Hello Tempe, Arizona

by   •   Travel
 

There’s more to the Phoenix Metropolitan Area than just Phoenix. While here, I’ve been spending time in some neighboring cities too—I already explored Old Town Scottsdale, and earlier today, I adventured around Tempe and the Arizona State University campus.

I started on the northern side of the Salt River near the Tempe Town Lake marina and walked west on the Tempe Town Lake North Bank Path until I reached the Tempe Town Lake Pedestrian Bridge. From there, I was able to get some nice views of downtown Tempe.

This is also close to the Tempe Town Lake Dam.

I arrived on the southern side of Tempe Town Lake right by the Tempe Center for the Arts. Unfortunately, the park directly to the east of this performing arts theater was closed for construction, so I had to go around on Rio Salado Parkway instead of walking on the beach.

After continuing a bit on Rio Salado Parkway and passing its intersections with Ash Avenue and Mill Avenue, I started climbing up the Hayden Butte, often called “A” Mountain due to the large letter “A” on the southern face of the incline.

Once I reached the summit, I got nice sweeping views of Tempe with a little bit of Scottsdale to the north, Mesa to the east, and the downtown Phoenix skyline to the west.

I descended the mountain on the opposite side and ended up at the Tempe Transportation Center on Veterans Way and College Avenue.

From there, I walked a bit south and then west, passing the interestingly-shaped Tempe Municipal Building on the way to Mill Avenue.

After taking a look at some of the shops on Mill Avenue, I walked eastbound on University Drive until reaching the Arizona State University Bridge leading into the Palm Walk.

From there, I went deeper into the Arizona State University campus, looking at the different architecture of the buildings until sunset.

For dinner, I returned to Mill Avenue and went to Matsuri Izakaya. The atmosphere of the restaurant was colorful and interesting.

Unfortunately, the food quality was pretty mediocre. I ordered a salmon bowl; the portion size of the salmon relative to the rice was a bit disappointing, the salmon didn’t really have that strong of a salmon flavor, and the texture made it seem like the fish wasn’t as fresh as it could have been.

After dinner, I walked back to the Tempe Transportation Center, purchased a US$2.00 single-ride ticket for the light rail, and rode my way back to my hotel in downtown Phoenix.

I had a satisfying time in Tempe. The environment of the university campus was both nostalgic and inspiring, and I felt a level of motivation and energy in Tempe that I don’t always sense in non-college cities. Everything was decently clean, and although I didn’t have any direct interactions with strangers, most of them seemed like they were going about life with a positive attitude.

If I ever return to the Phoenix Metropolitan Area after this trip, I will most likely stay in Tempe. There was an unusually high number of hotels under the Marriott brand in Tempe, and even though it doesn’t seem to have too many dedicated attractions within the downtown and campus area, it seemed like a very nice and safe place to just go for a walk and get some fresh air during my free time.

 

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Hello, Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix

by   •   Tourism
 

For my next tourist activity in Phoenix, I visited the Arizona State Capitol in the Government Mall neighborhood west of downtown. The Capitol consists of three different buildings—the Capitol Museum (which connects to the Executive Tower), the Senate, and the House of Representatives.

I started in the central Capitol Museum and wove in and out of the many rooms containing many museum exhibits.

The center of the museum had a dome on top, from the structural supports of which there was a chandelier hanging by a long, metallic, wound rod.

After going through the first building, I went to the southern building, home of the Senate.

As you’d expect, my third and final building tour was the northern one, home of the House of Representatives.

Security was tighter in this building for some reason, so I was escorted around by a security guard. I had a nice conversation with him; he is a fan of the Las Vegas Raiders and is looking forward to the new baseball stadium for the Athletics.

Here are some more photos of the museum exhibits taken in the central building.

This is the first Capitol I’ve seen with this large and robust of a museum on-site. I remember the Idaho State Capitol having a small set of displays on the lowest floor, but the Arizona State Capitol has a literal full-blown, multi-floor museum.

I think education should be affordable, accessible, and abundant. Although I support having a small government, I still believe government has an important place in society, and one of the roles I think it should have is to help provide opportunities to its people. Being educated is a great way to expand the scope of someone’s opportunities, so it was very nice seeing Arizona putting some of its funding towards educating the public about history and politics.

 

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Hello, Old Town Scottsdale, Arizona

by   •   Tourism
 

For my next adventure, I made my way over to Arizona. I’ve been to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon before, but I went straight northwest afterwards and didn’t get a chance to visit the southern cities, so I decided to take another trip to Arizona to explore the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

Today’s adventure was in Scottsdale. I had a bit of a late start to my day, so in the very late afternoon, I hopped in a Waymo self-driving, autonomous vehicle and took a ride to Old Town.

Unfortunately, right as I arrived, it started raining. I considered taking shelter for a bit, but eventually decided I wouldn’t let some suboptimal weather put a stop to my tourism, so I went back out into the precipitation and walked around the Scottsdale Waterfront.

I made my way over to the Soleri Bridge and crossed over the Arizona Canal, continuing south deeper into Old Town.

I continued southbound on Drinkwater Boulevard to check out the Scottsdale Civic Center. By this point, the sun had already set and it was getting pretty dark.

After continuing west on Civic Center Park Path, I popped right out on Brown Avenue in front of Main Street. I still had a bit of time left before my dinner appointment, so I did a few loops around to explore the shops alongside Main Street, 1st Avenue, and Scottsdale Road, and Marshall Way.

When it came time for dinner, I met up with a couple friends at the Frybread Lounge on Main Street. We picked this location because this is apparently the only Native-owned restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale and I was interested in trying Indigenous cuisine.

As our appetizer, we started with their Frybread Flight, three miniature frybread with side dipping sauces of powdered sugar, honey, Ramona Farms O’odham tepary bean hummus, and Lakota wojapi berry sauce.

This was my first time ever trying frybread. When it came out and I saw it for the first time, I wondered if I would dislike it because it basically looked like regular flatbread that was deep fried (and I usually am not the biggest fan of fried foods), but it ended up being pretty good. It wasn’t excessively oily or greasy; the fried flavor was strong enough that it was distinctly different than flatbread, but not so fried that it was heavy.

For my entrée, upon recommendation by our waitress, I ordered a bison burger containing two quarter-pound bison patties topped with chipotle aioli, romaine lettuce, diced tomatoes, diced red onion, and a slice of cheddar cheese, all nestled inside frybread.

The best way for me to describe this is that it was pretty much normal burger, but inside frybread. The frybread gave it a very unique texture that added an interesting and distinct identity to the dish, and that flavor profile is something that I had not tried before. However, ultimately, it was basically just a regular bison burger with the bun swapped out for thick, fried flatbread.

For my beverage (not pictured) to go along with my burger, I ordered a cup of coffee that was roasted on the Salt River Maricopa Indian Community Nation. I’m not at all a coffee enthusiast and I don’t have a well-refined palate when it comes to identifying different kinds of coffee, so I couldn’t really tell a difference between this coffee and mass-produced American coffee, but with a little bit of half-and-half and sweetener, it made for a nice drink to accompany my meal.

And with that, that is one tourist activity down out of many more to come during my several-day stay in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

 

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Hello, “Lunar New Year: Year of the Snake” at the Bellagio Conservatory on the Las Vegas Strip

by   •   Las Vegas
 

I’ve been spending some time around the central Strip over the past few days because one of my friends is in town for a work conference; in her free time, we checked out some attractions that were conveniently in the area, one of which was the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens inside MGM Resorts’ Bellagio Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada.

The current set on display is called “Lunar New Year 2025: Year of the Snake.” It’s usually very popular and congested, but it calms down and gets pretty empty overnight; here are some photos I took of the installation at approximately 3 AM:

 

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Hello, High Roller at the LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada

by   •   Face, Las Vegas
 

I’ve been living in Las Vegas for almost five years now, since 2018 (this excludes the couple years I spent road tripping across the United States and living out of hotel rooms), but there are still a lot of iconic things in the city that I haven’t experienced. Up until yesterday, one of those things was taking a ride on the High Roller Ferris wheel at Caesars Entertainment’s LINQ Hotel + Experience on the Las Vegas Strip.

One of my friends is in town for a work conference near the central Strip, and while we were going for a walk around the LINQ Promenade together after picking up her admission credentials, the entrance to High Roller caught our attention. There was no wait and the box office was nearly empty, so we made an impulse decision to go for a ride around the wheel.

The wheel constantly spins at a very slow rate and you enter your pod while it still in motion, sort of like how you mount a bench on a ski lift. Because of how few people there were on a Tuesday late afternoon, my friend and I were able to get our own private pod without needing to share with any other parties.

I used to live in high-rise condos on the Las Vegas Strip, so as we ascended in altitude, I got waves of nostalgia looking out onto the city.

A little after ten minutes into our climb, we were high enough that we passed the elevation at which I lived in my old condos.

My friend took some photos of me in the pod. Here is me being confused why she is holding the camera up so high…

… and here is me looking like I somehow just now finally noticed that they put the Sphere there.

About 15 minutes into our ride, we reached the summit of 550 feet (~168 meters). From the top, I was able to get some great 360° views and captured some nice photographs of the sunset.

Soon after, we began our descent, and after about half an hour, our loop was over.

Going into the ride, I assumed that I would only end up liking it a moderate amount because of how desensitized I am to the view after living in high-rise condos, staying in rooms on upper floors of Strip hotels, and riding in aircraft over Las Vegas. However, surprisingly, I enjoyed High Roller a lot more than I expected.

I imagine a big part of it was attributed to the fact that we were able to get a fun, private experience in our own personal pod. There was amazing lighting due to the pod being fully surrounded by large glass windows and the setting sun shining in, so my friend had a great time taking glowing selfies. I was also able to roam around freely taking a lot of photographs of the view without feeling like I was distracting or detracting from others’ experience.

Apparently High Roller has flexible pricing depending on demand and time of day, with adult tickets starting at US$29 each and sometimes being eligible for discounts if you purchase ahead of time. My friend and I ended up paying US$33 each at the box office, which isn’t exactly cheap, but also wasn’t too bad in my opinion.

 

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