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by Barbara Penny Angelakis
If you like sparkling blue skies, puffy white clouds, mountain views in every direction and sun, sun, sun, you might want to consider a visit to Arizona. The time of the year and your personal tastes and athletic prowess will dictate which area in Arizona you head for or, if you’re the travelin (sic) type, board your SUV and cover it all. Mostly everyone is familiar with the astounding natural beauty and the indescribable geographic wonders that Mother Nature has chosen to grace Arizona with - and you could clearly spend a good deal of time covering it all - but for those with limited time and in search of the comfort and luxury of “la dolce vita”, head for south central Arizona and you can’t go wrong.
Spending a week in the Phoenix/Scottsdale megalopolis and the city of Tucson and its environs in early December left me hungering for more… there was more to see and do then a week could accommodate and there was precious little time to do absolutely nothing, a compelling focus for many getaways.
By sheer tenacity and determination, Phoenix blossomed from a sleepy southwestern town into a world class city of business and culture and the fastest growing urban center in the country. If I was a myth maker, I would start my myth by saying that the Greater Phoenix metropolis grew full-blown out of the ubiquitous Saguaro cactus that looms so majestically against the sky. Like the Saguaro, Greater Phoenix provides a nurturing haven for its inhabitants who are drawn by the magical pull of the high desert. Greater Phoenix’s architecture and attitude reflects a brashness and freshness that, juxtaposed with the ancient staid and traditional culture of American Native peoples, and the colorful and musical influences of its Mexican population, meld together to create a totally unique environment. This uniqueness is noticeable in the look of Phoenix’s downtown commercial area as well as in its  surrounding residential suburbs, and a first time visitor can’t help but be struck by the distinctive cultural blending.
We began our tour of Phoenix’s historic district with a delightful visit to My Florist Café & Bar, one of the favorite local eateries in the heart of the historic district. Originally a florist shop – hence its name- this high tech, boldly decorated restaurant offers dynamite salads, gourmet (translation: huge) sandwiches and freshly baked goodies (also huge). The historic district is a charming collection of shops and restaurants. Housed in Old West style architecture, it is perhaps the only downtown area that is walkable in a city built for the automobile. Unlike the urban cities of the east i.e. Boston, Philadelphia, New York, distances are vast and Phoenix is not really “walker friendly”.
 Phoenix is the cultural hub for the Greater Phoenix area and a visit would be incomplete without a trip to some of its many museums and learning centers. We spent a half-day visiting the Phoenix Art Museum with its just completed new wing, a $36 million plus expansion program featuring an expanded lobby and a sculpture garden. The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest in the Southwest and houses collections of American, Asian, Modern and Contemporary, European, Latin American, and Western American art in a spacious, well lit building of striking good looks. All of the exhibition facilities we visited use the Docent (teacher/guide) volunteer program to augment their staff capability and the Phoenix Art Museum was no exception. Docent’s were readily available to help with directions, explain exhibitions and interpret art work. In every case it helped to make our visit more rewarding and informative.
 An excellent cultural and architectural contrast to The Phoenix Art Museum is the not-to-be-missed Heard Museum; a testimony to the region’s Native cultures, art and history. Housed in a Spanish-Colonial style building originally built for the Heard art collection, it is currently eight times the size of the original 1929 structure. The Heard Museum’s outdoor courtyard is adorned with splendid sculptures and the collection of new as well as ancient Native American art and artifacts, is unsurpassed. The recently unveiled “Remembering our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience” exhibit was a shocking and moving glimpse into the failed experiment of assimilation mandated by the federal government in 1879, by which American Indian children were separated from their families and sent away to Boarding Schools to acculturate or Americanize them. As you walk through the “school rooms”,  you hear the personal experiences of some of the children who suffered through the program. The museum’s exhibits are laid out to educate and entertain and you can approach them on either level. One of the standout exhibits, amongst the thousands of items on view, is a room containing an assortment of katsina dolls collected and owned by Senator Barry Goldwater and The Fred Harvey Fine Arts Collection. Also not to be missed, is the spectacular ocotillo art fence. Native peoples break off dead stems from the wild-growing ocotillo shrub to build fences and corals. The leafless and apparently lifeless stems root and miraculously bloom, seasonally blossoming into a living fence and providing yet another  example of the rejuvenating nature of the desert. The striking work of art that I refer to is a representation of an ocotillo fence fashioned out of glass and clay by native artists, ceramist Rosemary Lonewolf, and glass-artist Tony Jojola. The 30-foot-long, 8-foot-high art fence honors nature’s gift, by visually and symbolically representing the light, and hues created by the sun’s daily journey.
The Sonoran Desert plays a huge role in the south Arizona persona. We found a conscious awareness and deep respect for its physical characteristics, its healing qualities, its life cycles, and its endless wonders in everyone we encountered… which probably accounts for the rapid rise of the community of Scottsdale. One day the land was all sagebrush and cactus, the next it was an oasis of luxury resorts and condominiums. And, least a perspective visitor think that Scottsdale is all gated condos, huge resorts with multilevel swimming pools, golf courses, shopping malls, glamorous spas and innovative dining experiences, be aware that it is all that and much more. It is also filled with parks and endless open spaces for walking, riding trails, climbing rock faces, family friendly residential areas, sports arenas and opportunities, both natural and artificially constructed, for mingling with the many indigenous native tribes that inhabited the area now known as Arizona and the Sonoran Desert.
We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Gainey Ranch, in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains, one of the finest and well-run resort hotels with all the bells and whistles. In addition, for a totally different experience we stayed at The Hermosa Inn, a luxury historic boutique hotel in the upscale residential suburb of Paradise Valley. The  spa experienc e was also part of our visit since Scottsdale boasts many of the preeminent spas in the country, perhaps in the world (see Spa segment for Spa Avania and Centre for Well-Being).
No visit would be complete without sampling the culinary delights of the area; here we found a new American cuisine that, like everything else we encountered on our trip, was a superb blending of cultures and traditions (see Restaurants section for Vu Restaurant at the Hyatt Regency and LON’s at the hermosa).
The shopping opportunities in Scottsdale are legend and whether you are in the market for native art and artifacts, international merchandisers, or something in between, you will find a wide variety of choices in the malls and shopping areas. The Arizona Office of Tourism (www. azot.gov) the Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.visitphoenix.com) or the Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.scottsdaleccvb.com) are great resources for detailed lists on all the shopping areas, categorized for the serious shopper and/or browser. In fact, they are your best source for all of the information you need to make your trip to Arizona as delightful an experience as mine was.
© January 2007 LuxuryWeb Magazine. All rights reserved.
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