I discovered your blog through the Light Rail blog, and am enjoying it. Following you on Twitter too.

Thank you so much!

This is a great idea. I actually thought the downtown area had an interesting feeling to it: very clean, fairly new, and the few restaurants I ate at were wonderful (Sam's Cafe, My Big Fat Greek Restaurant, Cartel Coffee Lab, and Hanny's); I even thought that the food at the Hyatt wasn't too shabby considering the usual crap hotels 'cater' to their conference attendees. What struck me, and my friends, as odd, however, was the apparent lack of activity for a downtown area during the day on weekdays; there just simply wasn't anyone out and about, which lent it a feeling of "Night of the Comet". (What, you never saw that AWESOME 80's flick about zombies?) For me, a little sense of activity helps me to enjoy things more; it's like when you go to an action or horror movie - the crowd's OOHs and AAHs make the experience, well, "more".

For my one touristy thing, I hit the Desert Botanical Gardens, which I only discovered on my own search for a way to kill Thursday afternoon. No one suggested it but when I asked the concierge about it he said it was one of the 2 must-sees in Phoenix (the other being the Heard Museum). But, accessing it would be either by bus or by taxi ($30 each way). The concierge insisted that the walk from the bus stop on the other end was terrible, and since I was doing just the one event, I splurged on the 'cab' (a van). My point? Well: (1) This is a GREAT place and more people should recommend it (on Thursday nights they have Spiked - an open air music and happy hour from 6-8pm), too, it's only about 9 miles east of downtown; (2) Light-rail! Get it out there; (3) Find a taxi driver who knows where this place is (mine was an IDIOT, nearly killing me and then asking me for directions); OR, (4) Take the bus - when I left, I discovered that the bus-stop was an easy and pleasant 1/4 mile walk - just be sure to know the schedule, as it's not posted on the stop or their website. Finally, I wanted to see the FLW Taliesin house, but there's no organized transportation to it from downtown. It would be nice if they had regularly scheduled vanpools to help allay the cost and time it takes to get there.

As I said earlier, I was quite impressed with the food in PHX; I hope they keep it up. Oh, the Asian Festival was wonderful and the venue is beautiful. I hope PHX can bring more cultural events into its city.

What I always like to visit in a city is the 'arts district' which I could find little to no mention of.

Ok, plenty said, and rambling. Enjoy :)

Thanks so much! It seems to be a rather common theme.. even with people that live in Phoenix. Sounds like something the area definitely needs to tackle!!