Tales Continued: Day 2

Day 2: got up at 6am to go in search of a cup of coffee for Dave. Spent a half-hour just waking up at a leisurely pace. Dave grabbed the first shower. Now, Dave typically doesn't take long showers at home anyway (DROUGHT!), but I noticed that this one was particularly short. He emerged from the bathroom. I asked how the water pressure was. His reply: "I'm going to let you experience the shower for yourself. There's good news and bad news. But I'm letting you find out for yourself." 

As it turns out, the water pressure is fine (the good news). The water temperature is not fine (the bad news). It wasn't icy, but it was not what I would call warm. I also took a particularly short shower. 

How, I ask you, does a room not have hot water? No refrigerator? Ok, I get it. And you told us that up front. The no chairs thing was a little unexpected. But easily fixable by bringing chairs in from outside. But no hot water? NO HOT WATER? Come on, man. That's not right. This is 2015.  Hot water should not be an issue.

wifi on plastic adirondack-y chairs:yes.   hot water:no.

Breakfast, I'm happy to say, was a bright spot. There is a little local coffee shop less than a block from us that gets rave reviews. Our host recommended it, although she qualified her recommendation with, "but just to warn you, the baristas there are douchebags. I mean, they are serious assholes." Okay then. 

We did not actually find that to be the case. We had great coffee and food, the young woman behind the counter chatted with us the entire time, taught us how to make cold-brew coffee, and recommended dinner restaurants for us. She was utterly charming. I don't know what the opposite of douchebag would be, but she was it. It was a lovely way to start the day. 

Spent a bit of time cycling around Phoenix after breakfast. It's a bit of a ghost-town right now as it's Labor Day weekend and, so the story goes, if you live in Phoenix and you get the chance to get out of 105 degree Phoenix for a long weekend then ya do! So kinda empty--very easy to bike around. Although we don't really know where we are going, and we did find some very let's call them interesting neighborhoods. 

Made our way (again, on our charming bikes) to Chase Field just before noon and stood in line with all the other Giants fans waiting to get in.  I think there were some D-Backs fans as well. 

What a fantastic park! It's a very surreal thing to watch a baseball game in an enclosed stadium.  It's quite subdued. Perhaps everyone is just using their inside voices--I don't really know what it was--but the entire game had a somewhat hushed feel to it.  I'm not complaining. It was just very different from any baseball game I have ever been to before. 

The Diamondbacks are not doing well this season, so consequently we got seats on the first base line in the first row for the price you'd pay for the worst possible seats against the worst possible team at AT&T Park. We were sitting directly behind the ball guy (I learned in a couple of mid-inning conversations with him that you have to try out for that job--they actually make you field balls!) and could see into the Giants' bullpen. Very cool. 

The people around us were extremely friendly and pretty darn amusing. There was this great young couple sitting next to us.  When Buster Posey came up to bat the first time and his picture came up on the Jumbotron, she whipped out her phone to take a picture of the picture and announced, "That's my future husband," to which her boyfriend replied quite quickly and confidently, "Yeah, that works for me. I'm just gonna keep on dating you until you marry him, and that way I get to be friends with him and probably friends with you, too." 

And then there was the group of people to our right who, when the concession guy selling popcorn came around and yelled, "Popcorn--butter corn and kettle corn," started having a (very loud) conversation about what "ghetto corn" was. Yep. Super loud. Apparently she had misheard the guy and thought he said ghetto corn instead of kettle corn. It was not a conversation you wanted to continue. I was uncomfortable sitting in the next section. Not that anyone actually said anything offensive. But you just knew someone was going to at some point if the conversation went on. Luckily, they got distracted by the baseball game going on a couple rows away. 

We lost the game, sadly. Not unexpectedly, mind you. We have been losing quite a lot lately.We did get to see the return of Joe Panik, which was fantastic. He hit a double and got the Giants on the board with their only run of the game. Unfortunately that was about all the Giants action there was in nine innings. 

After a little downtime back at our humble home-away-from-home, we headed out to find some dinner (on our charming bikes, with mine still clanging away--that fender is stubbornly clinging to life). We had asked several locals we had met for recommendations, and though we headed out intending to check them out, we ended up stumbling upon a place not on our list. And then we had the best meal ever. Kid you not. My BEST. MEAL. EVER. 

Here's how you get the best meal ever: you ask your waitress what she likes best and then you order it. All of it. 

It's going to be hard for me to convince you that a cheeseburger and sautéed veggies made me swoon. I don't care if you don't believe me. They made me swoon. The burger had homemade onion marmalade and jalapeño cheddar sauce and this fresh-baked brioche bun. And more stuff, but all the right stuff in all the right proportions perfectly cooked. The bun held up, the burger stayed together, and all was right with the world. The vegetables were beans and baby squash and some other bean-looking thing sautéed up in a house-made ginger soy concoction that I would bathe in if allowed. It was that good. 

And then even though I would have sworn the meal couldn't get any better, our wonderful server Zoe started talking dessert. Decadent choices. We stuck with the plan and ordered what Zoe told us to order, which was sticky toffee pudding. Words will not do it justice. It was a date cake swimming in caramel syrup with vanilla gelato on top. See-- I told you. You're sitting there thinking to yourself, "That doesn't actually sound amazing or anything. I mean, date cake? That doesn't sound good at all quite frankly." And you're likely imagining the caramel gook you get on Baskin Robbins sundaes. And perhaps mediocre vanilla ice-cream.  No matter what you think, our dessert was 1000% better than you imagine it. Maybe a million percent better. As previously mentioned, words aren't going to cut it so I'm going to stop trying. If you're ever in Phoenix, go to the Phoenix Public Market. Ask for Zoe. We left with a list of Zoe's (and the cook/wait staff's--she asked around for us) top ten favorite Phoenix local joints. AND she packed up a piece of their famous chocolate cake for us--her treat!--because she wanted to be sure we got to try it before we left town.  BEST. MEAL. EVER. for so many reasons :)

Made it back. Ready for Day 3. Could use a hot shower. Crossing our fingers on that one... 

random picture of random airplane wing in front of our bed
we are using it to hang stuff on
that is probably not what it is intended for