The Wild West and Beyond
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 to the Wild West. A free trolley bus took us through the area from the mall to the old town where you can see wooden buildings with old rustic charm. We found Sottsdale's oldest saloon bar, "The Rusty Spur", which had walls covered with old dollar bills ( the premises used to be a bank), number plates and photos. We had a drink while listening to a country and western music performance by Russ Reiter, before exploring more of the town and its galleries.
On Friday, we made our way to the airport for our flight to Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest city where we were looking forward to catching up with Dee and Paul. We had first met them on our trip to Dublin in 2012, where Paul, like David was working at DCU and Dee like myself was enjoying being the tourist while the men worked. As you approach Albuquerque, the Rio Grande River is clearly visible with lush greenness close to its banks, away from the river the landscape changes quickly to rocky dry soil.
Dee and Paul met us at the airport and took us back to their house where we sat for a few hours and caught up on all the news from each other's lives. That evening we went to the casino where the bar has big glass windows with an amazing view of the Sandia Mountains and to dinner at El Pinto Restaurant and Cantina. Dee helped us decipher all the options on the menu but I played it safe with the tacos and thoroughly enjoyed them!
On Saturday, we headed towards Santa Fe for the day. It is about an hour's drive from Albuquerque and is renowned for its Pueblo-style architecture. We wandered the old town past the square where traditional jewellery was on sale in a market atmosphere, up to the church where we waited for a wedding to finish before getting a glimpse inside at its beautifully decorated beams and ceiling and had lunch at a courtyard restaurant that had wisteria and oak trees forming a canopy above us. We travelled back via the other side of the mountain range through the town of Madrid, stopping of course for a drink at a bar along the way.
Although Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, David and Paul had some work to do, so Dee and I took off to the mall for some shopping. We left the SUV for the boys and we went off in style in Dee's Mustang convertible! The boys did find some time to go for walk in the foothills above the house and returned safely without seeing any bears, coyotes or scorpions, although Paul tried to spin a different story!
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