In April, Brian had another spouses invited trip and this time it was a lot closer… in Scottsdale, Arizona! This place had been on my bucket list FOREVER and I was so excited to go. Unfortunately, Brian had a couple of days of meetings, so I got to PLAY while he worked (ha, ha!), but it was nice to get away to relax a little bit, meet his coworkers (and their plus ones) and reconnect with one another.
The flight was 3.5 hours and when we landed the land looked SO much different than it does in St. Louis. There was a big mountain in the middle of Phoenix that we saw while landing.
One thing I noticed in Scottsdale is that the sky is SO blue… and vast. Brian’s work graciously put us up at the Four Seasons Resort in Scottsdale and the grounds were BEAUTIFUL!! We stayed in the Premier Casita Room, which has a deep soak tub, patio with TV and indoor fireplace.
Brian’s work put together a bag of items for us that we received in the lobby. Here is the photo of the fireplace in our room.
After we checked into our resort and dropped our luggage off, we headed BACK to Phoenix to check out the Desert Botanical Garden. We were FAMISHED after a 3.5 hour flight that we left for early in the morning and after you calculated the time change into it all, we ate lunch around 4:00 p.m. We had reservations at Gertrude’s which is a farm to table restaurant inside the Desert Botanical Garden. We started with cocktails, which were so colorful and tasty.
I won’t share all of our food photos, but we got the hummus appetizer and the plump vegetable slices were pretty and refreshing! I ordered a burger and it came with baby potatoes and it really hit the spot. I wish I had booked an outdoor table when I reserved the restaurant for us, but we had reservations inside. The restaurant patio was BEAUTIFUL (I took a little looksie outside at it)!
After we ate at Gertrude’s, we walked out and explored the Desert Botanical Garden. Wow! It was BEAUTIFUL. I wish we hadn’t visited it during the hottest part of the day, because after the cocktails and just traveling all day I had little to no energy to explore all of the trails. Which is unusual for me, I am usually high energy! Ha, ha! So, we didn’t stay as long as I would have liked, but maybe that gives us an excuse to go back again in the future and see it at a better time of day. I had never seen so many cactuses and the height of them all was just amazing to me. The entire grounds was kept up nicely, every area of the gardens was photo perfect!
I took A LOT of photos at the Desert Botanical Garden, but I won’t share them all on here. Here is a couple of photos of a cactus flower (they said the cactuses bloom around the time we were there in April) and they had a butterfly pavilion area and we checked that out.
After the Desert Botanical Garden, we went back to the resort to rest a bit. Then, we headed out for a late dinner at Tommy Bahama (which is also a clothing store!). They had a lot of seafood options and we had their famous coconut shrimp for an appetizer (not pictured) and then I had their crab cake entree for dinner. The dessert was over the top, I got a pineapple creme brûlée served in a pineapple itself!
The next morning, we headed to Butters Pancakes & Cafe early, to catch a delicious breakfast before heading over to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home. WOW! I wish we had this place in St. Louis, it was SO good and they had a HUGE selection of crepes. I ordered their vanilla latte and wild berries crepe.
We had a scheduled walking tour for Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and laboratory. We got there a little early after breakfast and took some time to shoot some photos. The grounds were absolutely breath taking and the architecture blended in so well with the desert.
Our tour was fairly early in the morning and just such a beautiful time of the day to walk around and explore. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and passionate about Frank Lloyd Wright. Something I learned on the tour was that Frank Lloyd Wright and a painter that I’m found of named Georgia O’Keefe were friends! They had some photos of them together on display inside the home.
Once again, I took a TON of photos, but I want to keep this blog post as short as I can. I was surprised to see he had a large theater (there is 3 total), residences for apprentices and more. Such a large space! They have sunset and sips at this site, which would be fun (and beautiful!).
After we got back to the resort, we had massages scheduled (another BIG thanks to Brian’s work!) and we had charcuterie and desserts room serviced to tide us over till dinner.
We wrapped up the day with the Welcome Reception. I paired my top with some white linen pants since it was outside. I can’t really share too many photos from the reception, since I don’t want to share his coworkers on here… but, I’ll share a photo of one of the flower arrangements. So beautiful!
I have 2 more Scottsdale posts coming up… stay tuned!
