Saturday, September 12, 2009

We officially (heart) Park City

Michael and I have been in Salt Lake City since Thursday. We visited the Salt Lake City GTT office, we spent some quality time with newlyweds Andy & Lindsay, and today we decided to spend a few hours in Park City.
We have now officially fallen in the love with the ski resort town of Park City. We had lunch at a cute little french cafe, Bistro 412.
They had an excellent looking menu and it was difficult to decide what to order:
Oh, and these pictures were all taken with my iPhone because we didn't have any other cameras with us. The bread and olive oil at Bistro 412 may have been the best I have ever eaten. No kidding. Delicious baguette with a delicately crispy crust and a soft delicious middle, but the real key was the olive oil. Light oil with a little balsamic, red pepper, rosemary and garlic thrown in, yum!
So delicious, here I am stuffing my face:
They make their own sodas. Michael ordered the homemade root beer and said it was "pretty good". We decided to split an appetizer, a soup, and a sandwich. We knew it would be too much food, and it was. Not sure why we decided to order a quesadilla at a french bistro, but it sounded good at the time. As it turned out, it was not all that good. A goat cheese & mango quesadilla with an avocado salsa sounded scrumptious, but in fact there was too much goat cheese which overpowered all the other flavors. Something in it was spicy, but that was really the only redeeming quality. I would not order this again, but I do think I will try and recreate a better version at home where I specialize in eclectic cuisine, not french!
We ordered the french onion soup (this should be a slam dunk, right?) and also the smoked chicken, provolone and pesto croissant (french, right?) sandwich. Both were very delicious although the french onion soup was our favorite. It was just perfect.
The sandwich came with a whole slew of shoestring fries which we could not even begin to finish, but they were great. They had lots of other delicious options like wild mushroom strudel, daily quiche special, pork loin french dip, steak frites, and even beef bourguignonne.
After lunch I got some love from Franz the bear...

We decided to take the city chair lift up to the top of the mountain and it turned out to be really fun.
At first I was a little scared as the "chairs" are a little high off the ground (obviously I am not a skier).

I was a little worried about my slip on sandals after seeing someone's flip flop abandoned below on the netting over the street, about 20 feet into the climb. So I kept my feet very still the whole time and my sandals stayed securely on my feet.
The forest and sky were just beautiful today.Although it looks like the ground is very close to our feet, solid ground was actually about 30 feet below...
The original chair lift towers run parallel to the new chair lift:
Here's the mechanism that keeps us safely moving up and down the mountain:
Heading back down through the aspen forest:
The aspens were beautiful. Here a few maples are thrown in for beautiful early fall color.
View on the way down:




Heading back down to Park City:

A really fun aspect of the chair lift and surrounding area during the summer are great mountain biking trails. Lots of people took the chair lift up with their bikes following behind and then they rode the trails back down. Looked like fun.

After our fun chair lift ride, we headed back into town for a little shopping. We stopped into a very cool pet store. The owner was great. They currently have about a half dozen Newfoundlands and they sell a raw protein diet, plus supplements. It was interesting to hear this woman's theory about the life span of pure breeds and how vaccines and mass produced foods are killing our dogs. She previously had golden retrievers that she did not vaccinate and that she fed a raw diet and they lived 16-19 years. Nearly unheard of for golden retrievers. Definitely something worth thinking about. Below Michael is getting to know a 200 pound Newfoundland and I am petting a 160 pound 1 1/2 year old "puppy". So cute!
The weather was perfect, the town adorable, the food 'mostly' delicious.
We had a blast!
We

Park City

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kari,

Looks like that bear is telling you a secret!
Kari+Bear = KareBear!

Kim said...

There are so many cool places we are discovering in Utah. Looks like we need to add Park City to the list. I am not a skier, but I will give the mountain biking a try!

Unknown said...

The mountain biking looked like so much fun. I'm sure Jake and Joe would love it too. You guys should definitely do it. Park City itself is kind of a fancy, cutsie little town, but it does offer a lot of fun activities. Michael wanted to check out the operating luge track, but we figured we would save it for a winter's day.