When we planned this part of the trip, hotel prices for Phoenix were a bit silly, so we ended up booking a hotel in Scottsdale for two nights, with the idea of going into Phoenix one of the days – and what an inspired choice it turned out to be! I started the day with breakfast at MartAnne’s Burrito Palace, that I’d read about after Elmarie tipped me off. All the reviews were good and I concluded that the place was very popular but I still wasn’t prepared for a queue at 8:30 in the morning! I’m not quite used to people showing up that early for breakfast/brunch, especially not on a Sunday morning, but I put my name on the list and joined the queue outside. It counted in my favour that I was on my own (strangely Brian opted not to have Mexican food for breakfast!) and I got a table after about 10-15 minutes. The place is really nice and interesting inside and I ordered the JB’s Volcano, with pork green chile, chorizo, chilaquiles and an egg etc, along with a customary cup of bottomless diner coffee. My food came quite quickly and it was GOOD – and HUGE! I ended up eating about half of it before giving up and asking for a container to take away the rest. I thoroughly enjoyed the meal even though it was very garlicky – but then garlic is supposed to be good for you isn’t it!? Brian may not agree…..
After breakfast we went back to the hotel and got ready for the trip to Scottsdale. We weren’t in a particular hurry but at the same time the hotel wasn’t nice enough to hang around just for the sake of it! On the way to Scottsdale we drove through Sedona and stopped at a few places for pictures. It is indeed very beautiful and the colours are amazing and in total contract with the surrounding area. We didn’t spend any time in the town but rather carried on to Scottsdale.
When we got to Scottsdale it was very, very hot and humid and we didn’t even consider going out straight away like we tend to do when we get to a new town. We were very happy with our suite in the Scottsdale Holiday Inn Express Downtown and in this instance it really was a suite, not just a big room which it usually is when they call it a suite! We actually had two rooms, one with 2 double beds and one with a sleeper couch and both with its own TV. For two people living in each other’s pockets for the last couple of months it was heaven! The hotel also had a decent pool and fitness centre, as well as good breakfasts, and turned out to be very good value for just over $80/night.
We ventured out about 5:15 hoping that it would somehow have cooled down a bit – it may have but it was still close to 40 degrees! We walked towards to town and a restaurant I wanted to try out, Rehab Burger Therapy, where we ended up staying the whole evening. They had happy hours on so we had a couple of drinks from the happy hour menu and ordered our burgers. Brian had a Bacon & Cheese Rehab Burger which weighs in at 10 ounces, and I had a chicken burger with two types of cheese, instead of beef – practically a vegetable for me at this point! Both the burgers were amazing, though the sweet potato tater tots weren’t as good as I expected from the reviews I’d read. They were very big burgers and we were very full after eating them and I can fully understand why many people there were sharing their burgers. After we finished our meal we couldn’t be bothered to walk around looking for another bar and just stayed on their patio drinking more beer and wine until we eventually decided to stumble back to the hotel. I decided to go for a quick dip in the pool and the water was amazing and warm which suited me just right as I hate cold pools!
Biltong and Burger 