By Piya Jacob, Sedona Community Center Board Secretary
As the summer draws to an end many families are wrapping up their summer travels. A lot of families take time off during the summer to visit relatives, go to our national parks, or fly away to foreign countries for a vacation. It’s a beautiful ritual, playing out all over the world and is a great way to bring our world closer together.
My husband and I have returned from a five week holiday on the East coast. We started off in New York City. There we were drawn to the fabulous museums and to Central Park. We also thoroughly enjoyed the variety of restaurants in New York. It is a gastronomically delightful reflection of this country. Every immigrant who came here over the years must have yearned for the tastes they left behind. So someone from their community decided to open a pizzeria, a kebab shop, a Jewish deli or Greek restaurant. You can go to Chinatown and partake of an authentic Chinese meal, foods that people who left China are recreating in order to remember the homes they left behind. Japanese meals, Korean meals, great Mexican food…it’s all there. An authentic reflection of what makes America truly unique among all the nations of this world.
From New York we took the train to Washington DC. Watching America go slowly by until arriving at the legendary Union Station is great fun. What a magnificent capital city this is. The beautifully laid out mall with all the museums, the majestic Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial next to it moved us as it does every time. The Washington Monument is at the intersection of the mall and is a beautiful building as well. We visited the National gallery and he National museum of the American Indian was very educational. The heartbreakingly important Jewish American museum and the new Museum of African American history pay homage to, and remind us of, the history of those who make up this country. If you haven’t spent some time in our nation’s capital I would highly recommend it.
From Washington we went to New Hampshire and on to Maine. In New Hampshire our friends took us to a huge hotel where the leaders of the world met in the 1940s to create the World Bank and the IMF. In Maine we were thrilled to be by the ocean. The people are friendly and proud of their state. We spent many hours in the gardens and on carriage roads taking in the splendor of this state. We also visited many small galleries and admired the beautiful pottery or paintings of the artists from this region. I think the long winters encourage people to become creative indoors. We ate lobster every single day we were there! The lobsters are sweet and delicious and we just couldn’t resist them. From there we went to upstate New York and admired the small towns on the banks of the Hudson River. There is a lot of history in upstate New York with wonderful historical buildings which we have enjoyed going to such as FDR’s presidential library and former home at Hyde Park and West Point. It sure is lush in that part of the country. The light filtering through the trees begs for a painter to settle down and start painting.
What’s the best part of the holiday? Coming home. Yes, waking up to the sight of the sun hitting the red rocks or watching the shadows of the clouds on the mountains around us reminds me that we live in a place as close to heaven as one could ever hope for. Picking up with friends and exchanging stories about their summer adventures is also fun. I love coming back to resume serving lunch at The Sedona Community Center and seeing our regular lunch friends. I look forward to welcoming new guests to Our Sedona Community and I hope you will come in one of these days and enjoy lunch with us. Check out our class schedule and menu at www.sccsedona.org or onsite at 2615 Melody Lane.