Exploring SLC

SLC is a "Mormon" ("LSD/Latter Day Saints" is the correct term) settlement, founded in 1847/48 by Brigham Young (pic) 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 multiply. "This was the Place" as 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 big church, not accessible for visitors, called "temple", as its core, the Tabernacle (where a famous choir performs) and two visitor centers with exhibitions. The square is surrounded by many large official church buildings, like the fantastic Joe Smith Building (pic),some museums, the house of Young, and genealogical research centers of the LSD. Though, I have to admit, that religion in general, mormons in particular, give me the goosebumps, it's a place you have to have seen. Young "sisters" from all over the world (and, less often, brothers, because they are often on a mission abroad) are overly friendly and the whole neighborhood (or, even, the whole city) is very clean, sort of sterile, and secure, though we saw quite a few homeless people on the streets - like in every big city.

We explored the Temple Square first thing this morning, after about 6 hours of sleep, then walked up the hill through the historic Capitol Hill Neighborhood to the Capitol, a fantastic, monumental building from the beginning of the 20th century. To our full surprise, no security at all to enter and admire murals, copola and Chambers. Views from up here are gorgeous, towards the Mountains, unfortunately it was a bit misty today, but warming up and sunny, perfect to explore.

Since we've visited last time, at least ten years ago, the city has become much more "modern" and attractive, new highrises and a nicely renovated theater, the Capitol Theatre (pic below, right). Especially the new streetcar (complimentary in downtown!) and the City Creek Shopping Mall (below, left), rather a pedestrian zone than one building, have improved the downtown area considerably, though it's still difficult to find a supermarket, drugstore or liquor store (but, years ago you didn't get any alcohol at all).

What we found were two really great bookstores - rather a combination of bookstore and antiques - used books for great prices: Utah Book & Magazine and Eborn Books. First one was more of a large, rather rundown shack with antiques between bookshelves, operated since 1975, the other even larger and a little more "appealing", with a large LSD literature section and many historic movie posters, coins, rare books, license plates etc. Really a bit of a contrast to the rest of town. Also, found a great boulangerie, where we grabbed breakfast/lunch, hungry from all the walking and no real dinner yesterday.

Picked up our credentials for the Go West Summit - a travel trade show for the Western part of the U.S. - explored some other parts of the city, like the basketball arena, home of the Utah Jazz (NBA, Karl Malone, one of the former stars, on pic) and went back to the hotel to get ready for the first reception tonight sponsored by Colorado Tourism in a pub/bar 20 min. walking distance from the hotel.

Out again ,,, to the Mormon Capital of the World

Although we are pretty experienced travelers, we didn’t sleep well last night and got up before 6:30 am to leave the house at 7 am to catch the streetcar to the railroad station and from there the train to MUC All on time, empty, no crowds - good thing to travel on a Sunday!

Also, it was very „relaxed“ on the airport, all went fast and half an hour before boarding we got to know that we had got an upgrade to business class. Our UA flight to Chicago took off about half an hour late, at 12:15 pm, because of some piece of luggage, which had to be unpacked.

Well, sitting in Business Class is a completely different ballgame. Main differences are the comfy seats and the legroom and the much better meals (beef shortrib as one of four offered main courses on the picture) - served on "real" plates with real silverware. A good wine selection, snacks here and there, what else could you wish? Seats can be flattened out completely to make a short small bed and TV screens are much larger. Not a bad experience and much more relaxing than Economy for sure.

Our flight to Chicago took a little over nine hours and was uneventful. Lake Michigan was frozen for quite a portion already when we flew into Chicago. No snow at arrival, but it started to snow lateron. The almost 5 hours layover in Chicago and then a two hour delay because of different kinds of problems with the plane made it a VERY long day. Eventually we departed and arrived to Salt Lake City/UT (short: SLC) after 3 hours flight time at almost midnight local time. Of course, no trains (light rail) from the Airport anymore, so we had to take an expensive cab into downtown and checked in in our room at the Radisson Downtown at about 0:30 am. 26 hours+ on the road, slept like a log.

Bye-bye New York!

Thursday - our last day in the city. To our surprise it has become warm again and no coat was needed. We packed our luggage efficiently to not succeed the weight limit and left the house for a last culinary adventure at Maki-Maki, a new Japanese restaurant closeby theater district and Rockefeller Center. It's been just a hole in the wall, but they had a very efficient "assembly line" for the rolls (cut and handrolls) they exclusively offer. No wonder, Kevin, the owner, was an engineer and knows how it can be done effecively. Fresh fish and seafood with avocado or sauces wrapped in rice and rolled or put into a cone-like shape. It's been fun to watch and delicious to eat.

But,,, best thing this day was a 1.20x1,50 m (4x5 ft.) large laminated subway map, which I got for free. In one of the stations MTA workers were taking down old maps and I asked one of them whether they throw them away and he gladly gave it to me. What a finding! Made our day and, surprise!, didn't even have problems to bring it on the plane.

After lunch, we went back to our friends' place to pick up our luggage. Being a little anxious about security because of the terrorist attack a couple of days before, we left pretty early, around 1 pm, to arrive at Newark Airport at about 3 pm. Two hours for the trip is a good time considering the three trains we had to take. Departure was at 6:20 pm and once we were in the air we got a great last view of NYC from above (pic). The plane was full, but flight time was only 7 hours and we arrived half an hour earlier. Didn't sleep a single minute. Another two hours in total to get from MUC to our home - all worked out perfectly fine today.

Considering the 1,150 miles (1840 km) driven in one week in Upstate New York and the many, many miles walked and spent on subways in NYC – no wonder, that we are really tired and exhausted now. At least the weather in Germany is o.k., partly sunny and not too cold today, so that we went for a walk to the garden in the afternoon to get some fresh air and to not fall asleep too early.

NYC revisited

Monday was not our day. Our long-planned Staten Island tour was a no-show. We had left the house early to get to the southern tip of Manhattan and catch the ferry to Staten Island. But, nobody showed up for the promised half-day tour and the office of "The Wheel" - a humongous project including a huge Ferris Wheel and a shopping/entertainment complex - was closed. We have heard about problems with the contractor there, but not quite sure yet what's going on.

Well, we did a lot of other things instead, e.g., we walked The Highline again - a green promenade on the elevated tracks of a former railroad, with artwork, fantastic architecture, stages and benches and plants grew immensely – and inspected the crazy-growing, booming Hudson Yards area, a railroad hub. Wondering, who can afford all the apartments coming up there... Chinese? Arabs? In any case, not your regular New Yorker!

On Monday evening, we took the subway to our previous long-time "home from home", to the Strange Dog Inn in Brooklyn's Midwood section, and had dinner with our friends Paula & Gail & BB (Benny, a huge Australian Shepherd), with Dom and the two cats.

Chinatown (picture on the left), the Lower East Side, the Bowery and the Broadway (probably the best area to go shopping) - even these neighborhoods are progressively changing, old shops and restaurants substituted by modern chain stores.

The old Essex Street Market, a city market hall from the 1940ies will soon move to a newly built highrise, the LES shows almost no Jewish or German reminiscense anymore, with the exception of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (pic below, left), the Broadway gets more and more chain stores (besides the old souvenir vendors like the one on the pic above), just Chinatown didn't change that much. Around the famous Flatiron Building (pic below, right) a new neighborhood, "NoMad", is up & coming, things are definitely changing.

Oct. 31 was Halloween and besides the big parade in the evening - which we missed because of a hockey game (Rangers : Las Vegas) in the Madison Square Garden – there was a kids' parade going on in the afternoon on Washington Square, where at the same time one of a series of artworks of Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei – "Good Fences make Good Neighbors" – was installed in the arch. We spent some time in the sun and watched the kids in their elaborate costumes, while at the same time, about 1,5 mi. away, a crazy truck driver murdered 8 people on the promenade along the Hudson River. We heard the sirens and saw the police cars and ambulances without knowing first what's going on.

Before the hockey game we spent part of the evening with our friends in a new Indian Restaurant called "aRoqa" in Chelsea and the food was terrific! Spicy, but not over-spiced, each dish very different in taste, from crabcake to duck and vegetarian dishes. Cocktails from the bar (pic) were fantastic, too.

Also, we went shopping - though, not excessively: Bought a bag full of books at Strand's, our favorite bookstore with new AND used books, and some clothing at Uniqlo (pic), a Japanese department store, which we like. Also, we stopped for another visit at Union Square Market - the presentation as well as the variety of goods is just amazing.

Farewell to Upstate New York

On first Sunday morning stop, before heading south, was the Vanderbilt Mansion, neighboring FDR's home in Hyde Park. Unfortunately, it was under renovation and surrounded by scaffolding on the outside (the pic isn't my own one therefore) and it had wrapped furniture on the inside.

Nevertheless, this park ranger with a Greek name did an amazing job in explaining the history of the Vanderbilt family and the way society – "Nouveau Riche" and "Old Money" – worked at the time. This was the home of one of many grandsons of the famous railroad patriarch Commodore Vanderbilt, Frederick Vanderbilt and his wife Louise. They lived here from 1896-1938, not year around, but only a couple of months in the spring and fall. Besides the fancy interior with all luxury imaginable, the estate offers spectacular scenic views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains that inspired the Hudson River School of Art.

Rain was pouring down in buckets when we left the house and it rained hard all day long. We made a brief stop in Beacon, an artsy community with a quaint main street and glimpsed into the Hudson Beach Glass Company, before we headed out towards NYC. Though it was only a 100 mi-drive from Poughkeepsie, it took forever. We didn't want to drive on the hectic toll roads, so, we chose backroads (would have been a fantastic drive through the Hudson River Valley without rain!), and, from Yonkers we drove on Broadway/Hwy. 9 (the same famous Broadway as in NYC - one of the longest roads in the world!), through the Bronx, over the Harlem River into Inwood, Washington Heights to Harlem. It was stop&go, since traffic was dense on this Sunday afternoon and the driving style of the New Yorkers is horrible, especially in the rain: parking second row, cruising slowly and looking for parking, cutting into lanes, taxi cabs, pedestrians, you name it. It was no fun at all, especially in this hard rain, with real poor visibility and flooded roads.

Well, eventually we made it and because of the rain dropped our luggage in Harlem, at Heidi's house, first. There is absolutely no parking, so we had to be quick to unload before we returned the car at Avis in Uptown. All sweaty and exhausted and wet afterwards, we arrived "home" at about 4:30 pm.

Since Monday we are back to exploring The City, NYC, walking instead of sitting in the car. Though, don't miss the car! The weather has improved again, but now the time of thin sweaters and t-shirts is over. Temps don't climb over 55 deg. F. anymore, but sun was out quite a bit. NYC photos will follow tonight, it's hard to catch up when days are soooo long.