Road Trip 2012

So, yesterday: we had an early start as we were catching a ride into central Phoenix with Keith on his way to work where we would there get some breakfast, then go round some museums and galleries there and meet back with him for lunch and at the end of the day.


To start we spent a good hour and a half sat outside Starbucks in the sunshine :) ! For some strange reason they didn't sell most of the drinks they do in England so I had to settle for a vanilla-bean frappuchio, which, by the way..was so so good! They even wrote your name on the cups as you waited for them to be made! Needed to spend so long there as we were waiting for the museums and galleries to open as it was so early!

Next stop was the Phoenix Art Museum, which we were there early for but oh well! Walked around the gardens in another section of it first then just sat around waiting for a while before they let us in. That was really good, although mum wasn't too impressed at the modern art as she kept claiming that anyone could whack some acrylic paint on a board, swirl it around into a mess then sell it for millions... hmm. Anyway! They did have some interesting things in there, and not just modern art either: much to mum's joy. They also had an Ansel Adams photography exhibition on too of all his black and white work regarding Yosemite National Park and a few colour commercial ones. The museum also included fashion relating to times, this particular one was of women who began to have the opportunity to work in the war, and other 40s fashions etc.

We later met back with Kieth for lunch at this old 50's diner called "Durant's" which used to be a mob hang-out! It had quite dark inside and had a red kind of lighting to match with the themes of the place which had been kept original including the chairs and fixtures - which took your eyes a while to get used to, especially when we had just come from the extremely bright sun!


Once sat down Keith presented to us what looked like poker-chips, for us to then discover that they were 'free dessert for life' coupons! So of course, we took advantage of that, and after eating our main meal we each ordered a huge dessert which we all shared parts of each! : yumyum.

Thoroughly stuffed after lunch we then waddled our way to the next museum, leaving Keith to go back to work in his rather snazzy looking tall building across the street! This next museum was called the 'Heard Museum' and exhibited lots of tribal cultural items regarding the south west. It was full of beautiful turquoise jewelry and tribal masks of all different cultures and information regarding their history. It was certainly bigger than the last museum as we kept getting lost in it!