So, clearly, I’ve moved around quite a bit in the past year. Understandably, many of my friends haven’t really kept up with my nonsense.
One of those friends is Robbie, one of my friends from grad school.
Robbie currently works for Hilton in Denver. Because his work includes hospitality administration as it relates to his hotel’s convention center… he’s currently on furlough, given that the convention center has been temporarily converted into a COVID center.
So, Robbie’s been using his time off to explore all the National Parks in and around Colorado.
How do I know this? Well, he posted on Facebook that he was on his way to the Grand Canyon. Because I’m tactful and classy, my automatic first response was to text Robbie “BITCH, I LIVE NEXT DOOR TO THE GRAND CANYON. WYD.”
Robbie, naturally, replied to tell me that I need to get my shit together because he can’t keep up with my life and he didn’t know where the hell I was living or what the hell I was doing these days, but yes, he booked the Flagstaff Hilton for the night and he’d love to meet for dinner.
So, later that night, I joined him for wine and sushi at the Hilton restaurant.
Because it was still the work week and I had stuff to do, Robbie ventured up to the Grand Canyon alone (well, with his dog Bentley) the next day. I’d already been, so I wasn’t upset. He ended up staying the night up in Williams, and then asked if I wanted to join him at a Hilton resort for Thanksgiving.
I figured hey, why not! We chatted and made plans. We had discussed Sedona, but decided warm weather was calling our names. So, the valley it was!
So Thursday, I hopped in my Jeep and drive down to the Hilton. Robbie and I had a super chill night. We spent the afternoon drinking by the pool, then ordered Chinese takeout for Thanksgiving dinner and holed up in our room watching movies, because pandemic.
I even got to have a nice Thanksgiving FaceTime reunion with some of my favorite Peace Corps Volunteers. This time last year we were all celebrating Friendsgiving together in Lviv, so we were all a little bitter and heartbroken.
The next day, we decided to move to a different Hilton hotel, because this one had apparently booked itself to capacity with a high school sports tournament.
We relocated a few blocks over to a Hilton Canopy, which ended up being much, much nicer in my opinion.
Robbie gets really into hotel branding and management and administration obviously, so he was explaining the difference between the two Hilton hotels we stayed at. The first one was an Embassy Suites, which is an older brand that caters more toward people who travel for work and book hotels through their companies. The room had a separate living and sleeping area, and seemed a little more dated. Hilton Canopy, however, is a newer brand targeted toward millennials. Our room was a lot smaller, but was brand new and modern with clean amenities (a slate-tiled shower with glass doors and a wall-mounted flat-screen TV) and floor-to ceiling windows that gave us a view of Scottsdale. Hilton’s Canopy brand also, apparently, puts more emphasis on the shared spaces… so the bar/ restaurant/ pool areas were really, really nice.
Because I didn’t have Black Friday off work, I had to spend the day working.
However, I got to bring my work computer up to the pool, so I wasn’t mad.
Aside from dinner at RA Sushi across the street, we spent the rest of the day at the hotel (again, it’s COVID, we’re not trying to be stupid here) drinking at the bar by the pool.
We woke up early the next day for… a day trip to Saguaro National Park!
For the sake of brevity — and sparing those of you who don’t want to read about either of these adventures — you can read about our day trip in my next post.
Here’s one quick photo for you, though.
After our trip to Saguaro, we drove back to Scottsdale and went out for tacos and margaritas before going back to our hotel room. We were exhausted! We fell asleep early watching Legally Blonde.
The next morning, I got up a little bit early to go to a CorePower Yoga class.
For those of you who don’t know, I’m OBSESSED with CorePower Yoga. I know there are a ton of flaws with the company, but it was such a huge part of my life back in Chicago that it just feels like home. I can’t give it up. There aren’t any locations near me in Flagstaff, so I took advantage of the fact that there are several locations in the Phoenix area.
Believe me when I tell you I cried walking into the studio.
After that, I went back to the hotel to shower and pack my bags. I said my goodbyes to Robbie — who was planning on staying down in the Valley for a few more days, and ran some errands before heading back up to Flagstaff. I grabbed some shampoo bars at Lush, stopped at an Eastern European market to try to find some Ukrainian candy for my coworkers and, of course, grabbed a pizza from Jet’s.
Then, the drive back up the mountain to Flagstaff.
I did spend most of this weekend wondering what it would have been like if I’d been in Ukraine as planned for Thanksgiving — but — I’m at least glad I didn’t have to spend the day alone. I actually had a lot of fun relaxing poolside and exploring a new National Park.
This post was originally published Jan. 22, 2021. Its timestamp has been updated.
