Mar 12 - 21, 2011 Last updated: 3/26/11 12:00pm PT
Are you ready for some baseball? We spent a little over a week in Phoenix, Arizona to enjoy some warm weather and some spring training baseball. We also took in a hockey game, visited a national park, a city park and drove around a lot.
The weather was great, temperatures in the mid to upper 80’s with two days breaking 90. And it was sunny all but the last day (when it was also only 79). The average high this time of year is around 76. You’ve heard the phrase, it’s not the heat it’s the humidity. Well, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but it’s true. 90 degrees wasn’t so bad – if you stayed out of the sun. The sun is brutal. Being in the sun felt 10 degrees warmer. In the shade, especially if there was a slight breeze, it was comfortable. There wasn’t a struggle to breath, like when it’s 90 and humid. On the local news, the weather report said the humidity was 5%. The overnight lows were around 60, so it was nice most of the day, just getting hot in the middle of the afternoon.
Airport story: My pony-tail got frisked when going through security in Seattle. I know my hair is thick, but I’m not sure how I would hide a weapon in my pony-tail.
We spent some time driving around Phoenix and its suburbs. Our thought was to consider this as a retirement location. I was pretty sure I couldn’t handle the heat, but since it wasn’t too bad, Phoenix is still on the list. We’d still need to see what 110 feels like though. 🙂 Phoenix has suffered hard from the housing bust. There are a ton of cheap properties here and a ton of empty retail space. Near our hotel was a Borders. It was closing. It was the last store in the strip mall, every other store had already closed. There were a few other corner strip malls that were completely empty. Overall, we found Phoenix to be clean and easy to get around. Things are farther apart, due to suburban sprawl, but the streets are wide and traffic seems to flow nicely.
Best food was at The Fry Bread House (two locations, one in central Phoenix and one in Mesa). Denise had the fry bread with butter and chocolate (it’s a dessert). I had a couple different kinds, one filled and folded as a taco, and one filled and folded with red chili. The red chili with their extra hot sauce was the best. We went here three times, Denise had the chocolate one all three times.
Other good food places were Chompie’s (several locations), which was featured on Man vs. Food. We had the brisket sliders, and they were expensive but exceptional. The Gecko Grill in Gilbert has a mango shrimp or chicken quesadilla that is really good. Chino Bandido in Chandler has Asian/Mexican food, an interesting combo. We had Mexican food a few times too, all good. We even ate at Culver’s (a midwest chain missing from Seattle) because you can’t beat deep fried cheese curds.
There are a lot of ex-Chicagoans here. We found three places with Italian beef sandwiches. There’s Joey’s of Chicago, Luke’s of Chicago and Jimmy’s of Chicago. We ate at the first two – Joey’s was good, Luke’s had bad bread and the Giardiniera was wrong (had olives).