To get to Tonto, you take Route 60 from Phoenix, up to Globe. That drive takes you over the Gonzalez pass. We’d done this trip before, but from the opposite direction, and it was at night, so we’d missed the scenery. The mountains are strikingly beautiful, but what’s even more striking is when you get […]
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The last time we were in Arizona, at the end of our rather epic journey along the Apache Trail, we passed the entrance to the Tonto National Monument. It was closed at the time, so while it mentioned cliff dwellings, we had to look it up later to see what it involved. Turns out, there
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The other cool thing about visiting the Desert Botanical Garden is that it turns out they were having a Chihuly glass exhibit. One of the things I really like about the garden is how structural the cactus are, so having the glass in amongst them was a really interesting contrast. We never did
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So it wouldn’t be a trip to the Phoenix area for us if we didn’t stop by the Desert Botanical Garden. And can I just say how nice it was to see some green? One thing we did differently this time was check out the succulent collection. I don’t know how we’ve managed not to
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I’m back from Arizona. It’s snowing right now, and I’m finding it hard to believe that just yesterday, I was looking at cactus. I have about 500 pictures to go through, and five books read, so those will be coming out over the next several days. In the meantime, a few non-pictorial highlights: Short Leash
I need to add a postscript to my trip report. Our last day was really all about getting to the airport. Which we did on the RER train, and which afforded us our last great authentic Parisian experience. Now, I had read up a lot about the petty theft problem in Paris. I was well
So by the time of Louis XIV, Versailles was becoming a bit much for the king and his family, so he had a smaller palace built on the outskirts of Versailles, and the Trianons were born. They’re really quite lovely, and way more opulent than a summer house should be. The thing about the Trianons
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Versailles is an utterly amazing spectacle. It is grand on a scale that I’ve never experienced before. Standing there, looking out from the Palace to the Grand Canal is a glimpse into a very different world. Versailles is a bit of a trip outside of Paris proper. We took the RER train (basically the commuter
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Our next morning, we had some shopping plans. We started out at the Les Halles metro stop, and managed to get completely turned around. Which ended up being a happy accident, as we ended up at the Centre Pompidou, which has a really neat fountain installation in its courtyard. Mistake corrected, we headed into the
Our first full day in Paris, we decided to do some shopping. Which worked out to involve a whole lot of incidental walking. We started the morning at Notre Dame, because, well, we’re in Paris, so we had to go to Notre Dame. Which is fully as fascinating as a medieval cathedral should be. We
