Sunday 21 October 2012

Apres SS - The Salt Lake City Chronicles...

With all the excitement of Sewing Summit over, we had Sunday to explore Salt Lake City centre.  Boy is that place quiet on a Sunday!  It was really quite eerie without other people and cars about.

This is the view from our hotel window, wasn't it a lovely day to go exploring?



We decided to walk up to Temple Square to see what we could see there.  This is the temple itself, but we weren't allowed in there:


This was in the gardens near the temple, a little Jack sized fountain:


Then I found some people to play with:


And then there was a HUGE fountain.  I got a little damp posing for this, but it was a nice day so I dried off quickly.


We went into the visitors' centre where I met this big guy.  He was seriously echo-y and there were all these planets and clouds and things round him.


We saw some people over at the conference centre up on the rood and we really wanted to go up and play there too, but we had to go all round inside first.  This is where they have the HUGE services for the LDS people both locally and round the world.  It seats 21,000 people, and is broadcast in 97 languages around the world, 54 of which are translated simultaneously in-house:


This is looking up from the stage end.  You can't really see it here because of the lens LT used, but the chairs are different widths to accommodate the curve of the auditorium.  We think there must be a bit of a fight for the wider seats, they look comfier...


My, what a big organ they have.  The choir sits up next to it, but in the open bit underneath they can wheel all sorts of things in and out:


Up on the roof of the conference centre is a garden.  There's trees and wild flowers, but because of the time of year all the flowers are dead.  The trees are pretty though:


You can see up the street to the capitol building with the dome.  We rather liked the brown house in front of it...


This was looking across to the temple and the city centre buildings:


When we came out of there, we headed to where there was a mall with real live people and open shops in it, just a couple of stops down on the Trax.  We just had to go into this shop after we saw this hanging outside:


We ended up having dinner at Cheesecake Factory (which conveniently ticked off one of Laura's wish list thingummies) as it happened to be one of only 2 restaurants near the hotel that were actually open!  We had salad and wee breaded cheese bits, weren't we good?


Err, well, except for these:


Mysteriously we then failed to take a photo of the cheesecake desserts, so we'll pretend that didn't happen, 'kay?

10 comments:

ginger@bearbits said...

Hi there Jack!

What a magnificent adventure you are having. Seeing all those sights on a day when the city is pretty much all yours. I'll bet that was very interesting.

Thanks for sharing all your photos. I can see that fountain was really really big. I'm glad you dried out quickly.

I'm glad you are keeping the ladies on their toes!

~ginger

Sarah said...

Oooh Jack, America makes you look even tinier. Just you be very careful now you dont lose LT. Cheesecake factory?? Not jealous at all. And please dont go to IHOP and if you do, please dont take photos of the food for me......

Canadian Abroad said...

Ignore Sarah. All the food photos you can take are welcome. So pleased the weather is being kind to you and you are getting lots of exploring done.

Trudi said...

Hope,the fountain shower hasn't shrunk you Jack, and I won't tell anyone how big the,cheesecake actually was ! That's why there's no picture right?!

The Bear's Blog said...

Hi Jack,

You had a wonderful trip and thank you for sharing with us.

The cheesecake - mystery - full tummies? Not a mystery to us. Giggle.

Hugs
Prudence ♥

Isisjem said...

Great pics Jack but doesn't the US make you look even smaller? I suspect the cheescake wasn't photographed because it was even bigger than you are!

Alan said...

Looks like you're having an interesting time. Hmm.. Salt Lake City doesn't look too much like my cup of tea. Pretty silly of you to get too close to that founting mate, abut I'm glad you dried out alright.

I LIKE the drinks, and maybe I'd like the cheesecake too if your staff hadn't gobbled it all up. I hope she stopped to give you a share.

Thanks for your reply to my blog - where exactly did that red dust go?

Hugs,

Jock

maddyrose said...

Hi Jack,
Our mom grew up about 40 miles north of SLC but that was so long ago I don't think they even had a Cheesecake Factory back then. She left there when she was still quite young so most of the sites you saw probably weren't built yet.
Looking at the size of that salad we bet the slices of cheese cake were really awesome.
Have a great adventure and take plenty of photos so you can tell us all about it.
Hugs,
Bellamine, Clarissa & Wendy

Karen said...

Cheesecake factory, h*ll ya! One of the best places for a visit. The photos are gorgeous!

Archie The Wonder Dog said...

The truth now, Jack - did you dive nose first into the cheesecake and that's why there aren't any photos?!