Fleming Fun: What Rain?! Amazing Arizona

Jeff received word several weeks ago that he was being sent to Phoenix, AZ for Greenbuild 2009. What does a girl with lots of vacation days do when she receives news like this?! She tags along of course. We left for AZ on Tuesday night and arrived around 1am west coast time.

By day Jeff was in class. I spent my days working in the hotel room in the morning, lunching with Jeff, and exploring areas of AZ in the afternoon. By night we were together exploring what Phoenix and the surrounding cities of Tempe and Scottsdale had to offer.

Pizzeria Bianco:Before our trip I had done a bit of research on things to do and places to eat. Pizzeria Bianco was mentioned in two articles I read. I thought it was just a good pizza place. Turns out it is rated one of the best pizza restaurants in the country. Mr. Bianco is the only pizzaiolo to win the best regional chef designation of the James Beard Foundation.While having a beer across the street around 4pm we noticed that more and more people were lining up outside the pizzeria and all enjoying a glass of wine or a pint of beer. I had to find out why. I walked across the street and asked one of the groups what they were waiting for. Apparently if you want to be seated at dinner time, you must arrive around 4pm to put your name on the list when they open at 6pm. The line was already 30 0r 40 deep and lucky for me Jeff and his coworker were willing to wait to see if the pizza lived up to the hype. After putting our name on the list, we found a spot at a long farm table in the middle of all the herbs and fruit trees that produce the ingredients in the food in the restaurant. I was already impressed. When our name was finally called, we headed inside the restaurant, ordered some drinks and perused the menu. We had the spiadini for an appetizer-in this case spiadini were pieces of mozzarella wrapped in prociutto. Oh my-delicious!! We then ordered our pizza. I got pizza margherita and added prosciutto to the top. Holy moly-even more deliciousness. But really the pizza was like any you get in Italy. I was one happy girl.

Greenbuild:
We were in Phoenix so Jeff could attend Greenbuild. He thought some of the classes could have been better but overall he enjoyed the conference. The exhibit hall was amazing and huge. While Jeff networked with some of the exhibitors I gathered up as many cool, eco-friendly freebies as I could. I love being an event attendee's spouse.

Sunrise Hike:
On Thursday morning, we woke up reallly early and took a taxi out to Hole in the Rock hiking area. We hiked up and watched the sun rise through what else but the Hole in the Rock. It was quite, peaceful and beautiful. Definitely a good idea.

Tempe:
On Thursday while Jeff was in class I took the Light Rail out to Tempe where Arizona State University is located. Tempe has a cute little street just like Carytown so I walked around, shopped and spent the rest of the afternoon reading and people watching at a coffee shop. We returned to Tempe on Thursday night for dinner and more people watching.

Sedona:
On Friday morning, I had a conference call and Jeff had one more class. Afterwards, we picked up a rental car and headed out to Sedona. We left beautiful, 75 degree weather in Phoenix and as we climbed up to 4000 feet, the weather turned sour. 45 degrees, misty rain, grey. We had a quick lunch at a local brewery, made an emergency stop at a discount store. What do you do when you are wearing inappropriate clothing for unanticipated weather? You buy touristy Sedona sweatshirts. Oh yeah-did I mention that Sedona has sunny weather 300 days a year? Guess we chose one of the 65 non-sunny days to visit.

The rain let up just in time for us to hike to Devils Bridge. We rented the cheapest car-Chevy Aveo-not the best vehicle for driving on unpaved, rocky slippery roads in the mountains. But we did it anyway and the car did not let us down. The hike was gorgeous and the woods smelled delicious. Heaven.

After our hike, we hit some of the local shops and made our way back to Phoenix. I had read about an international beer festival before the trip so we drove to Scottsdale for dinner and to check out the festival. It was amazing-there were probably 100 breweries represented at the festival. We tasted and tasted and tasted. We loved the beer from an Alaskan brewery and also an Acai Berry beer. So fun.