Sedona Sunday

Sunday the 15th was the first of the true bad-weather days; gray drippy skies and cold temps had us planning a mostly home morning the night before. Everything changed, however, when Dave was woken by a water drop landing in his ear at 6am – our roof was leaking. A couple of phone calls to the front desk later and we were packing up to go to a new apartment, since it was obvious to the manager that the leak couldn’t be repaired while it was raining. We had our choice of two apartments and chose the one on the second floor, which has the exact same layout and décor as the one we had last year and a nicer view than this year’s first apartment. It was a flashback to last year when we ended up moving after the second night as well due to a booking issue.

Once we’d finished moving we headed to the Tlaquepaque to look for puzzles at the toy store (no) and have lunch at Oak Creek Brewing (good beer, ok food). We headed to Uptown Sedona to look for puzzles and found a very good 500 piece Sedona one, and I also got a very nice small whisk at the tea store in Sinagua plaza. Back to the hotel, and Dave and I went out for a short hike in the cultural park area (Girdner-Axis-Lasso-Stirrup, if you’re curious).

Our big event for Sunday was dinner at Mariposa restaurant, which we wanted to do last year but had waited too long to get a reservation. This time Dave made the reservation 6 months in advance, and while their dress code and rules about how early you could arrive and the woman at the front door talking into her secret service earbud to let the inside people know we’d arrived and the mechanical delivery of the waiter were all a little offputting the food was absolutely spectacular and made it all worthwhile. So if you go there don’t worry about any of those things and order the octopus and OMG the mussels with tomatoes and chorizo that I’ve ordered in many places but never in a cream sauce like this, and put aside your skepticism about chocolate mint desserts and get the chocolate mint dessert with its unbelievable melty creamy warm chocolate pie and cold creamy mint ice cream. A bottle of the malbec blend and some cocktails wouldn’t hurt either. Lynn and Dave split the ribeye which was fantastic and deserves an honorable mention, along with Lynn’s butternut squash soup and the mashed potatoes. Totally delightful, would highly recommend. A perfect place to celebrate our 35^th anniversary.