La Posada de Santa Fe, NM

It's been a while, but hello.

We were looking for a place close ish by to take a semi short trip and had recently heard pretty cool things about Santa Fe from a few different people.  A short direct flight to Albuquerque (took me a while to master this spelling and I'm sure I will forget in time) from SF (after a 2-hour delay), an $80 4-day car rental from Hertz (half of this was taxes and fees, believe it or not), and we arrived at La Posada de Santa Fe.  We chose the hotel because of the Starwood affiliation, and it served us well.

During check in, we had requested for a suite upgrade, but unfortunately this was not available for the first evening.  The reception lady told us to stop by the next day and they would help us with this.  The regular room was nice, comfy bed, worked out just great for us.  Lingon learned to build a fire (even though there was a sign telling us not to build a fire) and that kept us nice and warm!  The one thing that was annoying is that there were no bedroom slippers, apparently they had been on back order for a while!

The grounds of the hotel were really pretty.  Some of the buildings were old adobe structures, and others were newly build but in the same style.  The lobby was inviting with a wonderful fireplace and they served complimentary coffee and hot chocolate in the morning.  The hotel was a few blocks from the main square, so we had a nice walk everyday when we went to town.

On our second day, we upgraded to a suite.  It had a living room and was very big, and we enjoyed the extra space though it was not really necessary.  The bathroom had double sinks though, which we appreciated!

What I really liked about the hotel (I must be turning into an old person!) is the activities they arrange.  While we were there, we attended an art talk, smores evening, and we would have done the Saturday morning yoga except we decided to go hiking early instead.  Yummmmmm smoressssss.

For our Starwood Platinum amenity, we chose the breakfast.  You can get a continental breakfast which is coffee, a pastry and fruit parfait, but coffee was free so we decided to go with the $30-off-your-bill option at Julia restaurant.  Over the days, we got to try the huevos rancheros, lox and bagels (it really was just one bagel), French toast and Skinny Minnie Beni (poached eggs with a bunch of vegetables).  All very good and we were very pleased.  Portions were large and we often had leftovers.  Service was wonderful too.

Also, there is free coffee, tea and Mayan hot chocolate available in the lobby in the morning, and we just got that every morning instead of buying coffee for Lingon at breakfast, saved a few bucks!

We had a most lovely stay here.  I would highly recommend the hotel.  Thumbs up!

Salt Lake City and Park City, UT

This is sort of a continuation of our great American summer adventure, but somehow is not quite as iconic as Yellowstone or so, so I decided to give it its own heading.  It seems Park City, very popular for winter sports, has now also become the place to go to in the summer.  Lots of families around.  We went for a conference that Lingon was to attend, which was nice because we got a good rate on the hotel.

We drove in from Yellowstone (exited the west gate, went through Montana, Idaho, and made it into Utah.  That makes it 4 states in 4 hours.  I feel kind of cool thinking of life that way.  ;-)

Our friend told us about this Mexican joint called Red Iguana that we had to go to.  So Red Iguana we went.  We are both trying to keep fit and lose some weight, especially during periods of travel, so we decided to share one of their specials, a seafood fajita platter.  On a Sunday afternoon at 1.30pm or so, our expected wait time as told to us by the greeter was 45 mins, but we probably got seated in 20.  We got free chips and salsa, so that helped fill us up a little.  The fajita plate itself was plenty, and had shrimp, mahi mahi and scallops, together with grilled peppers and onions, and 3 flour tortillas.  The food was cooked really well, plenty of flavour, not overcooked, simple flavours, not too unhealthy (or so I would like to think).  Given the popularity of the place, I would say the other dishes have to be really good.  SO YUM!

I decided I wanted to visit the Great Salt Lake, so off we went towards the marina.  After the GPS told us to get off the freeway, we saw a giant gift shop before the marina where a few cars were, and we decided in the interest of time we would go there.  I had asked a friend whether it was cool, and she said it was gross, but I wanted to see it anyway, thinking it could be like the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia which was also another great salt plain but actually beautiful (think reflecting crystals where one can take cool photos), but this was pretty much a dump.  Still, saw it, and happy to have seen it.  We took a walk out to the water, where some of the ground was made of sand, some soggier than others, and salt.  So there we have it, the Great Salt Lake, which wasn't so great after all.

Then we headed off to our hotel, where I knew we were going to get pampered.  The St Regis Deer Valley.  It was a welcome change after our not so great motel-esque places.  There is a valet at the base of the property with a private St Regis funicular to the top where the actual property was.  We did not know to drive to the top, so we went to the base valet, and lugged our luggage up the funicular to us, which was rather inconvenient - I really do wish the valet told us we could go straight up.  The views going up the funicular were stunning.  we got upgraded to a suite with a full kitchen - the fridge was the same as ours!  Our view was not very pretty overlooking the property valet area, but we rarely go on balconies anyway, so it was no big deal.  But it was very very nice.  Yay.

One of the days, I took the opportunity to order room service, a rare treat.  Fried chicken wings, which reminded me of the kind I would eat after a swim when at home in Singapore.  The bread was not very good, there was a wheat (edible), sundried tomato (inedible imo) and olive (decent for olive, I do not like olives).

We got our Starwood Platinum breakfast amenity, which was $40 off our bill at the J&G Grill.  The first day I ordered a short rib hash, which was really spectacular.  Sunny side up eggs over short ribs and perfectly seasoned potatoes.  I'm not a big eat-out breakfast person, because I often feel I can make most breakfast egg stuff well, but this really wow'd me.  Lingon got the eggs benedict which was OK.  The second day, I went solo, and ordered Belgian waffles and bacon which were so so, and ordered granola, yoghurt and fresh fruit to go.  Their granola was extremely delicious!

One of the nights, when Lingon was at an event, I had to dine by myself.  And since the event had booked out the J&G Grill, I had to eat at the bar, which wasn't such a bad thing.  I actually enjoy eating solo at bars better than at a table anyway.  I sat down and got served the most delicious bar nuts ever, and some herbed popcorn which was not bad.  I had to restrain myself from eating it all.  I treated myself to a bubbly, and got the almond crusted arctic char as my dinner, really well done, perfectly cooked, healthy, a girl was happy.  I decided to skip dessert for health reasons and also because the bar was getting really full.  As I walked back to the room, I was informed that there were smores every evening from 7-9pm, which pleased me to no end because I was frankly a bit bummed that I did not get dessert.  One even has a choice between Reese's peanut butter cups or regular Hershey's chocolate squares (which were really rectangle).  I got both.

I really enjoyed staying at the hotel.  It was really nice to be pampered.

We had dinner in Park City itself on one of the evenings.  Kind of a small cute downtown strip.  Our first evening there, we went to Handle, a fairly new restaurant that opened a little over a year ago.  Good quality food, people seemed to be drinking freely, and having a good time.  We got the yellowfin tuna ceviche, broccolini, burrata toast, diver scallops and clams, pork belly, and the caramel pudding dessert which seemed really popular on Yelp.  I think all the food was pretty good, except they seemed to really like using watercress - in great quantities - in a number of the dishes, and the taste of that overwhelmed.  I found myself eating the watercress first before attacking the rest of the dish.

Over the couple of days, I managed to spend quite a bit of time outdoors.  The first hike I did was long, and according to my GPS I ascended 3900ft which is quite a bit.  I left the hotel and tried to get on a trail that would take me to Canyons Village, where I took the Silver Lake trail up to the top of Bald Mountain.  I had some really beautiful views on the way up of the Jordanelle Reservoir, and decided I wanted to take the chair lift down.  The chair lift down was singularly the most scary experience ever, I literally felt like I was going to pee in my pants, and constantly grabbed on to the side rail.  Funny, since I never experience this going up the lift.

One of the most exciting experiences, though, was seeing a moose upclose and personal.  So we were having breakfast at the hotel, and the server, a very nice lady called Kim, told me of a moose on the hill right in front of the restaurant.  We did not see him on the first day as we had a later breakfast, but on the second day, I went for breakfast bright and early and lo and behold, there he was!  Let's play spot the moose.  Sorry for the crappy photo.  The sun was really not in my favour.  I myself can barely spot him in the first photo.

Following the disappointing bear-less episode, I decided I would look for him and take a photo up close.  I went up to look for him and spotted his antlers behind the bushes.  Taking care not to scare him, I made sure to create a little noise so he knew I was there.  But still, at some point, he jumped back very suddenly and I got spooked, took a quick photo, and went down, a bit bummed that I did not get a better photo.

As I was heading down, I met a dad and son pair and asked if they wanted to see the moose, and invited myself on their journey to find the moose.  Then, we saw him.  We must have been 20ft away from the beast.  I was happy.  I did some reading on the moose, since I swear his antlers were furry, and indeed my eyes were not playing tricks on me.  Story is, they shed their antlers every year, and in the initial growing stages the next year, they are furry with a ton of blood vessels bringing oxygen (I suppose) to the antlers to help them grow.  Strangely, the Wiki entry on moose included the fact that if the moose gets castrated, he immediately sheds his current pair of antlers, and then grows a pair of deformed antlers which he keeps for the rest of his life.  Survival of the fittest, I suppose.  No one wants a moose with ugly antlers.  So sad.

Small world - turns out the dad whose hike I joined was the roommate of Lingon's ex-colleague's brother.  I would say it is super random, but maybe a lot of finance people go to Park City and it's just a matter of time you find 3 degrees of separation.

I went back to the hotel and showed Kim and some kids my photo.  Upon check out, Kim gave me a stuffed St Regis moose!  One for the collection.  So sweet.  Thanks Kim!

Well, soon the time came to leave.  We had lunch at Uptown Fare in town.  We both got the turkey sandwich because of all the rave reviews.  I was going to get the tomato soup, but the butternut squash soup caught my eye and I got that instead.  We also got a side of the egg salad to go, since their eggs were supposed to be really good.  What a meal!  And for $30!

We walked down Main Street just to check it out.  They were filming a movie, but we did not know the cast members.  And then I took an obligatory photo of High West distillery.  Then we called it quits.  Bye bye, Park City.  What a lovely short journey.