I have a tendency to be a little busy. Somehow trying to take care of two littles all day every day, spending time with their incredibly handsome dad, trying to keep the house in some semblance of order, working a full time job, taking health coaching classes, being active in different activities in my church, and launching a remake of my food blog/soon to be health coaching site, all while making most of our food from scratch and becoming more and more of a clean food crusader, I quite often end up finally turning in for the night around 11:00 at night, just to wake up again at 4:30 the next morning. Breakfast time is filled with doing my classwork while getting little ones dressed at the table while making some food for Marquis to take to work the next day. Every minute is scheduled, and I am usually doing 2-3 things at the same time because otherwise I just can't fit it all in.
And sometimes that makes a girl a little tired. Sometimes that girl needs to be taken away, to have her kids watched over by their grandparents (thanks again you guys, you are wonderful!) while her husband helps her remember how to sit and do nothing.
For Christmas we got some gift cards to the Grand America Hotel in downtown Salt Lake. (Thanks also to those who gave us those gift cards, I'm pretty sure you saved my sanity!) I have wanted to stay at this hotel since it was built, and I have now decided that it's the only hotel I ever want to stay at ever again.
The first thing I did was go sit on the loveseat, and that's all I did was sit. I remembered a little bit what it was like to just breathe, and that was glorious! The view out our 15th story window was also glorious, check it out:
I love our new house and it is nice living in a small town now, but it was also so nice to be back in the middle of a city! To hear the city sounds and watch all the people, to have everything we wanted to do within a short walk or train ride.
One thing I found funny about this little adventure of ours is how much it underlines that Marquis and I are foodies, no way around it. The first thing we did (after my deep breath on the sofa and peek at the view) was order room service. The cheese platter was delicious, and the caprese wrap wasn't half bad either. We had been to the restaurant at the Grand America before and knew we liked the food, so it was no shocker that we loved this.
We then hopped on the train to ride to the shopping areas nearby. We wandered past clothing stores, gadget stores and furniture stores without doing much more than dipping in for a moment. When we got to the cooking stores, however, it was a different story. We walked up and down each aisle in Sur la Table, discovering new gadgets and coveting ones we already knew existed but don't yet own. We spied on a cooking class that was going on, smelling the salmon and wishing we had thought ahead enough to be part of that class. We spent at least an hour wandering that store and loved every second.
When we finally had our fill, we wandered over to Mountain Town Olive Oil and spent quite a bit of time sampling the different oils and vinegars and discussing the 20 different kinds of salt with the man working there. And again, we loved every second.
By this time our room service snack had been walked off and despite our sniff of salmon and the samplings at the oil place we were ready for some real food, so we headed over to Fleming's Prime Steakhouse. Can I just say wow?! Wow! This is the type of place that Marquis and I will only go right after receiving our tax refund. I'm not going to tell you how much we spent, but to give you a hint, they gave us a $25 coupon on the way out to use next time. When you charge enough that you can just give away $25 coupons, you know that's a pricey restaurant. But the food?
(Sorry for the horrid cell phone pic!)
Oh, the food!!! Since Marquis started visiting steak places, there has been one steak that has been rated as delicious by Marquis. This one left them all behind. Actually not really, I just like to badly paraphrase The Princess Bride sometimes (the kissing quote? Do you get it? No? Never mind). For real, though, Marquis usually leaves steak places in extreme disappointment because he could have cooked the steak better himself at home, but he loved this steak, and his gigantic tower of onion rings. My scallops were divine, and I ate every bite of the chocolate lava cake they gave me at the end, despite being stuffed.
To continue our food nerdiness, when we got back to the hotel we discovered that they had Food Network. And there was much rejoicing.
The next morning was glorious. I slept in until 8:00. Eight a.m.! Me! And then, I went and took a bath in the gigantic bathtub, and no little people even knocked on the door to tell me their sister had poked them in the eye or had eaten a crayon. No knocking at all! I was left all alone for a whole bath! Aaaahhhhhh!!!!!
Of course, then we had to order more room service while watching more Food Network. My eggs Benedict was absolutely perfect, and Marquis enjoyed the platter of a la carte meat he ordered and a croissant.
The Grand America does packages that include the price of the room and also gives you $100 to spend anywhere in the hotel during your stay. Somehow we didn't quite use up the entire $100 on all the room service we ordered, so we just had to stop in their pastry shop on the way out and grab a chocolate berry tart for me to enjoy later. Yum!
I think this was my favorite weekend ever. And even though I adore my babies and missed them so much, it was so wonderful to be able to spent some time reconnecting with my wonderful hubby and enjoying our love of food together. It's been over a month now since we went and I still feel recharged. I can't wait to go back!
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