Eating…An Anniversary Done Right

After a wonderful afternoon spent at the Arizona State Fair, we headed to the hotel to check in. I had gotten us two nights with my hotel points at Hotel Indigo in Scottsdale.

The best part? Sprinkles Cupcakes was within walking distance. Ironically, this was also the worst part.

The hotel was really neat. It’s owned by the Holiday Inn family of hotel chains, and I just so happened to have enough points to score us two free nights.

Honestly, I don’t know what I will do someday when I have to pay for a hotel room!

You know that I love things with a modern twist, and this new hotel certainly didn’t disappoint. Especially when the front desk gal told me that we had been upgraded to the Executive Suite! Being a Gold Member in their points scale has lots of good things about it.

I guess it helps that I travel for a living, huh?

I loved this chandelier, which passed through three stories of the hotel lobby.

They look like little UFOs, huh?!

The room was beautiful…and had an entire living room inside as well. Bummer alert: we were right next to the elevator and got to enjoy lots of noise from returning drunkards around 2:30 AM each morning.

Maybe that’s our own stinkin’ fault for staying there so close to the weekend?

I loved how the suite had a giant living room next to the sleeping area. The bed wasn’t all that great, but we are spoiled at home with perfect support from our Sleep Number Bed, which we both love.

The bathroom was also spacious and simply beautiful. I loved the double vanity, though I don’t think that I would ever go with giant glass bowls for the sink vessels in my own home.

It worked very well in this setting, however!

And I love giant showers! Mine is microscopic at home (that might be a slight exaggeration, but it sure feels tiny), so this was a nice change.

The view from the hotel faced west, which meant that we had a gorgeous sunset two nights in a row. It was very pretty to have this open from a comfy chair in the “living room.”

And the pool was beautiful, just below our room. We both brought our swimming suits in case there was time to lounge around the pool. There wasn’t, but I enjoyed seeing it from above.

But, enough about a boring old room. Let’s go eat some dinner!

We tend to eat at the same type of places quite often. Because he is awesome at work, Hubby gets gift cards to several local restaurant chains (three in the last month alone!). It makes eating out nice and affordable, but we don’t often get to break out and eat somewhere different.

Since our anniversary was a special occasion, we broke out of the mold and got to try a new place! This restaurant has been on my radar ever since I ate at its sister company, Olive and Ivy. You need to eat there, if you have the chance. What a great place!

Copper salt and pepper shakers? Come on.

I promise that the menu wasn’t blurry in real life…I think that I was just shaky from being hungry excited to be there. And, thanks to a special occasion evening, we decided to get an appetizer. That’s breaking out of our eating mold, too!

Look how spontaneous we can be!

I have driven by I don’t know how many times and seen these gorgeous chandeliers inside.

I said to myself, “Self, that’s a place that you need to try.”

Here we are to eat our fourth anniversary dinner! Yippeeee!

Our appetizer was homemade kettle-fried potato chips with onion dip. These were really yummy, but I tried to restrain myself for the rest of dinner, too. There is nothing worse than getting full on the filler!

But, just for the record, we were really glad that we tried these. They have an awesome selection of appetizers that aren’t at the run-of-the-mill restaurants that we frequently frequent.

On to the main event! Hubby was going to try their Chicken Curry, but the server said that it was pretty hot. Because he knew that I would want to try whatever he got, he ordered the Gnocchi with Sausage instead. Isn’t that a great husband?

This stuff was absolutely delicious. The gnocchi was out-of-this-world soft. You could tell that it had just been made. My only complaint is that the sausage was pretty strong next to such a delicate pasta. I think that a lighter meat would have been better, like maybe a grilled chicken. But I would have taken an order of just the pasta, too!

This was ziggy-piggy’s my meal. the Warm Italian Grinder. I didn’t know that it was going to come grilled Panini-style, but that made it even better. One of my favorite parts of this sandwich, which was really yummy, was the pickled sweet peppers. I’m always so proud of myself for trying something unusual.

The fries were good, too. We weren’t expecting those to come with it, but we were both glad when they did. Hubby ate half of my sandwich, as we planned. He was especially glad for that after he felt that his pasta dish was tiny.

And the little skinny male waiter said that he could hardly finish the dish! I guess he doesn’t know Hubby!

My sandwich was delicious. I would get it again in a heartbeat. But I would want to try a bunch of other things from the menu first. I really love trying new places! I asked Hubby if we could start doing that once a month for our Date Night.

 

We weren’t lying to our server when we told him that we were too full to admire their dessert menu…we were. But we also has special dessert plans ahead of us. Just across the street from Culinary Dropout was Sprinkles Cupcakes, one of my favorite treats in the world.

We got a few to take with us to enjoy later in the evening. I was bummed that they were out of their Cinnamon Sugar, which blew me away last time I was there. But at least I got some Red Velvet goodness tonight!

A few hours later, when we could breathe again after eating such a delicious meal, we opened up the box of goodies.

Because it was late, lots of flavors had run out already. But we tried the Black and White Cupcake and the Red Velvet Cupcake tonight. Because it was dark Belgium chocolate on the bottom, the Black and White was really rich. A little too dark for me, but it was still an incredible Sprinkles Cupcake! I heart their frosting. It’s hard to find anything there that isn’t awesome.

Like always, the Red Velvet was simply divine.

It was a pretty great day with Hubby. The food was awesome, and so was the company. Four years…can you believe it?!