Hotel rooms will be available at the Best Western Rio Grande Inn (1015 Rio Grande Blvd NW) for $88 per night for up to two people. You must reserve the room by February 15, 2010 to get this rate. Call 800-959-4726 or 505- 843-9500 and mention you are part of the “Vagantes Medieval Association.”
The Best Western Rio Grande Inn provides complimentary shuttle service to and from the Albuquerque International Airport from 7:00am to 10:00pm daily. The airport pick up location is on the airport “baggage claim” level. Please call the hotel front desk at 505-843-9500 after retrieving your luggage. If you are traveling before or after the times that the shuttles run, please contact Marisa Sikes at msikes@unm.edu, and she will arrange to pick you up or drop you off.
Econo Lodge
817 Central Ave
has rates of $54.95-$64.95 per night
Plaza Inn
900 Medical Arts NE
has rates of $57-78 per night
Super 8
2500 University
has rates of $36-55 per night
Holiday Inn Express
2300 12th St NW
has rates of $88 per night
While some of these hotels might offer lower per night rates, the New Mexico planning committee would strongly encourage you to stay at the Best Western as long as rooms are available as it has the shortest walk to the Rapid Ride, Red Line bus service that will convey you to campus.
The other hotels are not necessarily in walking distance of the school and/or are not in as safe an area as is the Best Western, so it would be advisable for people who elect to stay in an alternate hotel to rent a car.
Additionally, the Best Western is located near Old Town, a great little shopping district in Albuquerque.
We have secured a chartered bus to take conference attendees to and from O’Niell’s Irish Pub and campus. On March 11 a chartered bus from Herrera Coaches will collect conference attendees from the parking lot of the Best Western at 6:45 PM. Christine Kozikowski will meet participants in the hotel lobby at 6:30 PM and ride with them to O’Niells.
On Friday and Saturday the bus will collect participants outside the Best Western at 7:45 AM and drop them off on campus near the bookstore. A representative from the conference will greet you there and walk with you to the Student Union Building on Friday morning. On Friday evening, the bus will pick up participants at the same spot near the bookstore on Redondo Rd. on campus at 7:45 PM. On Saturday evening, the bus will collect participants at 9:30 PM, after the banquet.
If you do not want to travel at these times, unless you are renting a car, we will ask conference attendees to take the Albuquerque Rapid Ride, Red Line (766) Bus service. We will provide a bus schedule and maps of the stops in your registration packets.
You can download the current bus map and schedule from the Albuquerque city website.
There is a Rapid Ride Red Line bus station at the corner of Rio Grande Blvd. and Central Ave., which is approximately 0.6 miles south on Rio Grande Blvd NW, the road that the Best Western is on. You will want to exit the bus at the stop near the intersection of Central Ave. and Yale Blvd., from where it is a three-minute walk to the Student Union Building (SUB), where all the on-campus events will take place. Rapid Ride fare is $1 per trip and payable as you board the bus.
If you indicated that you will need a parking permit on your registration, it will be available to you at the Thursday night reception. Please see Marisa or another UNM organizer at the reception at O'Niell's, and we will give you a one-day pass for parking on Friday,. The parking lot is not patrolled on Saturdays as long as you do not park in a spot with a meter or a “reserved parking” sign.
Directions to O’Niell’s Irish Pub
O’Niell’s is located at 4310 Central Ave. SE. To get there from Best Western, take Rio Grande Blvd. south to Central Ave. Turn left onto Central Ave., and follow the road east. You will pass campus on your left, and eventually come to the intersection of Washington and Central, where you will see the pub on the SE corner. Turn right onto Washington and right again into the parking lot behind the pub.
Proceed to campus on Central Avenue, turn left (north) onto Stanford Drive at the traffic light then turn right onto Redondo Road and park in the large open lot marked "A," located on the south-east corner of the intersection of Stanford and Redondo. Avoid any metered spaces in the lot, and you need display your parking permit only on Friday. From the parking lot it is a three-minute walk to the Student Union Building. Head west along Redondo, and when you come to the large, raised crosswalk, cross to the north side of Redondo and enter onto main campus. You will be on a wide-bricked walking area, and will pass two large sets of sculptures before arriving at the Student Union Building, which will appear to your left. If you enter on the level that has chairs and tables outside, you will be entering the second floor, where the main conference room is located, SUB Ballroom A.
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