First published by The Journal Gazette
I decided to spend a long weekend in Tucson, Arizona, to learn about travel content creators and the city of Tucson.
I attended TravelCon, a multiday annual business event for travel content creators to learn how to enhance their use of social media platforms so they can hope to wield the greatest influence on travel trends.
At the conference I learned many travel tips, but one stuck out to me: When I can, I fly ultra-low-cost airlines.
Each airline’s policy on carry-on bag and personal item sizes are different. Some airlines are stricter than others about what is considered a carry-on and a personal item. Frontier and Spirit airlines both have measuring bins at the gate to ensure that personal items comply with their size restrictions. No matter what airline I am flying on, when I pass another airline’s measuring bin, I will place my bag in it to see if it fits. This helps me with travel planning.
During the conference, I broke away to explore Tucson. I walked to meet Elysa Crum, owner and tour guide of Taste of Tucson Downtown: Culinary and Cultural Tours.
“I bring visitors to local places that are often missed by visitors,” Crum said. “People like pizza. Tucson has a lot of great pizza places. Tucson has a lot of interesting history.”
Our first stop was Los Olivos. It is in a repurposed standalone one-story building with the exterior front bottom half-painted yellow. It has a brown tile roof and a white and gray striped patio awning. There is a large Italian flag attached to the upper corner of the building. If it were not for the pizza signs in the windows and Italian flag, I wouldn’t have thought the restaurant in this building serves pizza. The slice of thin-crust cheese pizza that I tried was satisfying.
We went to Whole Slice Pizza next. It’s a small, carry-out pizzeria located in a mixed-use modern building. I tried a slice of mozzarella, ricotta, parmesan, lemon zest and black pepper pizza. It was delicious.
Empire Pizza was next. It’s located in a historic building in the Historic Congress District, the area along Congress Street in the heart of downtown Tucson. I tried a slice of the tasty Elote. Its toppings include fire roasted corn, cotija cheese blend, tajin, chipotle mayo and fresh cilantro.
“You can’t find this kind of pizza in other cities,” Crum said. Crum also pointed out the history of the building. “There used to be an underground tunnel connecting this building to the train station. The tunnel was used to sneak alcohol during the time of Prohibition.”
We also went to Hotel Congress, where I learned how Tucson’s history connects with that of Crown Point, Indiana.
John Dillinger, an infamous gangster, and his gang committed multiple deadly bank robberies in the Midwest. In January 1934, Dillinger and three gang members fled to Tucson to evade capture.
His gang members stayed at the Hotel Congress and happened to be there when the hotel caught fire. The firefighters recognized the gangsters from an issue of True Detective Mysteries magazine and reported them to the police.
Dillinger was staying with a woman instead of at the hotel, but soon the police arrested them. Dillinger was transferred to Crown Point’s county jail, where he later managed to break out.
By the time the wonderful tour ended, I was pizza-ed out. But that was only temporary. The next day I went back to Whole Slice for a slice of pepperoni pizza.