old town

Didn’t sleep well last night either. Went to bed late, got up early, and took a shower. For breakfast, the four of us went to T Cooks at Royal Palms for breakfast. It’s a little expensive ($13 breakfast entrees) just for breakfast, so figure closer to $18 per person after coffee, tax, and a tip for the valet. However, $18 is a steal of a deal for the Royal Palms experience, which was the resort that Dubya used when he came to town as President.

What’s so special about breakfast? It’s just a luxurious, self-indulgent experience. The valet takes your car, you wander through the really beautiful and historic hacienda style resort which is actually quite intimate, and its filled with lush vegetation, rustic patios, pools, and fountains. The breakfast is prepared at T Cooks, recognized as one of the best restaurants in the city of Phoenix, and the quality of the ingredients, food, and service is stellar. For less than $20 a pop, you get to feel like a multimillionare.

I ate the cinnamon banana brioche french toast which was quite good, although I liked mom’s pesto and prosciutto omelette better. Good coffee and lots of it. After we ate, mom attempted to show us how to get to the spot where they were going to get married so we would know how to find it on our own. Unfortauntely, she’d forgotten herself, so we had to wander for awhile until we stumbled across it (it is a small resort, after all).

The wedding spot is in a secluded open area against one of the buildings. There is a small grass lawn, and an equal sized patio with a wood pergola. Mom wanted to have the ceremony facing an old wooden door, but we all convinced her that it would be much better to have it under the arch to the collonade, someone raised up from the patio.

The directions to the place are kind of tricky, so to remember it, I named them all with the letter P: parking, portal, passageway, pavilion, portal, path, pool, pergola, patio, party.

After breakfast, we went to old town Scottsdale so Tay could pick up something for his friend who was watching Suki for us. Old Town was hopping. I’ve never seen so many tourists taking photos of saguaro cacti and the giant boots and other movieland “westernalia” crap that constitutes Old Town. I guess it is peak season in the prime tourist location in Phoenix. Thank god we didn’t go to Fashion Square mall.

OId Town does have this one labrynthine souvenir store which sells nearly everything you can think of related to Southwestern or Mexican souvenirs. Leather moccasins, leather goods, tee shirts, silver jewelry, a wall of cowboy hats, tequila flavored suckers with scorpions, bracelets, terra cotta crucifixes, “Native American” baskets made in Pakistan, falsa blankets, serapes, rugs, golf pants, talavera pottery, toys, spices, and salsas. There’s an entire room of the store which consists of iron hardware for cabinets and woodwork. Most of the Mexican stuff you can pick up at border towns a few hours to the south for about a third of the price. However, this stuff is relatively curated, and we’ve actually picked up some amazing works of Mexican art out of the more generic stuff.

We drove back to the house for a short while, changed clothes, and headed out once more. We stopped by the post office and went on to Shooters World, which probably deserves its own post since this has become quite lengthy.