Anne's American Adventures and Worldly Wanderings

Our next destination after leaving Albuquerque was Philadelphia. David was making a visit to Pennsylvania University. We had been here before and with only one full day, and no definite plan, I decided to walk into town. It was an hour's walk, fortunately walking straight along one main road, so there was little chance of getting lost.  First stop was to buy an umbrella, which then proceeded to blow inside out on this cold, wet,  blustery day. I eventually took refuge in Macy's department store where I happily roamed amongst the sale racks. The actual highlight of that shopping experience was listening to the daily organ performance in Macy's on the worlds largest fully functioning pipe organ. As people shopped, the sounds of " Jerusalem" rang out. It was beautiful although most shoppers seemed oblivious to the performance! We left the next morning by train for New York where we were to pick up a rental car to drive to Storrs in Connecticut. After collecting ...

While David attended the conference in Phoenix I amused myself walking around the downtown area, reading and sitting beside the pool! (It's a hard life!) I found downtown Phoenix does not have much to offer. There are few shops, mostly restaurants and businesses and of course the conference centre. David attended the MRS conference (Materials Research Society), a conference with about 4000 people attending. The days were particularly hot and the air very dry. There were lots of homeless and a police officer stationed on our street corner every day. On the final day of our stay, once David had completed all his conference commitments we caught the light rail and bus to Scottsdale. Over an hour away by public transport, situated east of the capital and not far from Camelback Mountain, the older part of Phoenix is known for its art galleries. Scottsdale itself has a fashion mall but it is the Old Town, although very touristy, that has all the charm with statues linking its past ...