Tropical Connection

Early this year, we were fortunate enough to take a long awaited trip to Trinidad.  It was Alvin's first trip back in 25 years and his first trip as a U.S. Citizen.  I finally got to meet my wonderful Mother in law, Ruby, her husband Hilton and many other family members and friends.  It was a great trip, and we hope to visit again.

We stayed overnight in Miami on both legs of the trip, so this week, I will share some of the Miami pictures and get to the Trinidad pictures next week.

We stayed at the Embassy Suites near the airport and since we wanted to experience the flavor of Miami, we ate at this great Cuban restaurant.

The food was great, and it was really quaint.  The staff was wonderful, and we asked lots of questions about the different dishes we saw go by.  We liked it so much that we told the owner we would be back on our return trip, and they remembered us.  They even sang Happy Birthday to Alvin, as they had a piano player in the room.

Since we wanted to see as much as we could, but had limited time, we took a tour bus of the Coral Gables, Miami, Little Havana, and the South Beach area, and here is what we saw.

That's the owner of the Cigar shop sitting out front, meeting his public. It was quite a site.

Inside, he was rolling cigars as you wait, talk about fresh!!!  He didn't want to look up at the camera, because he wanted people to buy the picture of him, rolling cigars in his traditional cuban fedora.

This is the Domino Club.  A social gathering.  The tile work was beautiful, and it was fun to watch them play.

This is the Love Hate Tattoo Studio, owned by Ami James and Chris Nunez.  It is where the show Miami Ink is filmed.

This is DASH, the boutique owned by the Kardashian sisters.  Kourtney and Khloe opened and run it, and Kourtney and Khloe take Miami, is based on the opening of this shop.

Here are some examples of the typical Art Deco architecture of Miami.

South Beach

and, finally the Miami skyline.

We hope you enjoy this little taste of Miami, not bad considering we were really only there for a few hours.

Next stop Trinidad.  The home of Carnival, steel drums and La Brea tar pit!

Butterflies

Hi again...if you read the last post, you will see that Desert Botanical Gardens was the host for the beautiful pieces of Chihuly glass.  As a result of that trip for my birthday, we joined the Gardens for the year with the hope of other photo opportunities.  I think we visited 5 or 6 times, and as all things growing, were amazed at the changes that take place in our newly adopted desert landscapes.  To hear many native Arizonans speak about their home state, you would think it was all brown cactus and dust, apparently, the dust may have clouded their vision, because things bloom and change and blossom and evolve just like other areas of the country where the weather fluctuates more than 10-20 degrees!! Just kidding, we do have cold winters here, I think it hit 60 during the day a few times last year... in any case.  One of the amazing things we were able to see at the Gardens was the Monarch butterfly exhibit.  Each year they hatch and tag monarch butterflies to track their Arizona migration.  It was an amazing thing to see and if you  ever get the chance to be in an area with an abundance of butterflies, you will not be disappointed.  So with that said, here are some of our favorite shots from our visit.

Blowing Glass

As you may or may not know, I used to blow glass when I lived on the east coast.  When I moved to AZ, I thought I would be able to find a studio to rent time in, but that has not yet become a reality.  I do however, still have a love for glass and one of my favorite glass blowers is Dale Chihuly from Seattle.  He is very famous and has several videos out, that are shown periodically on PBS, so if you are interested you should check them out.  He also has installations around the world and if you ever get a chance to see one of them you will not be disappointed. Desert Botanical Gardens is trying to purchase one piece to keep for permanent installation.  The Bellagio hotel in Vegas, has one of his pieces in the lobby, and there is a piece in one of the office buildings in Salt Lake city, just to name a few.

Dale had an installation at the Desert Botanical Gardens last year and we went for my birthday.  It was fabulous, and we got some amazing shots.  Unfortunately, we cannot use any of them for commercial reasons, so you will not see them in any of our products for sale or any of our calendars, but I thought I would share some with you here.

Alvin and I created two collages of many of our favorites which we have hanging in our home for our own enjoyment.

Hope you enjoy them too!

Going Big!!

We have recently enlarged, in various sizes, several of our favorite shots.  Now that we are shooting digitally, there is much more opportunity to GO BIG!!! 

I was inspired to blow up some of our images, when they were sponsoring a Native American photographer at work, who had enlarged a landscape of red rocks that was just breath taking.

So with that said, our house now looks like a gallery, with framed photographs everywhere.  Some of the shot take my breath away.

So here is a tease.

Cactus flower in the backyard July 2010

Monument Valley, UT March 2009