Catching up, from Sedona to Crete

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Hmmm. Where to start? It's been a long while and as I write this, I'm sitting in a summer house in Hanstholm (North West tip of Denmark) where two people are listening to audio files, telling the story of this place, it's natural wave energy center and the communities around it. They sit with headphones on, and occasionally off, and I can hear the repetitive hypnotic sound of voices in Danish and English as they tell the story. It's part of a project we've been working on over the summer, called simply, the Walking Sticks. Four walking sticks sit at a cafe in Hanstholm, and people can take them for a hike around the cliffside area on the ocean lining the edges of Hanstholm.

The sticks are from the National Park Thy, located here, and are from the wood of the area. The electronics which make it possible to tell the story have of course, been made by Dzl and are housed within a small wooden sphere, smooth and looking like a knot of wood on the walking stick. The only strange part is the headphone cable emerging from this knot of wood, which allows people to hear the stories as they move through the area. Since I'm project managing and official chauffeur (driving 450km each way to get here) I'm now enjoying a glass of wine in a beautiful summer house, while the other two are fiddling with the audio. Gives me time to tell you about what I've been up to. I made a quick list since my last entry and it looks like this:

- Sedona

- Vegas

- Montreal

- Malta

- NYC

- House!

- Sonar

- Crete



And I'm just on the verge of bopping off again on another multi city journey so I thought I'd better update now before it gets any more crazy.



I'll publish these as separate entries to spare your eyeballs drying up and falling out (gruesome image, but quite possible I suspect) so let's begin with Sedona and Vegas...



I'm amazed I didn't continue my story after San Francisco last year about Sedona. I have re-read it and realized that the last thing I wrote was that I was headed off to a dinner at The Embassy, a common living place in SF. Well, that was incredible. It was nearly a year ago and I feel like it was days ago. The people were absolutely incredible and creative and outgoing and so full of energy they nearly killed me; I was still jet lagged and I just remember conversation after conversation of high quality, real content, no small talk, and I remember going to bed early that night. What a great place, definitely visit there if you're ever in SF!



Sedona... was beautiful. It was everything my parents had told me it would be. Peaceful and epic all in one. Amazing red, red rocks jutting out of the earth like they were put there to be stages on which to stand and let the rest of the state be the audience. It was truly beautiful. We had some really good and some really sad moments there. Everything from cactus fries and pink tequila margaritas to a family sadness of our dog passing away while we said good bye over the phone. It was very hard but I can't imagine a better place to be to reflect on life and appreciate your loved ones. We headed straight out to my parent's favorite rock after the phone call, and just soaked up the incredible energy of the area, from the warm sun, and the red rocks, and the invigorating climb, it's all part of the experience that is Sedona.

Sedona, Arizona. Sedona is absolutely beautiful, full of color in both hue and personality. With bordering towns like Jerome (an old west village) and a 20 minute drive bringing you from 25 degree sun and poolside tanning to a 2 degree winterwonderland, Sedona has a lot to see and do. We spent most of our time alternating between staring at the beautiful red mountains and climbing them. There's many great hikes in the area and it was truly a treat to climb up in the moderate heat and enjoy the amazing vistas stretching forever out in front of you. The first place we stayed at featured a hottub and picnic area overlooking some of the bigger mountains and I spent my jet-lagged mornings there, working a few hours and alternating between checking what I was typing on the screen and staring at the beauty before me. When Dzl arrived a week later, we spent our time with my parents, climbing trails and trying all the prickly pear margaritas that Sedona had to offer. The prickly pear is a fruit growing on the cacti there, which is a beautiful bright pink shade, and is made into a magarita. Very tasty and very beautiful. We went one night for dinner at a place called Eloti, where my sister's husband was excited to try the food and compare it to his own cooking as he'd been cooking from the Eloti cookbook. Apparently it lived up to his expectations.



Some of the best moments in Sedona were definitely had at Slide Rock Park. We were lucky enough to get into the park due to a shutdown of the Federal Government (get it together people, Obama is amazing, embrace it already!) and thus the shut down of a lot of national parks (including the Grand Canyon but I'll get into that later). Slide Rock park is a place where glacial water forms small pools over a valley-like area and you can slip and slide along the very, very, deadly, slipperly rocks (it's best to be on your butt for this activity, because if you weren't to start with, you are by the time you've taken 2 steps). It was totally fun and ridiculous and FREEZING. Seriously cold. So cold my sister dragged my butt out of the water because I was too cold to figure out how to escape it. Kids however, seemed to have endless resistance to said cold and were repeatedly running and jumping in. Dzl's Scandinavian background made it possible for him to run and jump in. All in all, a great couple of days spent there, though next time I might bring a wetsuit. Bonus activities were watching my mom steal apples. Sure, she paid to pick a bag's worth of apples... but that was a bag that Hermione Granger would have been jealous of. It stored loads of apples, far more than it could apparently hold. Magical properties I'm sure.



Dzl and I, thanks to my parent's endless patience with Time Share people, were lucky enough to go on an amazing plane tour of the Grand Canyon. Since it was closed, we couldn't visit it as planned but we were able to see it up close due our pilot's fantastic flying and it was really something to see, the scale of it is hard to believe. We also went on a Jeep tour which took us into the red rocks and we got to see up close some of the huge magestic skyscrapers of the desert, and all the life around them, including a Cyolf (I did not name it, I would have called it a Wolfote but anyway) a half wolf, half coyote as apparently they've been breeding; and some cacti which our guide advised us not to fall on as we'd definitely be hurt and left for dead in the desert. :P



Our final night in Arizona was spent at the Barking Frog restaurant where we celebrated our trip together, mourned the loss of our family dog, Murdo, who had tragically died that morning back in Canada, and celebrated my Dad's birthday a week early by having a local flute player come and give my dad one of his hand made bamboo flutes.



We eventually made our way to Las Vegas, stopping at a 50's diner on Route 66 on the way (how perfect) and ending up with Dzl and I staying at a hotel on the strip for two nights and then joining my parents at their resort 20 minutes off the strip afterwards. It was a good combination to be on and then off the strip, leaving just enough room for sanity after the madness of constant dinging, drinking, and people slapping hooker business cards together at you on the street. We did manage to have some really good experiences though, given that we spent a week in Vegas, including eating mini burgers at Strip burger during happy hour (we were definitely happy about that); line dancing in the new country bar at TI (I was happy about that); taking care of business emails at the Wynn hotel at their La Cave restaurant being served wine in the sun; driving in the crazy traffic (and not-so-secretly loving it); seeing a cheesy comedy magic show where the magic was real and the jokes were terrible; seeing Jubilee, the Bally's classic show with 1000 costumes on 100 girls and a full Titantic set including sinking ship and on-fire engine room; winning again and again at a ridiculous slot machine which sang "Heaven, I'm in Heaven" repeatedly at loud volumes during bonus rounds (including an additional win of $80 at the airport at the same machine); and laughing and crying at vegas: The Show which went through the history of Vegas and told us the trials and tribulations of the start of Vegas, and how people like Sammy Davis Jr. made it possible for black men to enter a casino through the front door instead of the kitchen when they were performing (or otherwise). It was a great trip but I don't need to go to Vegas again anytime soon. We said bye to my parents here and they flew home a few days earlier than us, but luckily, there were feathers, sequins and delicious food, including happy hour sushi, to comfort me this time. 😊 I also spent a whole work day (needed to get caught up in time for a big event) in an Italian wine bar/bistro in a garden at the Wynn. Thank you Wynn for always being classy. How amazing was that day! So good!



I'll include Montreal in this since it basically wraps up 2013 for us, so here goes...



I went to Montreal, not long after the SF, Sedona/Vegas trip for my friend's wedding. In her typical effortless grace and style, she held her very private wedding at the Ritz Carleton's Elizabeth Taylor suite, where Liz and Richard originally were married. It was possibly the best wedding I've been to. We were only 7 in total (I think, maybe 8) and it was fabulous. An amazing suite, combined with enough wait staff so that I had my very own wine butler for the evening, who turned out to be an incredible singer who played his music for us at the end of the night. Not bad! Then we danced in the plush living room until we could dance no more. It was beautiful and incredible. Luckily, I was able to visit my amazing friend Laurel while I was in Montreal. She and I were friends in high school and have kept up with each other's lives through Facebook. We soon realized we have a lot in common and what started off as a, "hmm haven't seen each other in 10 years" turned into, WOW how have we not?! We're both working in interactive experimental art, and she showed me all the incredible little hidden places including a Japanese paper store, an official poutine restaurant, and an incredible coffee shop, all in the same walk. Montreal definitely has a lot to offer and very much blew away my stereotypical expectations, where I thought that no one would speak English and would take offence to English (something I've been told my whole life) and instead met friendly, rather intelligent people who were extremely fluent (like the Scandinavians) in English and French, and switched effortlessly. I so envy them. One day. Also, Tim Horten's saved my life. It was -something terrible degrees (like -7, but still!) on a chilly November morning. I had left most of my warm clothes at Shannon's hotel room so I had only a thin skirt. This was dumb. Coming from Vegas, to a strangely warm Copenhagen, I did not pack properly for the weather and ended up sitting in a Timmy's warming my extremities and recovering from the cold. Thank you Canada.



On to the next adventure... go get a drink. or two 😊 Thanks for reading along.

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