October Travels - Part Three

On the last day of my short visit with Deb, we started the day with the happy reappearance of her tiny turtle Casper from it's little hole. So it isn't quite hibernation time yet!

We met Carrie for breakfast at a restaurant called T.C. Eggington's where I had the most amazing omelette with Havarti cheese, bacon, pear slices and almond slivers. I've attempted to duplicate it a few times at home with okay results using baby Swiss cheese (what I had on hand) but I really think I need to find some Havarti cheese to do it right. We got to hear all about Carrie's meeting with one of her favorite motivational authors - Todd Henry.

After breakfast, we headed for downtown Phoenix. First stop, Tovrea Castle:

I had already packed my Canon in my suitcase for my trip later that day to Los Angeles, so all of these photos are from my iPhone. Sorry about the quality on some of them - I am still learning!

Saguaro Cactus

Prickly Pear Cactus - complete with fruit!

To me, the cacti are the most quintessentially "Arizona" thing I've ever seen.

Our next stop was a part of town well-known for it's graffiti artists - and I was blown away:

Couldn't really even tell you what this was - it was some sort of sculpture in the same area with all the graffiti art. 

Here we actually caught an artist at work. Deb got much better photos than I did because she was willing to get out of the car and get up close. I, on the other hand, was having a difficult time with the brutal Arizona sun and preferred the comfort of the air-conditioned car. I'm sure I must have sounded a lot like Wendy Whiner that day.  I was okay in the shade, but the heat of the full sun was literally unbearable for me. Gives me a new admiration for the people who are able to live and thrive in that climate! Still, I loved driving around to see all the painted murals. 

  This one was my favorite of all! That's some talent to be able to do that with cans of spray paint!

From graffiti, we did a 180 and went to the Biltmore Fashion Park - an outdoor mall of some very high end stores - where we walked around a bit and grabbed some ice cream before heading to the airport. It was a lovely visit!

Then it was a short plane ride to my next destination:

Los Angeles. Where I spent four nights at the J.W. Marriott hotel (only on the 4th floor) and spent three days in sun-up to sun-down sessions getting all my continuing legal education requirements for the year. Not exactly exciting or glamorous but I did learn a few new things, so worthwhile in the end.  This photo was taken from the Los Angeles Convention Center which was just a short walk from the hotel.

And I arrived home so late on October 31st that I completely missed Halloween! 

And that concludes my October travels. It has been nice to be back home in my own bed for longer than two weeks!