Hi friends! Hope you are all doing amazing! If you’ve followed my insta pics, you’ll know that a few weeks ago, my family and I embarked on a fun road trip from Phoenix, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada, driving through a few states and many incredible natural landscapes. I’ll summarize our entire trip in a single blog post later, but for now, enjoy a post on our first stop, Phoenix, Arizona!

Phoenix was the city we flew into. My uncle and my aunt flew from Milan to Frankfurt and then to Phoenix, while my parents met my brother and I in Chicago from Providence, then we got on the same plane to Phoenix and landed at night. We didn’t really get to see much of the city, since we ran on a pretty tight schedule! However, when we had to pick an attraction to visit, we all opted for the Desert Botanical Garden. And I’m so glad we did.

Desert Botanical Garden

The Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix is a 140-acre garden that hosts over 21,000 plants in total. Which you know, is impressive in itself. However, the reason why I loved this place so much was that I had never seen most of the plants that were there in my entire life.

Now some of you, my friends, are going to make fun of me because I’m foreign and stuff. I know, I know. I’m like a little baby, so easily impressed. But I had never seen cacti grow from like, the ground! And there were so many! The same goes for agave too, for example.

I had never been in a desert-like environment before. The climate and the flora (look at dem scientific terms!) were really fascinating to me. And the garden itself was really so well kept. It was so hot I thought I was going to melt, but we really did have a great time there.

Family Pic!

And here is my dad streaming the AC Milan game and being all happy because we scored.

Food in Phoenix

As I have said already, we did not have the time to really explore the city of Phoenix – I’d love to come back one day! – so the places I can recommend are very limited. However, there was one gem that we pretty much ran into that I really want to talk about: Pizzeria Bianco.

Now, you all know I was born and raised in Italy (yeah, we do know, thank you for repeating that about 39 times per day Caterina!), so I’m very picky about my Italian food and pizza. I’m usually very skeptical. However, we were hungry for pizza and Pizzeria Bianco claimed to serve Italian artisanal pizza.

So glad we followed our guts, and our stomachs, and let our curiosity lead us to this place. Not only the location was absolutely beautiful, but the pizza was truly incredible. It was very, very close to something you could get in Italy. Therefore, for American pizza standards, it was utterly delicious. This is a place I’d recommend. You’ll be happy I did.

Picture credits to Eater, I was way too busy shoving my face with food to take a decent pic.

That is all for Phoenix, short and sweet! Stay tuned for updates on the rest of the trip!