Phoenix, Arizona

We arrived in Phoenix yesterday.  Even though the flight was under 2 hrs, the travel took up much of the day - getting to the airport, getting through security, flying, getting from the airport to the hotel..  We had a very strange taxi driver from Phoenix Airport, who on asking where we wanted to go, and me replying with the name of the hotel, said "please...  You forgot to say please..."!!!  I was slightly gob-smacked :)  Maybe he has grand-children he is trying to train to be polite?!

Anyway from that start, Phoenix has proven to be largely under-whelming so far.  The hotel we are staying at (due to Pete's conference) is in a rather affluent part of town - the shopping centre across the road has Macys & Saks!  Don't think I'll be popping across for some shopping :)  It is quite pretty in a dry, desolate way - we can see Camelback Mountain from our hotel.  The hotel itself is quite spectacular inside.

We caught a taxi into downtown Phoenix today to go to the Arizona Science Centre - but frankly, we were rather under-whelmed with that too after seeing so many great and unique ones in San Francisco.  It did have a few cool exhibits, but on the whole, not much that we hadn't already played with.  The fact we were dodging hordes of school children on excursions probably didn't help the enjoyment levels :)  Fortunately it thinned out when they all went off to have their lunch.

We have a Grand Canyon trip tomorrow which I'm really looking forward to.