lingering.
Dinner this evening might be at Geronimo, widely considered one of the city’s best restaurants, before the journey north to Los Alamos tomorrow.
Day 4: Los Alamos & the Manhattan Project
A 45-minute drive north through the Pajarito Plateau brings you to Los Alamos, the city that didn’t officially exist until 1957. The Manhattan Project National Historical Park and the Bradbury Science Museum tell the story of how Robert Oppenheimer and a team of the world’s leading physicists developed the atomic bomb in complete secrecy on this mesa between 1943 and 1945.
The Bradbury holds a replica of Fat Man and Little Boy, declassified documents, and personal accounts from the scientists who built them. The town itself is quietly surreal: a planned community in the mountains that still carries the atmosphere of its origins. Return to Santa Fe for a final dinner before moving south tomorrow.
Note: Trinity Site, where the first nuclear test was detonated on July 16, 1945, opens to the public twice a year, in April and October. If your dates align, it is worth building the itinerary around. Nothing else in New Mexico compares.
Day 5 | Transfer to Albuquerque & Breaking Bad Begins
Check out of Santa Fe and drive south to Albuquerque, checking in to Hotel Chaco, a luxury property in the Old Town neighbourhood designed around the aesthetic of the ancient Chacoan people, with original art throughout and one of the best rooftop bars in the city.
The afternoon begins the Breaking Bad circuit: the exterior of Walter White’s house on Piermont Drive NE, Twisters on Isleta Boulevard SW (the exterior of Los Pollos Hermanos), and the Dog House Drive-In on Central Avenue. Join a dedicated Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul location tour that covers ground efficiently and with genuine depth. Dinner at Casa de Benavidez, a New Mexico institution.
Day 6: Breaking Bad: The Full Circuit
The Candy Lady on Old Town Plaza is the essential stop: the shop supplied the blue rock candy used as prop methamphetamine throughout the series and still sells it by the bag. The owner has stories. Crossroads Motel on Central Avenue, Saul Goodman’s office on Menaul Boulevard NE, and the car wash on Osuna Road NE complete the main locations.
The afternoon is free for the Albuquerque Museum, Old Town, or the Sandia Peak Tramway, the longest aerial tramway in North America, which rises 10,378 feet above the city with views across four states on a clear day. Final dinner at Campo at Los Poblanos, a working lavender farm and inn with one of the best farm-to-table restaurants in New Mexico.
Day 7: White Sands
A two and a half hour drive south of Albuquerque, White Sands National Park is 275 square miles of white gypsum dunes in the Tularosa Basin, one of the most otherworldly landscapes in North America. It appears briefly in Breaking Bad, sits directly adjacent to the White Sands Missile Range where Trinity Site is located, and is simply extraordinary in its own right. Go at sunset. Return to Albuquerque for a final night.
Day 8: Departure
Private transfer to Albuquerque International Sunport for the return flight.
Further information
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Don't forget that most of our itineraries can be totally customized. Our expert team will be able to talk you through all the options.
Practical Notes
Trinity Site opens the first Saturday of April and the first Saturday of October only. Book accommodation and adjust the itinerary around these dates if atomic history is a priority.
The Breaking Bad filming locations are all on public streets and accessible independently, but the ABQ Trolley Co tour adds context and covers several sites that are easy to miss without local knowledge.
New Mexico in July and August reaches 35°C in Albuquerque and at White Sands. April through June and September through October offer the most comfortable conditions for outdoor time.
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