Missing Temple Square, Finding Dave and Busters: Salt Lake City Family Edition

I am not sure what to say about my trip to Salt Lake City since my family had a different itinerary than the one I mapped out. 

To start, I was interested in visiting Temple Square and learning about the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) as a point of interest. Though many of the major sites are under construction, there were plenty of interesting LDS places to visit and see like the Family Search Library and Convention Center which shows a short film about Mormon history. However, my husband was having no part of it. He has always been against organized religion, citing his parents bad experiences with the Catholic Church growing up in Latin America, and protested visiting a cult. He was adamant and the kids were not interested so I settled for seeing the buildings from afar. I was impressed my the scale of the LDS office building and want to visit again one day when the construction work is complete. 

We ended up shopping at the City Creek mall, which is uniquely both an indoor and outdoor experience. It housed all the best shops including luxury brands and more accessible shops as well. The girls did some shopping at H&M and exclaimed “This is so much fun!”. 

Next we headed to the new Gateway development which was hyped as the latest and greatest development in Salt Lake City. The weather was pretty terrible and we ended up getting a little turned around trying to figure out what to do at the “destination center”.  We set out to find the planetarium but the kids led us to Dave and Busters instead. We played a quick round of games, watched the Ravens on TV and headed back to the hotel so we wouldn’t be late to our visit to a hot spring that night. 

Thanks to a helpful guide at the Visitor Center, she suggested we take in the new Marriott Autograph collection Asher hotel. It is located in the former Union Pacific Railroad structure. We took a quick look inside the historic renovation which retained many of the original features of the train station. 

Before exiting Salt Lake City, my husband took a turn around the state capitol building so we could say we saw it. 

Things that ended up on the chopping block were a visit to the Natural History Museum and a quick visit to the Great Salt Lake Utah State Park and Marina. A future, more ambitious, trip might include a visit to the Bonneville Salt Flats. I’m not sure if we will ever make it to this beautiful mountainous area again, but there are plenty of reasons to come back.