The Nutcracker

We left on schedule yesterday morning at 11:30 AM to catch The Nutcracker matinee at the Symphony Hall in downtown Phoenix. The drive was only 35 minutes which surprised us. Our concern the whole way down was about finding a suitable parking space for our huge F450 Ford Dually pickup truck. We passed on the first parking garage as the sign indicated that parking was for low profile vehicles - probably not us. The second one, about 2 blocks from the Symphony Hall seemed OK with a sign stating the clearance was 6'8". Josie kept saying "Oh My Gosh, we  are going to hit the ceiling". We took off the antenna which was hitting every beam in the parking garage, but we made it to a nice wide space - with about 4" clearance to the top of the truck.

The Symphony Hall in downtown Phoenix is a beautiful building:

When we entered the building off of 2nd Street, we were in the very huge Atrium. or lobby of the building that was nicely decorated with Christmas trees and lights:

There were several stands selling drinks and snacks and this one particular stand that carried all kinds of nutcrackers:

An announcement was made before the start of the show that no cameras or electrical devices of any kind could be used during the presentation. Bummer. I did capture a couple shots though. This one is taken from our seats (about 10 minutes before the show) that were on the 14th row facing the center of the stage:

The only shot I was able to take of the show was at the end when all the performers were taking their bows:

The show was terrific and the music was outstanding. Our seats were great and we had the perfect position to watch the show. We are so happy that we went this year after talking about going for the last several years. As you can see in the first shot of the stage above, there were lots of children in the audience and we presumed they were ballet students from local schools.

Following the show at 3 PM, we walked across the street to Majerle's Sports Bar and Grill:

For those that don't know about Dan Majerle, he was a basketball star for the Phoenix Suns in the 80's and 90's and has opened 5 of these Sports Bars in AZ. The place was crowded - as expected - and we located a couple seats at the bar when we walked in:

Of course, all the TV's were tuned-in to the NFL games being telecast. We ordered a draft each, and then located a table and ordered our dinner. We each had a salad that was outstanding and we felt it was a great ending to a perfect day in Phoenix.

While driving home last night, we caught this hot air balloon about to land off of the highway before we exited the freeway:

We arrived home at around 5:15 and yes, we got home in time to capture another beautiful sunset on camera:

A perfect ending to a perfect day...