The hubby and I have been super busy lately with wedding-related activities (we just had 2 weddings, and have 5 more planned before the end of next April!). So when we discovered a free weekend back in early April, we decided to jump at the chance to travel somewhere!
We knew we wanted to make the theme of our trip sports and/or comedy. We looked at a few different cities, trying to combine seeing one of our favorite comedians with a sporting event of some kind. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to work that out, so we decided to focus on SPORTS!
Due to having a home NBA and MLS games the same weekend, we picked Salt Lake City. The trip definitely had it’s highs and lows, with not too much in between.
We flew in late Thursday night and got in around midnight. The car rental place was already closed but we were able to take a shuttle to our hotel, DoubleTree Suites by Hilton. I’ve stayed at a DoubleTree before, but DoubleTree Suites was super fancy. All of the rooms were suites! (Hence the name…) Once we got up the next morning, we were able to see some amazing mountain views from our room. There are no mountains in Louisiana. We’re lucky if we get big hills. So mountains… cool stuff!
View from our room… Mountains!
We are members of the Hilton rewards program, so we got a free, delicious breakfast at the buffet, then took the free shuttle back to the airport to get the rental car (definitely good advice – if you are getting in super late and your hotel offers a free shuttle to the airport, wait and get your rental car the next day. It keeps you from having to pay for an extra day you aren’t going to be using.) Once we go the car, it was off to our normal vacation spot: the zoo!
Oh.My.Goodness. For a Friday morning, the line to get into the zoo was PACKED. And I have to admit, we were a bit disappointed once we actually got in. A lot of the zoo was under construction or exhibits being redone, so many animals were missing. We got to see another Grizzly Bear battle though! Those Grizzlies are fast becoming my favorite animals to see in zoos. Always doing something fun!
For lunch, we went to Pie Pizza Underground. It had super good reviews on TripAdvisor, for good reason! The pizza was AMAZING! I was starving, so I also got a salad and we got a Pizza Pull-Apart (which was basically just breadsticks) which were OK, but not as good as the pizza. We had some time to kill before our first sporting event, so we headed down to the bar to have a drink. Yes, the bar was a major criteria in our choosing that hotel. While the drinks were a bit on the expensive side, the people were nice. They kept recommending Cajun restaurants for dinner though.
If you’re in SLC, go here. Just go.
We then went to watch the Utah Jazz play the LA Clippers. I was very disappointed because, while not my favorite team, there are a lot of players on the Clippers that I like, but Doc Rivers sat all of the starters. We didn’t even get to see Austin play. *sad face* The Clippers still won in overtime. And Gordon Hayward was adorable.
We had a HORRIBLE time trying to find dinner after the game. Apparently the majority of the restaurants close around 10 on Friday nights, and the ones that stay open turn into nightclubs. We ended up getting take-out from Pie Pizza again, eating in our room around midnight. Needless to say, we were both grumpy and tired by that point, so just crashed after eating.
The next day, we decided to visit the area SLC is known for – Temple Square! We were planning on spending all day there before our second sporting event, but ended up staying at the genealogy library for the majority of the time. It was really cool! I’ve decided the hubby’s family must have been in the mafia, because they came to NOLA straight from Sicily only a few generations back. Once we were able to drag ourselves away from the library, we wandered around Temple Square so I could take some pictures. The gardens there are GORGEOUS. We didn’t have time to do any formal tours, so mostly just walked around, ate a quick lunch at the deli, and wandered around some more.
We decided to be smart this time and eat before our soccer game. We ate at Maxwells ECE, which we both HIGHLY recommend. It was fantastic. I got pasta in a pesto cream sauce with chicken. YUM. I felt so fat after.
Then it was onto what I was most excited about – Real Salt Lake! They were playing their rivals, the Colorado Rapids, in the Rocky Mountain Cup, so the crowd was super loud the entire game. And I got to see Kyle Beckerman play! While we were woefully unprepared (we didn’t know we could and should have brought in a blanket) and froze our fingers off once the sun went down, we had a blast! We decided we want to start going to more games, which means traveling more! I wish the trip could have stopped right there, with a fantastic evening.
Unfortunately, we had a day of hell trying to get back home. Let me start by saying that we’ve NEVER had this much trouble or been so unhappy with Southwest. They called us the next morning, about 4 hours before our 10:00a flight, to say that we were getting bumped. Apparently, our flight was going to be so delayed there was “no way” we would make our connection. They would not work with us to reschedule a flight over the phone, so the Hubs had to go to the airport and talk to someone in person. The next flight we could take didn’t end up leaving until around 3:00 that afternoon. The hotel tried to accommodate us as best they could by letting us stay in the room an extra hour (check-out was at 11 but they let us stay until 12). The rental car place told us we could keep the car about an hour longer as well before they would start charging us an extra day. We decided to just head to the airport early so we didn’t incur any additional charges.
That’s when we found out you can only check luggage within 3 hours of your flight. We were there 4 hours before. We had to sit in the lobby of the airport for an hour with our stuff, which sucked. Luckily, SLC Airport has free wifi, so we found a quiet corner with an outlet and were able to watch a golf tournament.
The rest of the day was spent waiting on airplanes. We would have made our 2nd flight because it, too, was delayed just enough, and would have gotten home at a decent time. Instead, after a long day of travel, we collapsed in bed around 2 in the morning. I got about 3.5 hours of sleep before the alarm rang to go to work the next morning. Blah.
So, after blocking out that horrible last day of travel, we had a pretty good trip.
Miscellaneous Wifey 