Where in the World are the Wendells: January 2025

Traveling to Phoenix to see Penn State play in the Fiesta Bowl gave us an excuse to visit Scottsdale in the winter (70 degrees!). We love visiting Scottsdale, with great scenery, restaurants and weather. This time we visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, which was his winter home and studio. The 60-minute self-guided tour was excellent. Afterwards, we visited his beautiful Arizona Biltmore hotel, which is an incredible example of this architectural style. The tiny Scottsdale Historical Museum is definitely worth a visit, with a great chronological history of the town.

Biltmore lobby bar

Arizona Biltmore

Taliesin West

There is an abundance of brunch places in Scottsdale, serving brunch 7 days a week: Canal Club at the Scott Resort had a great Cuban breakfast sandwich. The Daily Dose serves an excellent breakfast, pork green chili omelet was really good, the bacon Benny was excellent, and the cinnamon roll pancake for dessert was incredible. The Breakfast Club is very popular, and it’s obvious why.

There are dozens of outdoor bars in Old Town, including Pour Decisions, and at The Mission Old Town, next to the Old Adobe Mission church. At the Mexican restaurant Cien Agaves, the queso dip is amazing. We had an exceptional meal at Scott Conant’s The Americano, trying the black truffle polenta, wagyu Bolognese, spaghetti a la nerana.

In December 2024 we visited friends in Savannah, enjoying this beautiful city and visiting restaurants we didn’t get to during our 2023 visit. After Savannah, we headed to Charleston for a few days. Both Savannah and Charleston are beautiful historic cities with great restaurants. Below are some of the highlights.

Savannah

Savannah is one of our favorite cities in the US. The historic district is very well preserved, with hundreds of nineteenth century homes and buildings. In additional to the beautiful Forsyth Park, there are numerous small parks every couple of blocks in the historic district. We stayed at the DeSoto Hotel which in perfectly located on Liberty Street. There are two bookstores near the hotel that are worth visiting: E Shaver Booksellers for new books, and The Book Lady for used books. Public Kitchen is a very nice restaurant near the hotel. The Gallery Espresso is nearby at Bull and Perry streets, with great coffees and baked goods. Dinner at The Grey was excellent, and very cool Art Deco architecture in an old Greyhound Bus terminal. Lunch with our friends at Common on Broughton Street was great, and further down Broughton Street (a great place to walk and shop) is the Savannah Bee Company, a must-see shop. There are some great brunch places in Savannah; we rally liked B Matthews, in an historic building; Toast is a regional chain but pretty good. .

In the Garden of Good and Evil house

Presbyterian Church

Savannah park with Spanish Moss

We took a day trip to Brunswick GA to visit a former coworker. Newcastle is the main street downtown and has several restaurants, bars and shops. We had lunch at Tipsy McSways, which has very good elevated bar food.

On the drive to Charleston, we stopped in Beaufort, which is a beautiful, historic waterside town with antebellum architecture. The Lowcountry Produce Market & Café was a great place for brunch.

Beaufort mansion

Beaufort Old Point park

Charleston

There is a lot of history in Charleston, with many well-preserved eighteenth and nineteenth century structures. We spent a lot of time wandering the old streets of the French Quarter and South of Broad. King Street is lined with shops (including Blue Bicycle Books) and restaurants, Merion Square is a great public space with the beautiful Hotel Bennett and St Matthews Lutheran Church surrounding it. The College of Charleston is one of the oldest public colleges in America, and the small campus is worth exploring. Charleston City Market is historic and worth a visit. We took a harbor cruise past Ft Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. The Ordinary is a great restaurant in an old bank building on King Street. Brunch at Slightly North of Broad (aka SNOB) was great, as was the atmosphere. Magnolias also had a great lunch in an historical building. The iconic Charleston single home, with the the faux front door facing the street, was designed to fit the narrow but deep building lots of the eighteenth century town. The long veranda on the side would catch the sea breezes in the summer.