First Few Days

Here we go again my annual pilgrimage to "Mecca" Phoenix for a week of chilling out and a week of bridge, sun and gaming in Las Vegas. Can life get any better.

Check in at the airport goes smoothly and my advance planning pays off when I manage four seats to myself albeit in the last row of the plane. I doze for moost of the trip The Bill in between getting off the plane feeling in remarkably good shape.

I check in to the hotel using their automated check-in to room 2062 which I imagined would be on the twentieth floor of this nine storey building. All became clear when I realised that there were 153 rooms on each floor and of course mine was about 500 metres from the lift - GRR!!

I meet a former business associate for a sandwich lunch at a nearby Salad/Soup cafe.

Back to the hotel for a relax after which I head off for dinner. I decide to save the $40 cab fare and get the free shuttle 3kms to the airport and the Rapid Transport system to downtown just four blocks from the restaurant - Foreign Cinema. It is my fourth visit here and again I am not disappointed. Three varieties of oysters, foi gras and a magnificent dessert. www.foreigncinema.com

OK if it was good enoiugh to get there it would be good enough to get back so on the tain to the aiport and shuttle to the hotel and a good nights sleep.

Up early next morning for my short flight to Phoenix. Easy check-in and very short security line compared to what I saw thirty minutes later As I am very early I download the morning paper to my Kindle and read the paper while having a coffee.

Interesting company on the plane - an attorney specialising in IP in his way to a family holiday in Hawaii. Now I know little about American geography but Hawaii via Phoenix would be leading me to a new travel agent.

Picked up at the airport and back to the Warring’s house to collect around 20 boxes of ‘stuff’ I had ordered in the past few months in anticipation of collection this visit. Nothing too startling except my birthday present from my kids www.handpresso.com which I subsequently tried and is excellent for coffee on the go.

Off the Marriott Canyon Villas and a lovely one bedroom apartment, beautifully appointed and which will be a comfortable home for the next seven days. We spend a few hours around the pool, I beat Penny at Chess on a life size board (my first chess win in 25 years I think) before I excuse myself with jetlag now setting in.

It’s dinner time so I head down to the local supermarket and buy some supplies ending up having Piroshkies for dinner and a relatively early night.

I wake up at 06:30 on Sunday morning and it is full daylight and luckily fall asleep until 08:30 which means I have to rush to get ready as I am going to watch a friend of the kids compete in an Arabian horse show. It was very good fun and she finishes second of her group of eight having won the previous five rounds of the competition. It is quite amazing how done up the horses and riders are, both immaculately groomed – both.

Back to the Marriott Hotel for a few hours and lunch around the pool and what they call the lazy river – a long circular pool with slow running water dragging lilos and other floats around the pool.
I then have a few hours back at the hotel before heading off to watch the kids take a two hour soccer training session which is REALLY interesting. A former Belgrade Red Star and Yugoslavian national soccer player, Peter Balsic runs a soccer training school at his home. Hi backyard is a beautifully manicured walled soccer field about 15 metres by 30 metres where today he has four groups for two hours each with eight students in a group. I probably had better career choices when I learn that he charges $50 per student earning $1,600 for a day’s work. That said I must say he was unbelievably good, tough but outstanding.

He taught the kids ball trapping skills using both legs, kicking skills including just how to turn and strike the ball and then for the last 40 minutes they played a 4 vs 4 game where he often froze and rewound the game explaining what the kids did wrong – really good to watch. He is also an accomplished artist.

Dinner at Sushi Bistro saw an end to quite a long but relaxing day. Off to bed and love to all
David