Salt Lake City

     Our train trip from Davis to Salt Lake went relatively well, despite the crew being less than polite and giving the trip a sort of disappointing feel. We arrived in SLC at 3:30 am. After reviewing our limited options in an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night, we decide to walk to Denny's 0.7 miles from the station. We had "breakfast": hashbrowns and fries, and decide to scope out hostels. The venture for an appropriately located and priced hostel proved futile but in our search we found a Motel 6 which we were relieved to hear would let us check in at 6 am. We slept for a few hours at the motel and then ventured out to explore the city. After a lovely lunch of Thai food in the Salt Lake sun, we explored the local outdoor mall to pick up a few essentials, then walked back to our hotel to swim and rest. Might I add, this is the nicest Motel 6 stay I've ever stayed at, the pool was great, the room was clean and the real bed was sure nice to stretch out on. We read in the local newspapers that a free outdoor concert was playing in a nearby park. Explosions in the Sky!

Unfortunately we had Amtrak tickets to book before we could enjoy dinner and a concert. Our new rail passes were working however, we still had the issue of all of the trains being booked up (for USA rail pass holders but not for cash customers) because of our inability to book sooner because of the invalid passes from before. 

Begin boss fight with Amtrak Customer Relations! 

After explaining our story many times we were eventually told that we would have to pay an extra fee every time we boarded a train, there was nothing they could do, and they could not refund us or transfer us to a higher up who could help us. We were merely able to log a complaint and established that we would have to send in a complaint letter to the corporate office in the mail. While Claudio fought with the agent, I tried to reach a different department: Customer Support. (This ordeal took over 2 hours and threatened our concert plans.) But our agent at Customer Support proved to be helpful. We took a break from our Amtak battle to have a lovely dinner at a Japanese resturaunt accross the street from Motel 6, where we planned out our final itineray. When I called our agent back he was able to waive all extraneous fees and book all of our tickets! Hooray! We happily went on our way to the Explosions in the Sky concert and caught the last hour or so of the show. Miraculously we located one of three state run liquor stores in SLC and grabbed some Southern Comfort for the road. We road TRAX (the SLC light rail) back to the hotel and had an awesome evening. 

Explosions in the Sky

The next day we road TRAX all around the city, to a grocery store, temple square, the Amtrak station and back. We did eventually find the vegan mexican food cart we had read about in a local paper called Union Street Eats and had amazing tacos and a quesidilla. The owners told us about the vegan scene in SLC and recommended more restaurants than we had time to visit! 

After lunch, we explored the Temple Square area including the LDS museum, the tabernacle, assembly hall, visitors center and Joseph Smith Memorial Building (formally Hotel Utah). We enjoyed the views from the tenth floor of the JSMB and went on our merry way. 

Death Masks of Joseph (L) and Hyrum (R) Smith

Creepy Statue

LDS Temple

More Temple

For dinner, we opted to ride TRAX to South Salt Lake and eat at this funky vegan diner in a heavily industrial area. There we got to know more about living in Salt Lake from our server who had grown up there. She was super cool and explained about the liquor laws, temperature inversion, cost of living, and lots of other fun facts.

After dinner, we hung out at this planetarium place (also an IMAX theatre but opted out of seeing shows) and played with planet models and watched some short informational videos shown in the lobby. Then I got in a fight with an escalator. It ripped up the bottom of my toe in an excruciatingly painful way, but after some ice and a bandaid, we ventured to the Amtrak station where we found out our train (scheduled to arrive at 3 am) was running 3 hours late (now arriving at an even more inconvenient hour. After milling about and thinking about what to do, I suggested that we pitch our tent outside the station and catch some sleep. Aside from breaking a piece of the tent pole, operation Urban Camping was a success. We got 4 hours of sleep, boarded the train and slept some more on our way to Chicago. 

Urban Camping

I think the most striking thing about Salt Lake City for me was how friendly everyone was. Every one we passed on the street greeted us and we were always talking to strangers about all sorts of things every where we went. We also got to know the counterculture side of SLC where there is a thriving gay community, plenty of vegan restaurants, and lots of great people to get to know. The city was exceptionally clean, the surrounding mountains were beautiful and the weather couldn't have been better. 

We had a great time in SLC but are happy to move on to our next destination, Chicago, Illinois!