Day 1 – Arizona: Scottsdale to Sedona
Hello friends and welcome back! After starting a new job last June and a 7 month blog hiatus, it feels great to be back on here traveling and blogging again. Some trips at the end of 2025 that were missed from the blog but were still a blast include Lake George, Mexico, and Cape May. Last year was a busy one for me between work, vacation, and traveling for friends weddings, and I thoroughly enjoyed being home October through the holidays. But as my mom says, I can’t keep my feet on the ground for too long, so here we are in sunny Arizona!
I’ve been in Scottsdale the past week for our team on site. It was great hanging out with everyone in person and the weather in Scottsdale was beautiful – 70s and sunny, a much needed change from the 10 degree weather I had been dealing with back home in New Jersey. Rather than flying home Friday morning, Stelios flew out to Arizona to meet me and we drove up to Sedona for a weekend adventure.
The drive to Sedona was two hours but felt less – I filled Stelios in on all of the happenings from my week long work trip and he caught me up on home life. We arrived to our hotel at 2:30pm. We were staying at the Hyatt Vacation Club at Piñon Pointe, located in Uptown Sedona. Our room wasn’t ready yet so we left our bags with the concierge and found a spot to eat. We grabbed an outdoor table at The Vault that had beautiful views of the red rocks. Stelios ordered a local IPA (I tasted it a sip and it was delicious but I was in recovery mode and could not drink today after partying with my coworkers until 2am the night before). We ordered the tomahawk steak special for lunch that came with fresh chimichurri, mashed potatoes, and bacon wrapped asparagus. We basically licked the plate clean, it was delicious. Stelios started chatting with our waiter Nick who has lived out here for 8 years. When we told him we were from New Jersey he asked if we’d ever been to the Stone Pony in Asbury Park and we told him we have we go to Asbury all the time. Apparently Nick used to be in a heavy metal rock band and played there a couple of times – small world!
After lunch we walked back to our hotel to check into our room. The room was surprisingly much bigger than the photos online and was apartment style with a living room, fireplace, full kitchen, double sink bathroom and king bed – excellent ! Our room was also conveniently located right by the pool entrance – I can’t wait to lounge here tomorrow post hike. After checking in we decided to explore uptown Sedona. We passed by a bunch of cute shops selling anything from Sedona tourist excursion packages and apparel, to handcrafted jewelry, and locally sourced art pieces. After walking around for a bit I desperately needed a water bottle (the Arizona air sucks the hydration right out of you and after 5 days of being here I feel like a dried out SpongeBob in the episode where he goes to visit Sandy’s bubble and there’s no water).
We popped into a marketplace and bought several large water bottles, eggs and toast for breakfast tomorrow, and bananas and protein bars to pack as a snack for our hikes. Overall a success. We dropped the groceries back at our hotel, and I changed into pants as the sun was going down and it gets pretty chilly here at night. We caught a beautiful sunset from one of the outlook coves at our hotel – the sky was painted with shades of pink, orange, and yellow cast against the red rocks, it was truly beautiful.
We continued to wander around the town and by 7pm it was getting colder outside and I was craving a hot bowl of soup. We settled on a spot called La Vecina, a Mexican style cantina. I ordered the tortilla soup and Stelios had the pork tacos and a spicy margarita. The soup was exactly what I needed – warm, spicy, and of flavor. After dinner we walked back to our hotel and got ready for bed. Tomorrow was a full day and an early wake up time.
