Waymo fun

The last few days, we have been in the Phoenix area, visiting Amy’s family. On Sunday morning, Greg reconnected with his long-time friend Adam. That evening, we went out to dinner with Amy’s parents, her sister and her family. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant managed by her cousin Mike.

Tonight, we decided to leave the family behind for a date night. We went to dinner at our favorite pizza restaurant, Pizzeria Bianco. (Yes, pizza two nights in a row). Actually, Pizzeria Bianco isn’t just our favorite; it’s often the top-rated pizza restaurant in the country.

As they say, getting there is half the fun. We have seen a lot of Waymo vehicles driving around the Phoenix area. If you’re not familiar, Waymo is the self-driving taxi service from Google. Tonight, we decided to try one. It turns out that two of the three Pizzeria Bianco locations are closed on Mondays, so we headed downtown to the original location. Waymo does not take the freeway so it selected a route that took an hour. We sat in the back seat in comfort while the car drove impressively well - much better than Tesla’s overhyped “Full Self Driving”. It was a really enjoyable experience, but for a long distance like this it would have been much faster to take Uber or Lyft since they take the freeway.

Because the other Pizzeria Bianco locations were closed, the host estimated that we would wait 2-3 hours for a table! We saw others give up when they heard the estimate. The wait turned out to be just an hour and a half. And it was well worth the wait!