The Art of Touring Phoenix

Sunday, March 29 (Surprise, Phoenix, and Scottsdale). Today we spanned The Valley of The Sun. We began the day with breakfast at our Surprise hotel, The Windmill Inn, then tossed our luggage into the Impala and headed east 20 odd miles to downtown Phoenix and the Phoenix Art Museum.
The city center was quiet on this Sunday, and although the museum had a number of visitors besides ourselves, the crowd was small compared to what we are used to encountering at San Francisco art museums. Shortly after we arrived, we went on an hour long tour with docent Tom Lyle, an East Coast transplant whose Boston accent was still noticeable. We learned that color, texture, line, and shape are the four important elements of art, and we looked for each of these in the "Master Works" of the museum that Tom pointed out during the tour.
The museum has a fine collection of both modern art and pieces with a traditional Western motif, such as sculpture by Frederic Remington and paintings by Thomas Moran, as well as works by Monet and other European artists. After a quiet lunch in the museum cafe, we explored more of the galleries and the outdoor sculpture garden before pointing our car north to the City of Scottsdale and our second hotel of the trip, the Fairmont Princess.
Although we've stayed in several Fairmont hotels, including the company's namesake in San Francisco, only this one has been a "resort" property with golf and tennis. Its color scheme, a sort of Spanish Pepto-Bismol pink, matched that of the Windmill Inn, but with much finer room decor and furnishings, large outdoor pools and bars, and a more upscale tropical hotel feel.
After two nights of Italian cuisine (spaghetti and pizza), we did some "protein loading" and polished off a pair of filet mignon steaks washed down with an excellent bottle of Sonoma County Cabernet Sauvignon. Dessert was a dark chocolate "cigar" with a white chocolate "matchbox" and "matchsticks" ---- quite yummy.