Day 10 - Art & Vegetables

Finally, I got to sleep in! What's a vacation without a little snoozing, right? With my dad, 7:30 is sleeping late, so yesterday it was nice to stay in bed till a whopping 9:30! 

And to make it even better, I got to leave the water on the entire time I was taking a shower!!! Normally, I have to wet my hair, turn it off, rinse my hair, turn it off, etc. 

I always run out of hot water, and one day I even ran out of water, completely. Yesterday, I turned the water up so high it was practically scalding. And after my shower, I even actually took the time to fix my hair (like, for real) and change clothes about 5 times. What a luxury.

After doing a little morning blogging and postcard writing, I headed for town. First of all, let me say thank goodness for GPS! I would not have been able to get anywhere in Phoenix if it were not for my GPS. However, I can't seem to get it to stick to the windshield, so it falls to the dash at least 5 times a day. I either end up with it talking to me from the passenger seat or with me trying to fenagle it back up there while I'm driving (not safe, I know). But Phoenix is one of the most confusing cities I've ever driven in, with its dozens of freeways and suburbs. Give me a bustling downtown any day, even with all its one-way streets, but I could do without this insane web of high speed roadways. And let me just note here, Phoenix drivers are slow. At home, most everyone goes at least 5 miles over the speed limit on the interstate, except for those poking along in the right lane, but here, everyone seems to drive consistently just below the speed limit. I feel like I am doing something seriously wrong just by going two miles over. Anyway...

I started my sightseeing yesterday at the Desert Botanical Garden. Their Dale Chihuly exhibit was actually the number one thing that drew me to Phoenix. Dale Chihuly is a glass artist who I became really obsessed with when I saw one of his exhibits at Charlotte's Mint Museum of Craft + Design during high school. It was so fabulous, I think I went 3 different times. When I was doing internet research, trying to decide where I was going to go on my 4 day solo journey, I found that Chihuly had created an installation throughout the garden, incorporating his organic glass figures within the desert environment. It really couldn't get better than this. Chihuly and cactus. It was a done deal. The garden was every bit as good as I expected, and there was glass 

everywhere. I spent about 2 1/2 hours there, walking through a series of trails, finding secret little desert nooks with garden benches, and inspecting, up close, every type of cactus imaginable. The garden has more than 50,000 plants throughout its 145 acres, including rare, threatened, and endangered species. I also stopped for lunch in their Garden Terrace Cafe, and I was so happy to have a vegetable panini! Oh, vegetables, how I have missed thee! I even upgraded my side to Terra Chips! Yippee for roots! And a fresh-squeezed lemonade for dessert. Heaven.

A little navigation sidenote... 

My next stop was to be Taliesin West, the winter home, studio, and architectural school of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was supposed to be in Phoenix, the sprawling city with its many suburbs. I typed the address into the GPS. It didn't come up. I tried it again, thinking I had entered something wrong. Still no luck. I cussed the GPS and looked in my guidebook for some indication of directions. Nothing. I called the place, but they didn't pick up. Then I remembered I had typed everything into mapquest the night before and left it up on my laptop, so I got that out. But the directions didn't make any sense. They ended in Phoenix, AZ. That was it... So I called Paul and had him retype it into mapquest. It didn't come up. He tried typing in the intersection instead of the actual address. It still didn't work. Finally, I found alternate names for both road names, and he tried that. Nope. So I gave him the website to the place to see if they had directions listed. They didn't. But they did have their address. And guess where it was? Scottsdale. Not Phoenix. A suburb that turned into a town.

I arrived at Taliesin West right on the tailend of the 3:30 tour, which lasted a total of 90 minutes and included a slew of interesting facts about Frank Lloyd Wright and a behind-the-scenes look at his house. Wright did have many inventive architectural ideas, but he was a very odd man. He designed everything for the average height of a typical human during the 1930s (so some people had to duck). He also believed in blending his designs with the surrounding environment; since the Saguaro cactus was the tallest thing in the desert, he thought that nothing man-made should be taller. He angled the walls of the house so that there would be no shadows and no lights needed during the day. This was good, since he refused to have electricity for awhile (and a phone - he had to drive 8 miles down a dirt road to the nearest pay phone when he needed to make or receive a call). The strangest thing, though, and honestly, maybe the thing I like the most: the house didn't have any windows. It was completely open to the elements. A past guest who visited Taliesin West on a tour recounted the story of a party where a coyote ran through the room. Desert animals did roam freely and ate and destroyed much of the furniture, etc. He also placed his wife's closet outside. I imagine they had plenty of fights...

His ideas for his school were just as interesting as his ideas for living. He started the school so he could make some extra money during the Depression. Now, Taliesin West is an accredited architectural school with bachelor's and master's programs. Ninety percent of the students who attend receive a list of job offers before they graduate. The school gets thousands of inquiries each year from interested students, but once they learn of the strict guidelines, the number dwindles down to 30-50. Each student receives one-on-one instruction, cannot have a job during their four years of school, gets only 3 weeks off each year, and must meet 25 levels of achievement before graduating (there is no grading system). Ok, so most of that sounds fairly normal. But the first level of achievement is table setting... so they'll know how to entertain clients. And another is working in the kitchen, because how can you design a kitchen if you don't know how to function in one? (Ok, I definitely get that one.) Now the strangest, the wildest, the one that gets them all... Each student receives $1000 during his or her sophomore year to design and build their own home in the desert that they must live in during the remainder of their schooling. If there are any expenses beyond $1000, they must get materials donated, volunteers, etc. This is the thing that weeds out a lot of those thousands, but it's also the thing that students say they get the most out of. A+ for this tour.

After leaving, I decided I was really in the mood for some coffee. I had missed my morning cup, and I knew I needed to get back and do some catch-up blogging and research where I was going to go the next day. There was a shopping center on every corner right at the foot of the property, so I figured if I drove through enough of them I'd eventually find something. I pulled into the first one - the very first one - and there it was: Starbucks. It was attached to a grocery store. I just couldn't do it. So I picked up my handy dandy GPS from the passenger seat and searched for "speciality food" and picked the best-sounding local java shop. It was an ok place, but not good enough for me to want to sit around and write/type, so I took my coffee for the road. As I was pulling out, wondering what I was going to do for dinner, I spotted a fancy pizza place across the street! Pizza! So I ordered one to go, a pizza overflowing with my friend, the vegetable. Tomatoes. Spinach. Artichoke hearts. Caramelized onions. Olives (my very special friend). Strips of fresh, green basil. And little bits of bacon.

Cappuccino from local coffee shop: $4

Small pizza from fancy town: $16 (!)

Pizza box full of vegetables: Priceless