Road trip to Arizona
After putting our last few belongings in storage and officially becoming homeless, we started our journey with a brief overnight stay at the Silver Cloud in Portland which is an awesome hotel chain in the Pacific NW if you are ever in the area (they have robes!). Our next stop was Ashland, Oregon, home of the Shakespear festival. As you would guess, the whole town is very Shakespear inspired so we definitely recommend checking it out if that piques your interest.
The next day a snow storm was a brewin’ so we hit the road early and narrowly missed the pass closing behind us, phew! We were able to spend a few days in Reno visiting with Zach’s family and friends. We got to stop at our favorite Reno coffee shop, Hub Coffee Roasters and take a stroll along the river. We checked out a couple of restaurants during our visit, Brasserie St. James and Homegrown Gastropub which both have really good food and drinks.
We relived Zach’s childhood nightmare of growing up in the middle of nowhere Nevada on our drive down to Vegas. There is a “cool” town called Tonopah with a creepy clown hotel that you can stop at on the long (7h!) drive from Reno to Vegas. We made an overnight stop at the Palazzo in Vegas and quickly realized why we hate going to Vegas so much (crowds, smoke filled casinos, overpriced food etc.). We will probably forget all of the downsides and will likely end up planning another trip there in a couple of years, lol.
If you know me well, you probably could have predicted that I made Zach take my picture in front of Lisa Vanderpump’s new restaurant at Paris Casino. Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to see Lisa or any of the other Vanderpump cast :( Luck was definitely not on our side during this trip because we realized we had a slow leak in our tire right before we were about to start the drive to Phoenix (Good thing we didn’t gamble while we were in Vegas!). We got our tire patched at Big O’s Tires. They quickly got us in and out so that we could head off to In-N-Out Burger (if you are looking for a bad dad pun there you go) before our final leg of the drive down to Phoenix to visit my family.
We love visiting AZ in the winter because we get to take advantage of the sunshine and warm-ish weather. Zach played a round of golf with my dad while I went to the pool with my mom. I think everyone thought I was crazy because I was lap swimming in 50 degree weather but it was a heated pool! It was definitely not as crazy as swimming in Lake Washington with my triathlon teammates in late October… or is it?? We also got a chance to visit with my sister, brother and their spouses. My niece and nephew introduced us to the game Shark Bite (great last minute Christmas gift idea for 6-8 year olds) and I got a sweet manicure from my niece.
Flying to Thailand
We decided to fly from PHX to SFO and spend the night to break up the travel plus we had to use our hotel rewards night before the end of the year. Our overnight stay in SF was probably the most important part of our journey because this is where Zach finally got his haircut…something he complained about on the drive all the way down from Seattle. Thanks Erin for the local barber recommendation in Burlingame!
We used our Chase travel rewards points to book our flight from SFO→Bangkok with a layover in Taipei. This was my first time flying business class internationally and this is 100% the way to go. The seats are way more comfortable plus you get access to the business class lounges prior to your flight and during your layover.
When we checked into our hotel, the Sindhorn Midtown Hotel Bangkok we were excited to find out that since we are IHG Platinum Elite Members (due to having the IHG premium rewards card) they upgraded us to a nicer room with a small kitchenette and Washer/Dryer. We also booked this hotel with credit card rewards points from our IHG credit card. Zach is going to share a separate post on how he used his credit card rewards points wizardry to get all of these deals.
We are happy that everything is going smoothly so far and we will share another update soon about our adventures in Thailand!
