salt lake city

i'm sure my faithful readers have picked up that i use song titles as my blog titles. well, this one is no different. yes, there is a song called salt lake city. and it's by the beach boys. seriously. the whole song is about their love of the salt lake city fans. it's quite strange, but it was done before pet sounds. anyway, i wanted everyone to know there is a song called salt lake city. it's real people.

now, i've been here a few days. there's not a lot to do, but i went walking on friday night and i took these pictures above. i couldn't load them exactly how i wanted so i they're a bit jumbled. but some of them look like a mall. that's because it is a mall. the church purchased a large chunk of land right by the temple downtown and turned it into a massive outdoor mall. the mall has a stream going through the middle of it with fish and fountains. i didn't see anyone fishing though. what if it rains you say? well, they have a retractable roof that can close in four minutes to keep people dry when it rains. now malls are malls. same stores, same crap being sold. but this thing was pretty cool. salt lake is a little different from denver because the mountains in denver are off in the distance. you'll notice in one of the pictures from the second story of the mall, you can see the mountains right there. they're not off in the distance. they're about forty minutes away. the whole city is surrounded by mountains.

the other structure is the temple square. it's a massive temple right downtown. i'm not sure it's the actual church, because it appeared that the church itself was across the street. but the temple area was very nice. the grass was very green and there were some statues in the gardens that were really nice. the church temple is a massive structure.

finally, the top two photos are interesting. the top photo is of a meteor that landed perfectly on that stand. now that's not true, but that's what the artist is intending to say. i like it. it's actually out in the open area in front of my hotel window. i actually walk in front of it each day i walk to the office. the office is literally a minute's walk from the hotel. the second photo was of some sushi i ordered. takashi is supposedly the best sushi restaurant in salt lake city. so i went and i ate alone. i felt like bill murray in 'lost in translation'. but the sushi was really good. the red on the white rice is habanero infused masago. it was actually really good. i didn't expect sushi to be that great in salt lake city, but this place was good.

other than that, i've been enjoying the spoils of travel: cable, a/c and room service. the big three. i've barely left the room and loved every minute of it.