Gorgeous morning in Phoenix so I walked around on a Sunday morning near our hotel downtown. Very quiet and not many people around, except for occasional street people and farmer/conventioneers. I did find a lovely little pocket of urban pioneer hipness at the Public Market Cafe, just north of the convention center area.
The place was bustling with a mixed crowd, families, millennials, older folks, all drawn to a place with good hearty comfort food (and what looked like great bloody Mary’s.) How great was it to sit on the open air patio under a tin roof by a fireplace, estimg a light breakfast. Later I walked a little further north to the Roosevelt row art district which is still in process, with stucco bungalows in various stages of restoration or recreation as galleries or little shops and new modern loft complexes.
The development is still spotty — at that attractive stage where you sense change is happening and you feel a sense of discovery.
Early SoHo, I call it, harkening back to the days in the 1970s when I used to visit artists with my mom in the emerging soho district of New York, long before it became overrun with artists and over commercialized.
Dad and I stopped briefly for lunch in Scottsdale at a pretty place called Arcadia farms, again eating on the outdoor patio. 79 degrees today! nice change from subzero temps in Iowa.
Back in grey Des Moines but with fresh memories of sun and green and family and friends in Los Angeles. My friend Susan and I hiked up a hillside in Griffith Park, stopping to see the succulents planted in Amir’s Garden, then onto Cypress Park to see the house where Susan’s son lives (surprisingly roomy and airy group house for five 20 somethings in a transitional neighborhood).
WE had a late and delicious lunch in the nearby Eagle Rock neighborhood at Four Cafe (I had a salad with chopped and grilled root vegetables, feta and grilled salmon, plus homemade grapefruit soda.). The best meals, of course, were cooked by my sister-in-law in Burbank!
TakeBetsywithyou 