Vacation in Phoenix

I have been out of town and have been slacking...

Allison and I took a long weekend trip to Phoenix. We both finished our respective busy seasons and we usually take a trip to "celebrate." Oh, and I guess it could be considered a wedding anniversary trip too. Geez, it's already been four years.

Anyway, when we arrived in Phoenix on Friday, we grabbed lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. This is another thing Allison and I do whenever we go out of town. We collect pilsner glasses from every HRC we go to. This was by far the smallest one I have ever seen.



One quick note. The HRC was downtown near Chase Field (where we were going to watch the baseball game that night), so we walked over to check it out in the daytime with few people around. There was this contraption outside the Diamondbacks ballpark that was like a giant variation of the game Mouse Trap. It had balls that would roll along these slides and bounce and fall and cause pendulums to swing and all sorts of craziness. We could have stayed there and watched it for hours. It was pretty sweet. It's hard to describe, so here is a video I found on Youtube:



We went to the game that night. Now, being in Phoenix, it was over 100 degrees during the day, so we were prepared for it to be a hot night in the stadium. Not so. There was a huge system of air conditioning vents strategically placed all over the stadium. It was actually a little chilly for how we dressed. And I will tell you what, as soon as you opened the door to go outside, the heat slapped you in the face. That was how different the temperature was. The field itself was really nice. If any of you have ever been to Minute Maid Park in Houston, Chase Field was like it could be its brother. The game was otherwise uneventful.



The next day, we got massages and laid around by the pool. Just taking it easy. Here's a little story... We scheduled massages for Saturday morning at 10am. I specifically requested a female masseuse for myself and Allison. When we were in the waiting area ready for our masseuses to come get us, there was another couple in there as well (four of us in all). Four masseuses walk in at the same time: three women, one man. You guessed it. I was the one that got a male masseuse. And I am sorry, but that wasn't happening. Needless to say, that made me pretty freaking tense and at that point, I needed a massage just to get me back to where I was before I walked in the joint. And of course there were no females that were available as a substitute. In the end, it all worked out. I came back later that afternoon and got a massage (although it wasn't 90 minutes like I wanted). I don't know why, but I wasn't really surprised. Not like that kind of thing happens to me all the time, but it wasn't surprising to me that I (of the four people waiting) got the dude.

Sunday, Allison and I decided to drive around the greater Phoenix area and see the mountains and desert and the geographic features we are not used to seeing in Dallas. We stopped at this old ghost town (which wasn't even on our original itinerary) and it turned out to be the best part. We went down into this reconstructed mine shaft and walked all around the town. I even sat at a bar at a real saloon and had me a cold one. Good times. After that, we drove around and stopped at the places that were suggested by this travel book that Allison got about Phoenix. We live and die by those books she gets. Instead of trying to describe everything we saw, I will let the pictures do the talking...

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Monday was our travel day so we got a late checkout and hung around the pool until we had to leave. The hotel was really nice and if we ever go back to Phoenix, we are definitely staying there again. And if any of you ever go to Phoenix, I highly recommend it. It's the Royal Palms in Scottsdale. We stayed in room 143, which is on the corner, overlooking a garden with a view of the mountains. Awesome.

PHOTO ALBUM