Modern and Historic - SLC got it all!

Monday morning we had an early start and after breakfast in the hotel we went on a guided downtown walking tour, noticing how much the city has changed since our last visit in 2018, when we attended Go West Summit, a tourism convention. Modern new buildings - mostly apartment and some office buildings - popped up like mushrooms everywhere! 

Teslas, BMWs, Porsches on the streets - SLC has apparently become a very wealthy city, also, thanks to a lot of people moving in from the West Coast. Tech and aerospace industry is big now, and, there is the University of Utah. Outdoors and wintersports are big draws around SLC, and after the Winter Olympics in 2002 the city is preparing for the next Olympics in 2034, which is also the reaso for many constructions and renovations going on right now.

Originally, SLC is a Mormon settlement  ("LSD/Latter Day Saints" is the correct term), founded in 1847/48 by Brigham Young who brought a handfull of religious people, who were trying to escape persecution, from the East Coast over the Rocky Mountains to Utah, to find a place to settle and to be fruitful and to multiply. "This was the Place" Young exclaimed, when he saw the Utah Valley. He called the place "Deseret" referring to honey bee or beehive originally. In 1896 when polygamy (practised by the Mormons for a long time) was officially abandoned, Utah became the 45th State. 

Focal point of downtown SLC is the Temple Square, sort of a walled-in area with the "Temple" in the center, and the Tabernacle (photo above/right) where a famous choir performs. Right now all of this is a big construction site, aiming to make the buildings earthquake-proof. The square is surrounded by many large official church buildings, like the Joe Smith Building, a museum, the home of Young, and the Family Research Centers of the LSD. We peeked into the Tabernacle, where we experienced a wonderful concert in 2018.

On our tour we checked out Gateway Mall and City Creek Shopping Mall, passed by Eccles Theater and some historic buildings and murals in town - below a few impressions:

 

 

After the tour we took UTA Trax - the streetcar line - up to the UoU Campus and walked from there through Fort Douglas with the Military Museum to the Natural History Museum of Utah, a fantastic, comprehensive museum at the footsteps of the mountains in the East of downtown. 

 

The architecture of the museum (below) - clad in copper plates of the nearby Bingham Copper Mine - as well as the exhibitions on several floors are well worth visiting!  Utah's landscapes and cultures, geology and geography, ecology and climate, archeology and history, dinosaurs, and much more are represented in the museum. The museum's terraces offer a spectacular view of the city (pic far below). 

Spent quite a bit of time in the museum before we walked over to Red Butte Gardens (a botanical garden/arboretum) nearby, to check it out. Unfortunately, in winter, there is not too much to see. Then took a bus and the streetcar back into downtown and from there to Brigham Young Historic Park. Planned to walk up to the Capitol, but feet became tired and 10 mi of walking took its toll! It's been unusually warm, but cloudy all day.

Had a wonderful dinner at White Horse in the evening, in good company, and, called it a long day after that.

Duck breast with Utah sour cherries, brussel sprouts & potatoes